Is this communism? Is that what I’m doing here? I mean it sounds sort of like communism, advocating for collective ownership of a resource, but I implore all of you who may find this concept distasteful to just hear me out. The concept is really simple: Every neighborhood – made up of, say, 8-12 residences or so – should communally own a pickup truck.
I’m not suggesting that people should or shouldn’t just own trucks privately, because, sure, why not, drive what you like. But I think that there is a significant overall quality of life improvement to be had when a group of people in a small community like a neighborhood have shared access to a pickup truck.
I feel like I’ve had this thought before; it popped into my head most recently when I got my old F-150 going again so I could help my neighbors bring a ton of gravel and slate to their house. They mentioned that they don’t really need a truck, except for about three or so times a year when they very much do.
I think this is extremely common for people all over the place; they don’t need pickup trucks very often, but there are times when only a pickup truck will do. The thing about a pickup truck is it is an ability multiplier, and a truck is often a key component of being able to accomplish things that otherwise have nothing to do with trucks. Like, say, getting a lathe to your workshop to build things, or a pottery kiln or a lot of wood for a project. You may only need that truck for, say, an afternoon, but that single afternoon of truck use can transform your ability to create and build and do things for months or years.
Maybe you have a small boat, or, like me, a shitty canoe. They are useless unless you have a truck to get them to the water. Maybe a tree falls in your yard, and you need to clear out all the debris. Maybe your kid is going off to college. Maybe you’re throwing a party or a surprise Bar Mitzvah and you need to haul a bunch of folding tables and chairs. Maybe you told a date some elaborate lie about how you live that truck life, baby, and you need to keep the deception going?
Hell, maybe your car is in the shop for a week, and you just need a way to get two and from work? You don’t need a truck for that, but it’ll work!
There’s nothing but uses and reasons for a truck.
But these don’t happen every day. If you have a truck that’s not your daily driver, chances are that truck spends a lot of time sitting. So why not share it?
Just picture this: a group of households in your neighborhood – I’m guessing maybe a dozen at the high end, but who knows, more or less could likely work – get together to buy a used workhorse-type pickup truck. I think buying a used workhorse truck makes more sense than anything new, because this truck is for work. It has no need to be actually nice or pretty or even particularly comfortable, because it’s not for that. If you want a nice truck, buy yourself a nice truck. This is a communal truck.
Every household would pay a share of the initial cost, and there would be some sort of vote to find the “home base” for the truck. This home base would be the house of the person who would usually agree to store the truck, have it registered in their name (most states allow for some sort of group registration – here’s an example from the New York DOT), and would be responsible for making sure insurance and inspections and other legalities are up to date. In return, this person would be exempt from the fractional payments of insurance and maybe would get some sort of compensation for storing the vehicle.
You’re all adults, you’ll figure that out. If a neighborhood has an HOA, this is a perfect opportunity to actually have an HOA do something useful, for once, and the HOA could be the entity that registers/stores the truck.
Since we live in a modern age of computing machines that talk to one another, setting up something like a communal Google Calendar for scheduling the truck should be pretty easy; that’s part of why this may be the best time in history to communally own a truck. All the tools to manage truck scheduling are free and available on everyone’s phone!
Maybe keys could be stored in some sort of lock box in an outdoor location? Or on the truck itself?
I know people can rent trucks from Home Depot or U-Haul or whatever, but let’s be honest – it’s a pain in the ass, and it almost always costs more than you thought it would. It’s not the same as having access to a simple calendar to sign up for use of a truck walking distance from your house.
Spacer
I got a Home Depot Transit 350 HD, ask me anything ???????????? pic.twitter.com/Wv8bz0A1eY
— The Autopian (@the_autopian) September 23, 2023
[Ed Note: I would love to skip the HD visit and just grab the communal truck keys – Pete]
Truck co-owners would need to agree to some basic, obvious rules, like fill the truck up with gas when you’re done with it, clean it if you get it filthy, if something breaks from what you did, fix it, that kind of thing.
Regular maintenance and larger repairs would be communally paid for, of course, and hopefully wouldn’t be that terrible, since everything would be split about ten ways or so. Or, even better, members of the community fix the truck themselves (if the skills and/or will to try are there) together, which can help people learn how to work on cars, as well as a way for people to get to know one another.
Are there risks? Sure! Lots of them, probably! Someone could be a dick and stop paying their share (easy to fix, they’re out of the group), someone could get in a wreck, it could get used in a crime of some sort, all of these are possible but I think the worst possibilities are pretty unlikely. I believe the benefits of communal truck ownership outweigh these risks. These people are your neighbors, after all! If you’re that worried about them doing terrible shit, you have bigger problems, I think.
Why isn’t this more of a thing? I’m sure there are places where this does exist, and where it’s working well. I bet there are also stories from people who have tried this and it was a disaster. Again, I still think this is a net positive.
In fact, it should be something people look for when buying a house – a Zillow listing should have a section that mentions something like OPTION FOR COMMUNAL TRUCK OWNERSHIP, and it’s a nice perk if that’s checked.
