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Abject poverty and the freedom of motoring 🏁

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If you don’t want to live a life of abject poverty, drive a 20-year old Honda Civic the collective wisdom of the finance community seems to say. Cars are a depreciating asset, you should avoid buying them as much as possible, and if necessary to get a replacement due to old one being no longer cost effective to repair, then get the cheapest, reliable clunker you can find.

Let’s be honest, there is no such thing as a cheap, reliable clunker. Clunker and reliable are opposites, and usually reliable is not cheap. When cars get older, they need more maintance and costly repair. You can keep an old car on the road for quite a long time, if you don’t mind regular visits to the mechanic and dealing with a lot of broken and worn out parts, and poor performance. People put a lot of value in looks, and often look down on people who drive old cars, including police officers who target old vehicles for violations, assuming that the drivers are poor and will not have lawyers or put any challenge to police extraction of wealth out of the poor.

I agree you should buy a car, and hold on to it for a long time. I’ve had Big Red for nearly 14 years now – it will be 14 years come early October. Big Red still runs but it is showing it’s age, including being through 14 years of winter de-icing salts, despite my best efforts to regularly was the salt off it. Rough roads and the lift kit have been rough on the suspension. But it’s a been a lot fun, taking me on many good and memorable trips, and some more mediocre trips like that time burning up the wheel bearing on my truck driving back from West Virginia. Truth is any vehicle as it gets old becomes less reliable. And reliability counts, especially on road trips and vacation when time is limited, or for that matter if you depend on the vehicle to get you to and from work. Can’t be missing work all of the time because your car is junk.

People use the appreciating asset value as an excuse to buy a lavish, unnecessary frills full house that is expensive to heat, cool and maintain. It’s true that car becomes garbage after a decade or so of driving, but does many parts of even the nicest house. Houses aren’t free to live in, they have taxes, energy bills, repair, maintance and upgrade as substantial costs beyond the purchase and finance price. But people buy houses, not just as the most basic shelter, but as a place to give them joy and to feel like a comfortable place to be away from it all. Truth is cars preform more then just basic transportation. They give people pleasure when they drive them, and take them to pleasurable places, at ease. If cars were just basic transportation, why not just take the old city bus every where? That’s an even cheaper option then owning an old Honda Civic. Or better yet, walk to work and the market. But we like the freedom an automobile brings.

15 years ago as we were climbing out of the Great Recession, I was hard pushed to ever consider buying a Japanese car. It seemed anti-American, even though plenty of my friends including those who drive pickup trucks, swore by the reliability and simplicity of the foreign brands. I wanted a big jacked up truck, like so many of the farm kids I went to school with had. They used from farm things, they needed the power to tow and haul cattle, hay and tractors and who know what else. A big truck also seemed attractive to me, as I’ve long been a truck-cap camper, since I got my Ford Ranger more then two decades ago, and I wanted more room then a Ford Ranger. So I got Big Red.

Big Red has been great. But he’s big, which means he’s not great for off-roading, small parking lots, urban streets, or even tight campsites. He cruises nice on the highway, but the heavy weight means he’s a bit of dog on the hills, especially with the lift kit and the way those big tires are slow to accelerate and even more tricky to slow with the brakes. You really got to be careful and down shift and be easy on the brakes as you go down the big hills. Truth is I want something smaller if I’m thinking about driving out west, next year to the Midwest but in future years, who knows how far west. I want so mething easy to drive and more fuel efficent.

Mom suggested why don’t I consider an small all-wheel drive SUV. That way the cab can be heated in the winter for camping – and I don’t have to go out and buy a truck cap. Have you looked at the price of truck caps these days? The days of a very nice truck cap coming in under $2,000 are long gone. But I still want a truck. Maybe a Toyota Tacoma 4×4 extended cab? Or a similar American model of the mid-size? Nissan’s trucks are said to be an old reliable design, and have g reat prices but who knows if Nissan will be around in 10 years, they’ve had such trouble with their car fleet being crap, and nobody buys Nissan car anymore, unless they don’t know how bad Nissan CVTs and engines are on their SUVs and cars. I would love a manual transmission, some of the Toyota Tundra 4×4 still have that as option, as it’s so much better for off-roading, and honestly, driving in the snow too.

I could wait and see how much longer I can keep Big Red on the road, but I want to look late next winter into early spring at getting a new truck, hopefully before Big Red is no longer able to be driven without substantial repairs. It’s much easier to get around to car dealerships and lots to look at cars when you have your own vehicle. It also would be easier to get gear out of the old truck, when you’re not rushing to clean things out at a mechanic shop or roadside, before the vehicle is junked. Trade in values for running vehicle, are far better then a junked vehicle too.

How many more years can I get out of Big Red? That’s a valid question. Maybe I could get Big Red through another year, into late 2026 or even 2027. But let’s be honest, he’s 14 years old and getting up their on the miles. And I want to make that Great Midwestern trip next year to Northern Michigan and Wisconsin and I don’t want to be driving an old clunker that could leave me on the side of the roads between the cornfields or worse yet on a dirt road in Michigan wilderness. I want to be comfortable, cruising in a modern, safe vehicle with things like adaptive cruise control.

So maybe a Toyota Tacoma Extended cab 4×4 is my best choice, but I should also see what Detroit is producing that is similar these days. I know GM’s latest batch of engines are pretty bad but I’m not sure if that applies to the smaller trucks or not. I don’t think I want something as small as the Ford Maverick but also not full-size. I do also want to get a cap that I camp in and a rack up top for the kayak and solar, and a trailer hitch for a bike rack. Probably mount all that camp power batteries, controller and inverter in the bed, though I would run a voltage controlled relay to feed power both to starting battery when camping with solar and also feed power to accessory batteries while driving.

