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You clearly don't talk or pay attention to your neighbors. Trucks are _the_ conspicuous consumption good for rural Americans. It's the easiest way to project w
by skyyler 3y ago
You clearly don't talk or pay attention to your neighbors.
Trucks are _the_ conspicuous consumption good for rural Americans. It's the easiest way to project wealth. Have you ever seen an F-250 Platinum or an F-150 King Ranch? Those aren't for working class folks, they're for owners.
- chrisco255 3y agoI'm sorry but neither of those trim packages are out of reach for middle class, and especially if bought used, within reach of "working class" people, whatever that means as there is no fixed definition. Trucks have shot up dramatically in price in the past few years, however.
- _ea1k 3y agoThe King Ranch starts at ~64k and I bet most go for more, once they are optioned out. These are luxury vehicles at those trim levels.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoAverage price of a new car is around 49k. What’s an extra $15k-20k when you’re financing for 5, 6, 7 years? Yeah, it’s financially irresponsible, but this is America. The entire system is built on spenders vs savers.
- _ea1k 3y agoThat's a fair point, though I think interest rates are putting a damper on the mentality at the moment. Then again, Ford offers aggressive buydowns to fix that. The market is weird.
- skyyler 3y agoDo you see what working class people drive? It isn’t new $65k vehicles. The working man’s truck around here (North Bay Area) are late 90s / early 2000s Toyotas and Nissans that can be had for under $10k. Not fancy trim level recent model American trucks.
- samsolomon 3y agoNot sure you’ve been in the truck market lately, but the only Tacomas under $10k have almost 300,000 miles on it. $20k will get you one with 200,000 miles on it. It’s amazing how well they hold value.
- yuppie_scum 3y agoThe North Bay Area is not representative of America at large.
- skyyler 3y agoI've lived all over, including 20 years in Ohio.
- Aurornis 3y agoFarmers buy their trucks as a business expense, before the money has been taxed and disbursed to them personally. Still expensive, but it's not the same as an individual spending $60-90K of their own personal after-tax money on a truck. Trucks also don't depreciate as fast as normal cars. If you're getting a significant effective discount by avoiding taxes and then you can sell the truck for half of its original value after 5 years, you may only be "paying" a fraction of the truck's true total cost to drive it. Source: Grew up around farmers. They loved accounting and tax tricks that could be used to purchase nice trucks.