5 ms·

The odd thing to me about cars is that people pick the most unusual use cases and then buy their cars off of that. So my dad likes to haul plywood once in a wh

by tdees40 13y ago

The odd thing to me about cars is that people pick the most unusual use cases and then buy their cars off of that. So my dad likes to haul plywood once in a while, so he bought a pick-up. But 99.99% of the time he could use a subcompact. Likewise everyone knows people who have two kids and buy a van/SUV because they want an extra seat or two. You can always rent a car if you get into these sorts of situations, and it would be much cheaper than buying a huge car that runs with one person in it 90%+ of the time.

dllthomas 13y ago
It may not be unreasonable if the overhead to rent is high. It's coming down, though I have no idea what ranges are "too high" or where things currently stand relative to that.
- msandford 13y ago
  It's not even the monetary cost of renting, it's the time cost. If I have a pickup truck the time cost for me to buy something off of CL is driving there, inspecting it and then buying it. Done. If I have to rent a pickup to transport it back then I've got two choices. I can either rent the vehicle prior to looking at the item or after I decide to buy it for sure. If I always-rent then I'll kill at least 2hrs per CL purchase due to having to go to somewhere to rent said vehicle. If I rent-after-inspection I'll save those 2hrs when I don't buy at the expense of making two trips every time I do buy. Neither one is an attractive option. Two hours according to what they pay me is no joke in terms of cash so in either case if this happens say twice a month I've paid for the total difference between owning a subcompact and a pickup truck: note, gas, insurance, etc. I don't actually own a pickup truck and most of the time the things I pick up fit in my Forester just fine. But it's not unreasonable to make such a decision when you think through how much of a disaster it is to try and rent a vehicle on a semi-regular basis.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    "It's not even the monetary cost of renting, it's the time cost." Absolutely. I'd definitely meant for that to be a part of "overhead" but it probably is worth calling out explicitly.
    - tdees40 13y ago
      For most hauling cases, you can rent a truck/van from Home Depot for $20/hour or so. It takes about five minutes to do. Obviously that isn't everyone's use case, but Enterprise will pick you up, or Zip Car or even cabs is a valid possibility. None of these are all that difficult.
      - dllthomas 13y ago
        Like I said, it's been falling. Transportation to/from Home Depot is time and expense. Enterprise will pick you up, but there's slop in when exactly that will be, and it still doesn't entirely remove the time to/from the rental car place. The nearest ZipCar isn't always available. And nonetheless, these might be fantastic options for most people. My only points were that overhead shouldn't be overlooked, but that it's been falling. If you look at it and determine that, for your situation, it's less, then great! That will be the case in an increasing number of situations; I make no claim at all about how many or few.
      - msandford 13y ago
        Not difficult on an absolute scale, but definitely more difficult than getting your keys, going out into the driveway and driving off. So it depends on how frequently you use a truck as an input into the cost of owning vs cost of renting equation. At once per year it absolutely makes sense to rent. At once per day it absolutely makes sense to own. Many use cases fall in between.
  - VLM 13y ago
    For the price delta between my Yaris and a gigantic 4x4 crew cab pickup truck, including capital cost, interest, insurance, gas, maint, tires, if I buy a small car I'll never, ever have to buy anything used again off craigslist. This is stereotypical penny wise pound foolish behavior. WRT to OP's relative hauling some plywood occasionally, for the price difference between a commuter car and a monster truck he could find a young man, pay his living expenses while he completes a complete carpentry apprenticeship, and pay the young man for some materials, and the young-ish journeyman could come out and do all the work for him as a thank you. Another way to put it is the price differential is about 3x what I paid for a new roof on my house... all to haul some plywood... When I put in a patio I had a flatbed truck deliver two pallets of bricks, two pallets of gravel and a pallet of sand bags. The delivery fee was roughly the delta between one months payment for a car vs a truck. You'd be surprised how much labor you can get out of a truck driver for $200 or $300 or so, and he was probably happy with me because the job only took him maybe 2-3 hours total.
    - msandford 13y ago
      Sure but you're calculating the ideal case for you and worst-case for the truck. Not everyone buys a gigantic 4x4 crew cab pickup. There are plenty of regular bed length, single cab RWD pickups on the road and they don't cost $60k to buy. The Ford F150 base model goes for $25k or so. http://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/pricing/ http://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/pricing/ A base model Yaris goes for $14k. http://www.toyota.com/yaris/#!/Welcome http://www.toyota.com/yaris/#!/Welcome And that's presuming you're buying new! There are a great many used pickups for sale and the parts tend to change less frequently because pickup design parameters change much more slowly than car design parameters do. Because the design changes more slowly parts tend to be around longer and cheaper. And because the design of a pickup is driven by the need to have a 4x6-8ft long bed they tend to have roomy engine compartments in order to keep the proportions "correct" By your own admission if you did at least one project per month requiring the use of a truck you would be spending the same amount of money. Perhaps that's money well spent to you, but you're not everyone. There's no "right" answer here, only a spectrum of options that are better or worse depending on your personal preferences and the kinds of activities you undertake.
sliverstorm 13y ago
Is it really that odd? We do the exact same thing with computers. How often, exactly, are we max'ing all 16GB of RAM and pegging all eight cores of our workstations? Couldn't we "just" rent time on EC2 when we need more? Yes, it's a pain in the butt to farm out most types of compute to EC2. Yes, it can quickly get expensive. Yes, you can save money buying a $40 Sempron. All these arguments and obstacles can be applied just as well to buying a 2-seater subcompact and renting other cars, so before we decry it as "weird" and "making no sense", maybe we should reflect on our own decisions?
- TulliusCicero 13y ago
  1. Buying extra RAM or a faster CPU is almost always super cheap compared to buying a bigger car (consider both initial price and reduction in fuel efficiency). 2. Farming computing out to EC2 is nothing like renting a car.

