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.
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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.
Good luck, you’re talking about a country that can’t even figure out how to get to universal healthcare even though the other 31 countries at the top of the heap have.
It sounds great, until your neighbor decides to spend a Sunday cutting firewood… then he drinks too many beers, causes an accident then everybody gets sued. You know it’ll happen eventually! This is the USA!
Three other pilots and had a communal Cessna 150 with this kind of agreement. We had an LLC and equal shares in it. It worked out pretty well for us for years. Splitting tiedown, insurance and maintenance four ways made flying a lot more affordable.
In concept I like this idea, just as I like the idea of a tool rental/share for things I might need once or twice ever, but you must trust your neighbors, and people in general, infinitely more than I do.
I think the closest thing to this I know of that worked was with our old beat to crap 1992 Cherokee that we gave to some friends years ago. With a bunch of family in town, and a key that was worn to the point that it could be removed from the ignition at any time, they just left it unlocked, with the ignition not turned all the way to locked, and anyone from the family could grab it whenever and drive it without they key.
A local real estate company has a Ford Transit Connect van that they offer any customers (buyers or sellers) to borrow for free any time (coordinated with an online signup sheet). There’s no expiration on the deal, even if you bought a house 10 years ago.
Did this with a couple of family members and it did not end well, nobody could agree on what was maitenance and what was damage, trying to explain that alternators and clutches just fail and it was probably not the 3km drive that brother in law did with a bale of hay that wore out the clutch after 300000km
Sounds about right.
Why is the truck in your drawing green when the Marshal is maroon?
I’m afraid I am a firm believer in the old adage “Tall fences make good neighbors.” I’m all for helping out. But I’m also all for how lovely it is to keep your stuff yours and my stuff mine and not confuse the issue.
Yeah this would be highly dependent on the neighbors. This could be great or this could be a huge PITA.
I have access to a co-owned log splitter. My cousin and their neighbor own it, but I can borrow it. My contribution is to do whatever maintenance, repairs, or replace parts is needed at the time. Fortunately for me, my cousin lives up the road a few miles and it is far easier for them to deliver it to my driveway than for me to trundle through their property to get to the splitter with my big truck+camper rig.
I dunno man, I stumbled into this kind of situation and would not personally recommend it. Essentially my Aunt gave my four siblings and I her old truck a few years back when she got a new vehicle (a 2004 GMC Sierra with 120K miles on it) to be owned communally. It seemed like a great idea to us for a lot of the reasons you outlined. I “hosted” the truck since I lived in the most central location among us and had the driveway space, and we agreed to split the insurance/maintenance costs.
It ended up being a pain in the ass. Insurance alone was $100/month, or $20/person/month or $240/person/year. Registration was another $150/year or $30/person/year. So you’re already at almost $300/person every year just to keep the damn thing road legal. The truck was long neglected (as any cheap truck is) and needed frequent repairs. I’d say parts for DIY repairs (since no one wanted to pay to take it to a shop) easily added another $1,000/year, or $200/person. So $500/year or so each for each of us to keep the damn thing on the road. This is for something we got for free.
The costs were shared equally but the usage of the truck and the maintenance work to keep it going were not, which caused further issues. Additionally, any time we decided to spend money on the thing it had to be approved by all five owners, which was an annoying pain. We eventually just sold the thing and moved on.
Home Depot trucks are stupidly cheap to rent ($20 for the first 75 minutes, max of $129 for 24 full hours), and I can rent one quite a few times for $500/year. With the added bonus that there isn’t a decrepit, decaying pickup truck in my driveway loaded with maintenance time bombs for which all financial responsibilities must be coordinated between five different people. I’m good, honestly. All this shit wasn’t worth it for a FREE truck, with the ownership shared among close family members I get along with. There’s absolutely no way I’d ever purchase one with random neighbors.
Maybe I’m just built different, but I don’t want to co-own real or personal property with anyone but my spouse. It’s just a logistical nightmare with too much potential for disagreements and hurt feelings and resentment. Buy your own stuff and rent what you either can’t afford or won’t use often. Life is much simpler that way.
This is the exact counterpoint needed and would be even worse if you added in even more random strangers. I live on a dead end street that has 11 houses on it, picture a tight suburban street close to a city. Even having to share with those folks, I can guarantee that when we finally have free time to use the truck we will have competing uses for it. Seeing how hard it is for blood relatives to agree on communal ownership, adding even a good group of neighbors like I generally have would be a problem.
Communal trucks are down at Home Depot with a “rent me for $19” sign on them these days.
As a person that has had to use a “company van”, there’s no way a community truck is going to live long or be reliable. It’ll suffer the usual indifferent neglect that vehicles without a dedicated owner always get destroyed by.
U-Haul sells their used trucks, they seem like a good value, but I never bought one
I like the spirit, but given that trucks have wheels, I don’t think the neighborhood is the best way to delineate a communal truck group. In my neighborhood, there are several families with trucks, this would be a waste of money for them. There are several other families who hire out all their yard/house work. They would never use a truck. Some of us have friends that can help move a lathe, for instance (and they come with an extra set of hands!). Most of the rest of us likely need a bigger vehicle occasionally, but not frequently enough that HD isn’t a better option. This seems most helpful for people who regularly need a truck for a couple hours a week. I could see a hobby group (i.e. woodworkers, brewers, whatever) making this work, but not often.
