A Farmer's Truck

These days most pickup trucks serve as nothing more than glorified transportation to and from the downtown office. There's nothing wrong with that, but I still ask my truck to put in a days work here on the farm and I need the sort of vehicle that will allow me to accomplish what I need done in a mostly reliable manner. We currently run a 2006 3/4 ton Chevy diesel with a manual shift transmission that I bought at a sale when it was two years old for half the money of a new one. It wasn't exactly what I was looking for at the time but, like our tractors, it is functional enough to get the job done for the moment.

There is a lot of truth to the statement "Where I go goes my truck." and I visit a lot of non-standard off road locations nearly every day. There aren't very many days that we don't hitch up a horse trailer, stock trailer, flatbed trailer or farm wagon at some point. At times I have asked it to haul my round baler, my discs and even the big fifteen foot bushhog. We sometimes use the truck as a form of go-to-town transportation, but it's primary use is as a functional tool that gets used in dirt, mud and slop. Because of that, neither the interior nor the exterior is ever "pristine"and the interior is NEVER without some of my tools. There are some tools I use often enough that the easiest way to ensure they are where I need them to be is to never remove them from the truck in the first place and I get pretty agitated when they aren't in their place.

The current contents of the truck include the following items. There are four snap rings, two cotter keys and a # 10 sprayer tip currently on the console. On the floorboards of the passenger side sits a three foot long pair of bolt cutters, a pair of fencing pliers, a pair of linesman's pliers, a pair of gloves, a roll of wire and one empty water bottle. My straw hat rests on the passenger seat with a spare t-shirt (or several in the summer). In the rear seat and on the right rear floorboard sits enough wooden fence post insulators and electric fence wire to do nearly three miles of fence. There is always a lead rope or two and a halter on the floor immediately behind the driver's seat in case I run on a situation involving horses or cows that requires immediate action.

I have a reese type trailer hitch with a 2 and one quarter inch ball as well as a wagon hitch currently sitting in the bed behind the cab, along with two or three implement pins, a hammer (necessary to remove implement pins), a crow bar, a roll of chain used to fasten gates and othr things plus a twenty foot logging chain. I also try to keep a couple of 3 inch wide ratchet straps and ratchets handy. Of course the stock trailer and horse trailer are 5th wheels, so my two and three quarter inch fifth wheel sits dead in the middle of the truck bed.

Minus the diesel engine, I remember that we bought the equivalent of this truck brand new in 1986 for a little less than $ 10,000, taxes included. I've been told that Grandpa bought the same truck in 1967 for a little less than $ 3000. I don't know about that, but I DO know that was the truck I learned to drive on ! Would that I could replicate either of those prices on a new farm truck today !