I bought it in 1987 to make dump runs. It’s still making them. It’s what it does best.
CC Outtake: My Truck Doing What It Does Best
– Posted on March 2, 2019
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Curbside Classics Archives
I bought it in 1987 to make dump runs. It’s still making them. It’s what it does best.
Gotta love 8 foot bed, low lift height, and no fear of scratching or dinging the body.
A true Truck of a Liftime. And one of the official vehicles of Curbside Classic. It even says so on the side.
It just keeps going and going. 😀
The perfect truck for this website. Besides the URL on the door, it’s a classic that’s still earning its keep.
Renting to students as you do, this picture makes me wonder just how many ratty, beer-stained sofas have gotten their last ride in that truck?
This time of the year, here in New Orleans those “ratty, beer-stained sofas” are used to reserve personal space, at the street curb, for the various Mardi Gras parades.
I don’t rent to those kind of students. Undergrad guys? Forget it. Never.
I have two units rented to philosophy PhD candidates. Seriously. Best tenants ever. And I have a chemistry grad student in his last year writing his thesis. Quiet as a church mouse.
Multi-year grad/Phd students are invariably very good tenants, as they’re usually intelligent. That’s a good quality to have in tenants.
The couch actually came from the young woman who lives in the cottage behind me who preps our Airbnb and keeps an eye on our house when we’re gone. She was redecorating and I offered to haul her old sofa. It was quite heavy.
The fridge came out of one of the houses of there I’ve been sprucing up. It was 22 years old and time to go. Too many cracked/broken plastic interior parts to bother fixing anymore. I had a newer one in my reserve stash.
The rest of the crap did come out of the house on the other side of the driveway, and yes it was a youngish guy who left a mess. But it was a very rare exception and one of my own making. It’s too long of a story to get into here. But a very nice young couple with a little kid is moving in.
That makes the third family with a young kid.
If I’m making a dump run, I do offer to haul stuff for other tenants if I have extra space.
+1, makes me really miss my old truck.
It never ceased to bemuse (and irritate) me how much crappppppp rental tenants could leave in my houses when they disappeared in the still of the night, 3 months arrears on their payments.
Three months! 5 days and the sheriff gets paperwork filed….no issues especially with a substantial security deposit. Foreclosure home purchases, now that’s a different story – Figure on a 30foot dumpster as the norm.
See my comment above.
I’ve never had that happen. I would never let a tenant get that far behind.
Quoting “Weezer” (Shirley Maclaine) in “Steel Magnolias”: “I’m not as nice as I used to be”.
I quickly learned about renters taking advantage of my kind & patient good nature.
Agreed, my first Laramie tenant was a student getting her Masters and her husband who had already graduated with one. The current ones that have been there for two years now are both PhD candidates that have actually IMPROVED the place, as they garden and plant and trim and prune along with being meticulous about the place.
My worst tenants were in a large house I used to own (and lived in before renting it.). Both were doctors making obscene amounts of money and their families and they could not have cared less about the place. The amount of dirt they were willing to live with was astonishing and we won’t visit their practices due to it. Nice people otherwise but this isn’t a really big town either so it was surprising 🙂 Another doctor was very good (as would be expected) and became a close friend as well as a client and a retired couple was good as well. I’m torn on the whole rental thing, generally my places have been nice and I’ve invested personal time into them so when they almost invariably descend condition-wise it more than they would if I lived there it disappoints me. But I do like cashing the checks!
Try this with a newer Brodozer with a 5 foot bed… this is a truck.
Back when I had my ‘92 F-150 XL with the trusty 300 cid (4.9L) straight six, the Brodozer crowd was amazed that it could actually haul loads and tow without eight cylinders or diesel power.
I can only imagine with they think about Paul’s truck…doesn’t it have the smaller six (the 240)?
The summer we reroofed our farm house, I hauled eight loads of shingles to the landfill, and scaled out at 2,000+ lb. every load. I’d carry 40-50 bales of hay (a ton or more) plus pull a hay rack with another 2-3 tons on it to the sale barn four or five times each winter. Or haul wood…
Yeah, it’s got a 240…
That’s funny. My last truck was a diesel OBS. I actually sold it because it flat out couldn’t keep up with traffic with a load. It was barely able unladen. I picked up this load in Tulsa during Friday rush hour, had an incredibly exciting time merging onto the expressway (merge lane entered into the fast lane) at a blistering 38 mph. The rest of the way home I had to plan in advance for hills or risk losing momentum. It was a tiring adventure. I sold it not long after. Anyway, I’m sure the 300 would have been as good (but probably would have used 3 times the fuel).
While I don’t know the definition of “brodozer” I do know you can still do a lot with a 5.5′ bed. 🙂
There was lots of room to spare.