I couldn’t help but think as I read this that it would probably be hard to find a non-urban community of 6 or more residences in the US where nobody has a truck. Good all-around idea otherwise, definitely only ever going to happen where there is an HOA or other organized group like you say. And if the HOA truck was to be used for non-HOA things, everyone in the HOA would need the ability to opt-out in case they either have their own truck or don’t want to be a part of it.
In my little neighborhood of 12 homes, I think EVERY home has a truck? I might be wrong about 1 or 2, but I’m pretty sure every single house has their own truck.
This might work with actual friends or maybe trusted family members that can be trusted not to destroy everything but there is no way in hell I’d do this with random neighbors. I’ve seen what happens to “shop trucks” and I don’t want any part of that.
I’ll stick with U-Haul, Menards, etc. for renting. I prefer to keep that professional – so much easier.
Even friends and family is a minefield.
I have friends I love like brothers, but wouldn’t want using my car. Everyone has different standards of what constitutes ‘clean’ ‘maintenance’ or ‘damage’, and that’s totally fine… as long as we’re talking about our own stuff.
Even myself, I tend to use things hard, and a lot of people don’t like that. I’m pretty good at fixing things, and I take pride in being quick to open my wallet to make it right if I can’t. But that’s still stressful for a lot of people, and I don’t blame them.
Oh I 100% agree! This really should be a thing. I’m just thinking of the logistics. You need a truck manager, a waiver/rules, keys to hand out to the neighbors that are “in”, I’d throw an airtag on the truck so it can be tracked in case of abuse, and a truck of course. I love it!
The very first thought I had when I saw the headline was a particular neighbor…
No street-legal car (he does have a V6 Mustang, but it definitely can’t pass NYS inspection, and he loves to turn it on, let it get to temp, and just rev the piss out of it while extremely drunk at any time he feels like it), lives at home with mom (not talking down about that, that’ll be calling the kettle black!) while, as far as I’ve been told, he has a not-legal way of making money, that he’d probably take the truck to use to get even more money, whether or not he has a license or not.
So, huh, no just because of that neighbor.
Did I just read an essay advocating for truck time-sharing?
Just $50k up front and you’ll get a set number of credits per year which are partially transferrable to Bill down the street’s sweet C5 ‘Vette… When it’s available.
Bill knows what he has
Bill also has a near-mint BMW i3 with a brand new factory battery.
You mean, like a Turo for trucks?
Knowing how humans behave, the truck will be abused to shit in a matter of months.
Absolutely. It’ll be left there with zero fuel in the tank, one flat tire, the trailer wiring destroyed, and a locked up brake caliper within in a week. People are selfish assholes who care about nothing, especially when they don’t own it.
Similar to an Altima? Ha ha
yup, the asshole factor would keep this from working.
Sound concept but for the human element. This is why car/van/truck rental companies exist.
Living in a HOA controlled community, this would be absolutely impossible. We can hardly get people to agree to beautification projects in common areas and it ends up falling to one guy (whomever happens to be the president) to do the work. Some of it is honest unavailability (schedules with kids on the weekends etc) and some of it is good old fashioned laziness and sloth.
Add in a motor vehicle that everyone would have access to? It would be a mechanical (something breaks? “It was broken when I got in.”) and liability (I didn’t know that my neighbor Bob liked to do shots of bourbon at 10:00 a.m. before taking the truck to Home Depot) nightmare.
If I had a neighborhood where we had some serious background checks and behavioral checks (do they put the shopping cart in the corral after using it?), maybe, but it’d be darn near a commune at that point.
This reminded me of The “Tragedy of the Commons” which refers to a situation where individuals, acting in their own self-interest, overexploit a shared resource, leading to its depletion and ultimately harming everyone who relies on it, even if they act responsibly.
Unfortunately, the “Tragedy of the Commons” is something I see a lot these days with our not-so-nascent oligarch class.
The beauty of this emerging system is that the Commons are being taken away piece by piece, and therefore that can’t fall into disrepair. Genius!
I love my utility trailer, which hides under my deck when not in use. I have no problem loaning it out to friends and neighbors. The best part is that I do not need a pickup truck.
One does not have to own a truck, you can rent one whenever you need one. When I want Mulch, it’s cheaper for me to rent a Uhaul Pickup and get it locally than it is to deliver. It’s easier to move the mulch around as well, and you don’t have to lift it twice.
Don’t get the HOA involved. If anything, you’ll need to hide the existence and communal ownership of the truck from the HOA. Those goddamn Karens will mob the truck and look for any reason to make you sell it. Rust or dents? That’s blight, violation. Smokes a wee bit on startup? Junk vehicle, violation. If the current rules don’t outright ban the People’s Truck already you can bet they will after the next HOA meeting.
I hate my mom’s HOA. I hope to go cold into the ground and never belong to an HOA.
The problem is you need to create your own organization similar to the HOA to manage the truck. Based on your experience with the HOA, do you think that would go any better?
My HOA barely exists. I mean we do have one, but in 12 years I haven’t heard a peep out of them. Ours is just around in case someone is a major league asshole. Beyond that the neighbors all follow a live and let live agreement. We could have a People’s Truck and nobody would care. Most HOAs are not that accommodating.
I get it, you need to constantly create content but this is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. The truck would be destroyed within two years. It would be filled with garbage inside the gas tank would be perpetually empty it would be filled with dents and morons would put 4000 pounds of shit in a half ton truck because “why make two trips, its not even my truck”.