Beat-up Pick-ups Save the Planet more than EVs

The case for frugal use of old cars and trucks.

The title of this piece is deliberately controversial, but I will now set out to prove the premise that pushing old pick-up trucks to their last drivable mile is generally a very environmentally wise, as well as economically frugal, practice. The reason is that once a vehicle has been manufactured, an enormous environmental and energy investment has been made. It makes no environmental sense to discard that vehicle and rush to construct a new, “more efficient” one, while ignoring the massive investment of resources and energy that must be measured as part of that so-called efficiency.

The Big Lie behind renewable energy manufacturing is that EVs or solar panels, for instance, will “use less energy” than alternatives. But this allegation is deliberately and craftily crafted to ignore the environmental costs of production, let alone disposal. These “externalized costs” are cast onto the planet without environmental accounting by those offering the bait-and-switch of “renewables” that are in every case manufactured anew—mostly in China, but always generating massive amounts or pollution and waste.

An interesting analysis of the ability of renewables to meet energy demands (they can’t possibly) summarizes this sleight of hand:

Ecological footprint does not confine itself to a nation’s carbon emissions—the myopic habit of climate scientists and activists—but includes the totality of inputs that supports a given lifestyle, e.g. food, water, soil, metals, minerals. This includes the materials, waste and emissions embodied in consumer goods, including those made overseas, so that the ecological impacts of production are allocated to the nation where the end products are consumed. Ecological footprint also encompasses all per-capita waste, including food waste, throwaway plastics, household chemical pollution and other toxins, and all types of liquid effluent — counting, for example, the gallons of water needed to flush the average human’s prodigious excreta. 

I must protest against the slanderous reference to human excreta—which throughout history and perhaps in the future was a valuable source of agricultural fertilizer before synthetic fertilizers derived from fossil fuels displaced it, and those once-prized turds were flushed away instead of being composted. (A topic for a future article).

But this quote summarizes what I am claiming about older, allegedly inefficient pick-up trucks: they were manufactured using a variety of energy and natural resources, and their true footprint does not disappear when they are replaced with a new vehicle that likely “cost” even more in precious metals, energy, and human labor. (After all, those new trucks boast a host of gadgets, including back-up cameras and microchip air pressure monitors, that were unthought of a decade or two ago. Those gadgets all have an environmental cost that miles-per-gallon or electric-versus-gasoline measurements simply avoid.)

(Moving a round bale feeder in a Jeep clunker — no worry about scratches!!)

In a society that requires inspection regimens that often take older vehicles off the road prematurely due to rust spots or poor emissions, one must ask whether the motive is not at times “regulatory capture” that forces consumers to buy a new vehicle before the old one has been properly expended. This was highly apparent in the folly and farce of the Obama administration’s “Cash-to-Clunkers” fraud. This program offered taxpayer dollars to purchasers of brand new vehicles, rewarding people for taking older vehicles off the roads. This resulted in a short-term and temporary boost to new car sales, benefitting the auto industry that pushed the program. But it did the opposite of what it advertised for the environment.

Under the program, cars and trucks taken out of commission were prohibited from use for used parts, which were landfilled or melted down. How did that help the environment? 

But more, if it “cost” 800 barrels of oil to manufacture a 2000 Chevy Silverado, plus a massive amount of steel, plastics, and valuable metals including copper and chrome, the frugal and environmental course would be to drive it for every last safe mile that could be mustered. This is what low-income rural farmers have always done, and what is sneered at by high-earning talking-head urbanites who posture in their $100,000 BMWs. 

The once-praised adage “One man’s garbage is another man’s treasure” has always been my personal mantra. Not only do I not want a hefty monthly payment for a new vehicle in a farming enterprise with low profit margins: I don’t want a truck so fancy and polished that I “ruin” it when I fill it with firewood, manure, or hay. I want that scratched-up eye-sore with a solid frame and new brakes, so I can work it hard without decreasing its market value. Indeed, that IS its market value to me and others who share this creed.

I bought a used Ford pick-up from my cousin, knowing the frame had broken, and he had re-welded it. The truck had very low miles but had sat for many years, thus the weakness of the frame. I used it to move building materials, manure, hay, and firewood. Low and behold, the frame snapped again, in another spot. So we welded it anew, and off I went, transporting goods not in a fancy rig a la useless back-up camera (my neck still cranes fine: I don’t need no stinkin’ environment-damaging camera!), but in a well-weathered workhorse. Plus, the heater and radio still worked fine – much more important for the workhorse than whether it can be charged electrically while the owner buys a $10 cup of coffee. 

(After the third frame-snap, this truck still drove around like a back-country low-rider, but I soon sent it for scrap.)

Pick-up trucks with four-wheel drive now run some $75,000 new. But they cost much more in environmental damage. I bought a used 2010 Dodge pick-up (from that same cousin) three years ago for $2,500, and his garbage is my treasure. I have moved perhaps 20 cords of firewood in that truck, at least two hundred round bales (weighing 500-700 pounds each), and several thousand square bales. It has relocated many tons of organic cow and sheep manure. I only use it for farm work, but it is a fantastic laborer for me and my cows.

What I am doing with my cousin’s castaway trucks is environmentally friendly. Instead of placing a brand new vehicle in service, I am milking every environmental drop of energy and materials savings out of the service of the old one. It is both economically and environmentally more frugal to do so, despite the scowls of the elites parading around in their EV faux pas. THEY are destroying the ecosystem at an accelerated rate, while deluding themselves they are saviors (on their way perhaps to a skiing weekend). I am exercising stewardship of both the environment, and of that old pick-up.

I am concerned for the future of frugality. How will I buy used pick-ups to grow healthy local food, when all the city-slickers are driving nothing but useless EVs that couldn’t cart a single round bale, let alone a half cord of green maple? What will the world become, when all the climate elitists want nothing but high-brow fraud vehicles, and their used vehicles are no longer treasured by frugal farmers who take pride in recycling, and extending the use of what the elites discard? Who will do the work of raising food and cutting firewood, when the flatlanders are all dependent on heat pumps and electric grids for their basic needs, more vulnerable and dependent than any humans in all of history?

And the greatest irony of all is that this conversion to stupidity is being accomplished under the snake-oil guise of “saving the planet,” when it isn’t saving a single molecule, but instead doing the exact opposite. This folly is unfolding before our eyes, and must be countered by those with minds that function, and who recall the Great Depression, and the consequences of foolishness. Common sense must and will make a comeback, in due course. Perhaps then we will dispose of EV cars by repurposing them into chicken coops…. with snazzy back-up cameras that rot into the earth.