Yeah, dang things just aren’t capable.
Later on that night…I picked this thing up in the middle of nowhere, encountered a felled tree laying across the road, and had to back into a plowed field (my apologies to the farmer) to avoid backing the trailer a mile. I now keep a tow strap for such situations. Anyway, no problems with either load, even at 70 on the highway.
Looking as sturdy as ever. I feel that this truck needs to make at least an annual appearance on CC. I love the broom sticking up behind the driver’s seat. A true workhorse truck.
We just had a tenant move out of the rental house we own. Good heavens could we use an old truck like this right now.
Paul, Where’s all the snow that fell on 2/25? (asks a NJ resident who just shoveled 4 to 6 inches of the stuff off his girlfriend’s very long driveway, and is getting ready for 7 more inches tomorrow night.)
In NJ, snow plowed mountains of dirty snow can last for weeks, even during warm spells
I recently used the Tacoma to help a neighbor empty out of the nursing home constant care apartment of her late mother who died at age 99. One load went to the dump, and three more loads went to temporary storage awaiting the church rummage sale.
The last load was a chest of drawers and a glass display case about 5.5 feet high and 2.5 feet wide and 18 to 20 inches deep. We laid down a moving blanket on the truck’s bed, put the glass case on the blanket, wrapped the blanket around it and then secured it with bungee cords against the cab side bulkhead. We put the wooden chest next to it on a separate blanket.
As I climbed down using the rear tire as a step, added a few more bungee cords and closed the tailgate, we both had the same silent thought.
It looked like we were trying to hide a casket.
I hope no one in the nursing home saw us as we left and had nightmarish thoughts about what was in the pickup’s bed.
The snow’s still here! It’s melting, but taking its time about it.
This was shot about 2-3 weeks ago, when spring was in the air.
I am honored to have seen this truck in the steel. Though I was more interested in checking out the then in-process build on the ProMaster, and Paul also gave me a guided tour of the Chinook. So the F100 got short shrift. Thus I’m glad to see it featured today.
Because it was your byline I knew you were hauling stuff, but if anybody else wrote “My truck doing what it does best” I would expect a photo of a new 50-foot Super Duty Dually King Ranch with only the driver pulling into a McDonald’s drive-thru, because that’s usually what they do best.
Pickups are an item that once you have one you’re uncertain how you ever functioned without it. Handy as a pocket knife, utility regardless of condition, and generally tough as nails, they are wonderful tools to have.
And Paul it’s good to see you are still using it – not that I ever doubted you would!
+1 on this. If I had to choose between my truck and the SS, I would have to think long and hard about it… and would probably end up keeping the truck.
+2 on this, even if my Taco only has a 5’ bed. And “only” a 213 cubic inch six.
“Pickups are an item that once you have one you’re uncertain how you ever functioned without it. ”
I have found the same thing to be true in my life, only with vans/minivans.
+3 Jason. They are wonderful tools, and larger cabs allow them to also haul the family while they are hauling stuff. You can’t beat having an open bed for dump runs, hauling firewood, aggregates, bicycles, or dirty/greasy car parts.
It’s great to see Paul’s truck still being worked regularly. If I lived in a more temperate climate, I’d likely keep an old truck around for hauling too. Make mine a ’79 Ford though…
Your utes bigger brother was at a show I went to recently Paul similar colour too. Pic didnt load oh well it was a 67 F 250 you know what they look like.
Stainless steel load tie down hooks with stainless steel screws would have been worth the extra expense, if they exist.
Besides the ease of loading and unloading, perhaps the greatest advantage of a pickup over any other body style for dump runs is that flies don’t easily enter the passenger compartment while unloading at the dump. My dad always bought stations wagons, and one of my tasks as a kid after helping unload everything, was to chase the flies out of the car as we headed home.
There’s something very satisfying about making tip runs
“I don’t rent to those kind of students. Undergrad guys? Forget it. Never.” Ha ha! Reminds me that much of ‘Animal House’ was filmed in Eugene.
I especially like the broom sticking out of the bed. It reminds me of a picture from a railroad magazine when I was a kid. It was some kind of 1960’s GM locomotive with a broom and shovel proper up on the cab. And the tagline of the picture was something like “Someone, will need to get out of that warm cabin to shovel/sweep a snowed in railroad switch.” The takeaway for me is that all of our industrial creations – this truck included – have a human side to them. Someone is using these things to make a living, clear out their house, or help a neighbor.
I got a few Maverick parts in the 6 ft bed with toolbox in my 92 Ranger back in the day.
At our “recycling centre” we have to sort everything into the appropriate area, only JUNK goes onto the conveyor belt. Back in the old days you reversed the Toyoace at speed and hit the brakes to let the load fly. Then away you went.
KJ in Oz