See, this is the scale where communal things could actually work: small groups, a clear, common benefit, saves money for the people involved, builds community camaraderie – I just don’t see a downside here.
Trucks should be shared, and the best place to do so is right where you live. If this is communism, then I’ll be Karl Fucking Marx, tooling around in my battered but beautiful old F-150.
But you just know the inside will always smell like a used White Castle bag
I had White Castle once. Never again.
Same.
The only restaurant that applies mass reduction engineering principals to food.
“small groups, a clear, common benefit, saves money for the people involved, builds community camaraderie – I just don’t see a downside here.”
Tell me you never did group projects in school without telling me you never did group projects in school.
Driver A gets in an accident and kills pedestrian B. B’s family sues the owners of the truck for big $$$. Congrats, you just got sued and you weren’t even there if you weren’t driver A. Drivers B-F all get to play though!
I think there might be a type of insurance that covers this. Liability.
I’m sure it will be cheap, too.
The idea is optimistically utopian, but I fear that the pickup would look like Whistling’ Diesel owned it.
The concept is good, the logistics and legalities aren’t. In my neighborhood it’s moot because most people own at least one truck, or a trailer
So I want Someone to fix my truck, maybe even get it legal for road use, I don’t want to foot the bill myself, I only use it occasionally, I get along well with my neighbors, THINK Torch, THINK
For those that want to make this happen, CarMax has the pickup for you.
CarMax Is Selling a Bunch of Identical Lime Green, Single-Cab F-150 Pickups
My neighbor and I have discussed this very thing. Also discussed was a neighborhood golf cart type thing.
Having these discussions with your neighbor is great. Even on a smaller scale – you have a snowblower, they have a lawnmower. You have a hedge trimmer, they have a leaf blower. Having a whole bunch of stuff that you only need twice a year sucks. But in general neighbors are less neighborly than they used to be, which kind of sucks. It’s great seeing neighborhoods where everyone is friendly and hangs out.
This is something Dad and I discussed years ago – and it makes perfect sense in the respect that military installations used to have a “Motor Pool”
You needed a vehicle for official business – whether it was a truck, a jeep, a sedan or a “business coupe” – you had your officer sign a chit, you went to Motor Pool, signed one out, used it and returned it filled up and ready for the next person.
In fact, it would be smart for HOAs to band together on a community vehicle or two – similar to how communities for elderly people have a van and a driver to help get residents to shopping and doctors appts. Insure and maintain it as a maintenance vehicle – sign it out and return it as one would make use of the clubhouse or other amenities. You wreck it – your individual car insurance pays for it.
This is a great idea. I’m a member of a tool library, and this is a natural extension for the idea. BTW, the tool library is great–you pay modest, sliding scale monthly fee, and can check out tools for a week at a time, they check them in and out so they don’t get (too) crapped up, they also have cool classes and such. So I can, for example, go check out a sawzall, woodchopper, and shovel, but they don’t have to live in my garage during the 340 days a year I’m not disposing of bodies.
Why go through all that trouble? Just dump said bodies off in the nearest hog pen. As a bonus you get recycling points.
Transport said bodies to the hog pen in the shared neighborhood truck.
With that mess of DNA and prints no way are they going to prove it was me, or whoever, beyond reasonable doubt.
Unless they find the DNA from those bodies on you. So wear gloves and easily disposable clothing and wash your hands!
That’s a body disposal day every two weeks.
That seems about right.
I communally owned a utility trailer with some friends for years. We each chipped in $100 to buy it, and would just use it as needed. Much simpler than sharing an entire pickup, and just as useful if not more so. I have VERY few friends who I will lend a car to, and a long list of friends who I will not under any circumstances do so.
I love this idea. Since there’s very little room to store a trailer at most of the homes around me, we instead each pitch in for a U-Haul trailer rental for a day or two to haul stuff to the dump.
Folding Harbor Freight trailer to the rescue. Folded up and stuck in a corner of whoever’s garage used it last. We got every penny out of that thing, before sweeping the crumbling remains to the curb.
Though when I renovated my second home in FL 15 years later, I just rented U-Haul as I needed it. Who needs a truck? I renovated two houses with VW Golfs and trailers.
I think that’s a WAY better idea. I’d go in on that if I didn’t already have a utility trailer. I used to loan it out a lot more often when I had more friends who went to festivals and such. Now it mostly just sits in my driveway collecting leaves. I’d be happy to donate it to a loaner pool just so it gets some use!
love the idea…would be all in on doing something similar with tools, etc. Bring on the communism (in this use-case)!
In every group there would be one guy that would use it and return it with the tank on empty, with the interior filled with whatever trash, wouldn’t mention the check engine light that came on when he was driving it, would sideswipe a fencepost and not mention it. Not for me.
Come on, that’s simply not true and you know it. There would be two guys like that, not just one.
HALF the folks in the group would be like that. And one would just plain wreck the thing.
Also the rear tires would be bald.