by tdees40 13y ago

dllthomas 13y ago

It may not be unreasonable if the overhead to rent is high. It's coming down, though I have no idea what ranges are "too high" or where things currently stand relative to that.

msandford 13y ago
It's not even the monetary cost of renting, it's the time cost. If I have a pickup truck the time cost for me to buy something off of CL is driving there, inspecting it and then buying it. Done. If I have to rent a pickup to transport it back then I've got two choices. I can either rent the vehicle prior to looking at the item or after I decide to buy it for sure. If I always-rent then I'll kill at least 2hrs per CL purchase due to having to go to somewhere to rent said vehicle. If I rent-after-inspection I'll save those 2hrs when I don't buy at the expense of making two trips every time I do buy. Neither one is an attractive option. Two hours according to what they pay me is no joke in terms of cash so in either case if this happens say twice a month I've paid for the total difference between owning a subcompact and a pickup truck: note, gas, insurance, etc. I don't actually own a pickup truck and most of the time the things I pick up fit in my Forester just fine. But it's not unreasonable to make such a decision when you think through how much of a disaster it is to try and rent a vehicle on a semi-regular basis.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  "It's not even the monetary cost of renting, it's the time cost." Absolutely. I'd definitely meant for that to be a part of "overhead" but it probably is worth calling out explicitly.
  - tdees40 13y ago
    For most hauling cases, you can rent a truck/van from Home Depot for $20/hour or so. It takes about five minutes to do. Obviously that isn't everyone's use case, but Enterprise will pick you up, or Zip Car or even cabs is a valid possibility. None of these are all that difficult.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      Like I said, it's been falling. Transportation to/from Home Depot is time and expense. Enterprise will pick you up, but there's slop in when exactly that will be, and it still doesn't entirely remove the time to/from the rental car place. The nearest ZipCar isn't always available. And nonetheless, these might be fantastic options for most people. My only points were that overhead shouldn't be overlooked, but that it's been falling. If you look at it and determine that, for your situation, it's less, then great! That will be the case in an increasing number of situations; I make no claim at all about how many or few.
    - msandford 13y ago
      Not difficult on an absolute scale, but definitely more difficult than getting your keys, going out into the driveway and driving off. So it depends on how frequently you use a truck as an input into the cost of owning vs cost of renting equation. At once per year it absolutely makes sense to rent. At once per day it absolutely makes sense to own. Many use cases fall in between.
- VLM 13y ago
  For the price delta between my Yaris and a gigantic 4x4 crew cab pickup truck, including capital cost, interest, insurance, gas, maint, tires, if I buy a small car I'll never, ever have to buy anything used again off craigslist. This is stereotypical penny wise pound foolish behavior. WRT to OP's relative hauling some plywood occasionally, for the price difference between a commuter car and a monster truck he could find a young man, pay his living expenses while he completes a complete carpentry apprenticeship, and pay the young man for some materials, and the young-ish journeyman could come out and do all the work for him as a thank you. Another way to put it is the price differential is about 3x what I paid for a new roof on my house... all to haul some plywood... When I put in a patio I had a flatbed truck deliver two pallets of bricks, two pallets of gravel and a pallet of sand bags. The delivery fee was roughly the delta between one months payment for a car vs a truck. You'd be surprised how much labor you can get out of a truck driver for $200 or $300 or so, and he was probably happy with me because the job only took him maybe 2-3 hours total.
  - msandford 13y ago
    Sure but you're calculating the ideal case for you and worst-case for the truck. Not everyone buys a gigantic 4x4 crew cab pickup. There are plenty of regular bed length, single cab RWD pickups on the road and they don't cost $60k to buy. The Ford F150 base model goes for $25k or so. http://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/pricing/ http://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/pricing/ A base model Yaris goes for $14k. http://www.toyota.com/yaris/#!/Welcome http://www.toyota.com/yaris/#!/Welcome And that's presuming you're buying new! There are a great many used pickups for sale and the parts tend to change less frequently because pickup design parameters change much more slowly than car design parameters do. Because the design changes more slowly parts tend to be around longer and cheaper. And because the design of a pickup is driven by the need to have a 4x6-8ft long bed they tend to have roomy engine compartments in order to keep the proportions "correct" By your own admission if you did at least one project per month requiring the use of a truck you would be spending the same amount of money. Perhaps that's money well spent to you, but you're not everyone. There's no "right" answer here, only a spectrum of options that are better or worse depending on your personal preferences and the kinds of activities you undertake.

sliverstorm 13y ago

Is it really that odd? We do the exact same thing with computers. How often, exactly, are we max'ing all 16GB of RAM and pegging all eight cores of our workstations? Couldn't we "just" rent time on EC2 when we need more? Yes, it's a pain in the butt to farm out most types of compute to EC2. Yes, it can quickly get expensive. Yes, you can save money buying a $40 Sempron. All these arguments and obstacles can be applied just as well to buying a 2-seater subcompact and renting other cars, so before we decry it as "weird" and "making no sense", maybe we should reflect on our own decisions?

TulliusCicero 13y ago
1. Buying extra RAM or a faster CPU is almost always super cheap compared to buying a bigger car (consider both initial price and reduction in fuel efficiency). 2. Farming computing out to EC2 is nothing like renting a car.