At one level, I have some time to consider my options as I want to keep Big Red on the road at least through the winter if possible, though I still have to get it past inspection in December and any other mechanical breakdowns that occur in the meantime. And you don’t know with a 14-year old truck what could break down, but I’d much rather be beyond salt season before I get my next truck, which will hopefully last me through retirement around age 55. As  I make good money, and I like traveling dirt roads in my truck, so I should get one next year, so I’m ready for my epic trip next year.

Wisconsin for living

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Another state I’ve considered moving to would be Wisconsin. It’s a big state with vast rural areas, famous for its dairy industry and the sand hills that Aldo Leopold once wrote the Sand County Almanac about. It’s also home to the Blue Karner Blue Butterfly, similar to the Albany Pine Bush.

It’s vast fertile lands, such as the sand hills once fertilized by prarie grasses and now by manure and nitrogen fixing alfalfa and soybeans are great both for milk production and for deer, turkey, migratory birds, beaver and wildlife for hunting, trapping and observation. Northern Wisconsin has vast forests, a large portion that are federally owned and available for a wide variety of recreational pursuits.

Wisconsin is cold and snowy a big portion of the year and is part of the rust belt. There is a lot of salt on the roads but at least they are fairly quickly cleaned in the winter. If I had a good wood stove and a small well insulated off grid cabin it wouldn’t be a big deal. Hills in Wisconsin are relatively small and roads relatively straight so icy roads are less of a problem – although the rust belt still means throwing away cars regularly – even though they don’t rust the way they once did.

Wisconsin has its urban population centers and an under-girding of progressive politics but it’s also a very conservative state – much more than Minnesota to its west. Gun laws seem reasonable maybe not as permissive as some of the western states.

That said that in deep rural Wisconsin, your unlikely to be looked down upon for being a gun owner. Farmers aren’t likely to care if you hang a deer out back or process your own meat hung from a tree or work on your own car in your backyard. Raise a hog, goats, chickens or bull calves, and thru aren’t going to care – they’re in the same business. Code regulations are less in farm country, bonfires and household trash burning allowed. Dairies can be a cheap source of bull calves to raise for food or even fertilizer for the garden. And good farm stand produce like sweet corn in the summer. I’d probably choose a property that is more upland and less desirable for farming, just because it’s cheaper but I would have no problem living next to a farmer’s pasture or corn field.

Wisconsin at the state level officially forbids open burning of your household trash but most rural towns are much more permissive – many actually encourage residents to have burn barrels for non-recyclable trash to reduce disposal costs and landfill reliance. In dairy country that is spread out, I doubt most farmers give a damn about your fires as long as you don’t set their fields with valuable crops on fire. Many farms burn their own household trash along with net wrap, silage wrap and bags that corn seed and other feed comes in. Better than sending it all to the landfill as is the norm in New York – and saves a lot of money over having a dumpster.

Living in area near fertile dairy country can have it smells during part of year – early spring and late fall as manure is applied to the ground and a earthy smell as a ground is broken. Storage, use and disposal of spoiled silage can be real pungent too, although freshly chopped corn is wonderful. Especially with more modern controlled methods of liquid spreading used on larger, more modern farms which apply more carefully but in a pungent way. But I don’t care that much about the smell – my neighbors growing up raised hogs and the town I went to Boy Scouts in is famous for their milk production and the cow smell that goes along. Flies can also be a concern in farm country, especially during certain times of year after manure is applied or near barns themselves.

Zoning and codes varies a lot from town to town in Wisconsin and are an important consideration especially if I want to have an off grid property. Even though I don’t plan on doing a lot of building on my own land I don’t want to be tied down by a lot of red tape for minor upgrades when I follow code reasonably close. I want to be able to work with the town inspector do what needs to be done for as simple and minimalist structure as possible. Small towns usually are a lot easier to talk to and meet face to face with government officials.

Is Wisconsin my next home? Probably not but it’s a possibility on the list of many I’ve explored in recent years on the blog. Here are some of the previous posts I wrote:

Riding in this morning felt great!

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While the mercury was only around 2 degrees when I left home, it’s already up to 14 degrees and without much of a breeze, it was a pretty solid ride. Going to be close to 30 for the evening ride downtown. Still some snow banks and ice around to impede the ride but for the most part the snow banks were pushed back along the road, the city parts of the bike trail well salted and free of ice. The nice thing is I do get at least more exercise in, though the real exercise is the evening ride home once there is daylight and not too much snow and ice on the bike trail.

I gave another try at nitrile gloves under my glove liners and wool gloves, and that helped a lot. Between the sunshine and lack of wind, with the energy burned riding my bike, it didn’t feel particularly cold, and I did not have numb hands when I got in the office but my feet were a bit cold probably from trudging through the snow to park my bike at the bike rack. Maybe I should have brought the bike into my office but I didn’t want to track in all of salt, mud and snow into my office. The front brake remains soft from air bubbles in the fluid but after a bit of pumping it always stops well. Sewage treatment plant this morning is a bit pungent, as it wafts into my office in the cold, but whatever, it felt good to ride in.

Most people think I’m crazy for riding my mountain bike to work on a two degree morning, as I get passed by the endless lines of Honda Civics driving to the suburban office parks, so they can make more money, buy plastic and put it in their recycling bins.