No f’n way do I want any part of this. I’m the guy with the garageb and tools and I’d be the one fixing the thing. I have enough house stuff to do, I don’t need the neighborhood busting my balls because I didn’t have the truck repaired for Mrs/ Smith’s trip to the garden center.
A community open trailer? Maybe.
I feel like most people who rely on older (cheaper) cars and do their own repairs probably keep a spare or two around anyway in running order.
You will never get the Mopar/GM/Ford people to agree on a truck.
Tundra is the answer
Close. Titan is the perfect truck that no one would give a F*** about.
We had something like this growing up, and it usually worked, until it didn’t. Similar reasons to those below, but especially with family.
My variant was, if I had time, I can drive and we can got together with truck to do truck stuff.
Be ready at the appointed hour. Be ready with required labor. I’ll help with some lumber, but someone else is carrying the double recliner sofa down three flights of stairs.
Fill up the truck and buy me a burger and milkshake while I watch you unload the truck.
In town one shot only, otherwise maybe you should rent a truck.
I mentioned to my brother-in-law that we could buy and share a used U-Haul box truck. He could use it to shuttle the various children to/from their respective universities, apartments, etc., I could use it to haul bikes around in the summer time, and generally we would have an enclosed truck handy anytime we might need one. There would be no issues with maintenance as we’re both wrench-turners (he’s better than I am), and no futzing about with renting one on someone else’s schedule.
For those who are curious, https://trucksales.uhaul.com 🙂
Does this mean I can stop by the Torchinsky Estate when I need to borrow a truck? What level of Autopian membership buys that?
Torch level lets you borrow it, Tracy level comes with the service and support to keep it running.
The Tracy level comes with a rock solid warranty on labor, 15-minute warranty on “reconditioned” parts, and a 24-36-month lead time.
I thought the Tracy level was “rust and shower spaghetti included free of charge!”
Treat it like an apartment building or an HOA (shudder) and have a truck superintendent. Let’s call him Ivan.
Truck can’t be fixed? Ivan fix you.
The best truck is the one your friend owns and will run errands with you in it with payment in beer.
Nope, hard pass from me.
Our old neighborhood had a ‘tool share’ and somehow people managed to bust up shovels and rakes. Something with an engine that requires service and upkeep? Not a chance that would survive.
Communism would be taking all the vehicles and giving them to those who need them most except for the party elite who get the good stuff. Don’t like it? Here’s your bullet. You’re not there yet.
They’re still around: https://www.eugenetoolboxproject.org/
Weird. I borrow tools for free from Autozone and that works out great.
No way this works better for anyone but the dicks than just renting. Btw Jason I need to move some stuff this weekend can I borrow your truck?
It’s such a lovely idea, but as someone who loans my own truck out constantly and never seems to be able to say no, borrowed trucks are abused more than any rental car you can think of. You’re own friends will abuse your truck. Like, good friends. Not asshole friends, like regular good mannered people. Dents appear out of nowhere, mysterious stains in the carpet, cracked windshields, hell once my truck was borrowed for a weekend trip from Ohio to myrtle beach. They locked it in 4wd to get it out of my soggy yard. When It was given back to me, (Thankfully with a full tank and clean) it had 1500 more miles on it than when it left, and it spent every one of those miles locked in 4-hi.
If my good mannered, well meaning friends accidentaly abuse a truck of mine (That they know I CHERISH) Imagine what happens to it when the neighbors’ daugher’s 25 year old boyfriend gets the keys.
Ugh, maybe I’m approaching this from the standpoint of the actual truck owner, but if you look at the closest thing you have to a communally owned truck (Either a shop/Parts runner truck at a dealership, or, actually, our fire trucks at our VFD)
Even though they kind of get cared for, they mostly get the living balls run off them, because hey, “Not my truck.”
Yeah, this kind of thing has the potential to ruin relationships with otherwise trusted/ beloved family and friends. No thanks. I’m happy to help people with our truck, but I’m going to be there, and I’ll be the one driving.
Yeah I don’t loan out my pickup. I’ll go help people do pickup stuff, but I don’t ever give anybody the keys.
That’s nothing but pure and simple old fashioned communism.
Count me in.
Move there then.
… Nope. Look it up.
Go ahead, I was the owner of a “communal” truck. Everyone but the owner will eventually become a dick. Banning the dicks from use of the truck eventually means you are the sole member with a fucked up truck and the rest consider you the dick.
I believe in sharing, but as the person responsible, I had to make rules. Basically, anyone is welcome to use the truck but I have to be present so that means waiting until I have time.
If it’s real urgent, go rent one. If you can’t afford to fix what you broke, neither can I.
I still get asked! No, if you want to use it I will need the deeds to your house as a security deposit, written permission to sell your children to the highest bidder and first dibs on your kidneys. Is there something that I can help you with? Oh the Unimog, sure, Friday Ok?
This. This is it exactly.
“Hey did you ever get that truck running from the last time you let a guy borrow it? I need to borrow it.”
Said by the guy who was the last one who borrowed it.