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A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

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1336 points kwindla | 4 comments | 25 Apr 25 15:01 UTC | HN request time: 0.369s | source
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PaulHoule ◴[25 Apr 25 15:15 UTC] No.43794437[source]▶
I like it. My wife runs a riding academy and we use a Honda Fit the way some people would use a pickup truck: we can fit 10 bales of wood shavings in the back. [1] We’re dreading when it fails because they don’t make the fit anymore and compact hatchbacks seem to be on the way out. Recent experiences have made me a bit of a Buick enthusiast and I can see driving a 2005-ish sedan except that I won’t get those sawdust bales into the trunk. We are also thinking of fitting in EV into the fleet, so far the used Nissan Leaf has been the main contender but this is a pickup truck I could get into.

[1] We were profitable from day one because we didn’t buy a $80,000 pickup on day one the way everybody else does.

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x436413 ◴[25 Apr 25 15:59 UTC] No.43795057[source]▶
how do you haul hoss though? i would imagine you then outsource to professional hauling services? what do you do for vet visits, when it's not a farm call?
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PaulHoule ◴[25 Apr 25 16:04 UTC] No.43795139[source]▶
Just pay somebody. In a rural area there are a lot of farmers with a big truck and a trailer and it costs less than the monthly payment on a big truck.
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x436413 ◴[25 Apr 25 16:46 UTC] No.43795803[source]▶
i'll be honest, if the rest of your profile wasn't at least somewhat corraborative, i'd say you're larping, but what you're saying is at least irresponsible. most farmers in rural area have livestock trailers, not horse trailers, hauling for hire (including if you're hauling for students at your barn or whatever) requires CDL and a bunch of other documentation, which you're not typically going to have as a farmer, and more documentation if you're hauling interstate (my vet is across a border), but would i even trust random joe dirt to haul for me? i've hired professionals to transport horses, and i have a handful of people who could haul in a bind and unlicensed but i wouldn't rely on them to be available in an emergency. last year i had to haul an old mare, she was colic, she laid down in the field, covered in sweet, and had to be put down at the vet, but overall it was less than an hour from load to vet. if i had to rely on "farmers", that would prolong her agony. now i just train, so i don't usually have freak accidents, but at riding barns, with students, on trail, something happens from time to time. riding barns i work with tell me horror stories all the time. i'll give you a benefit of the doubt, maybe your wife knows the details, and ithaca being horse country, maybe she's got a friendly neighbor on speed dial, but then you're at best outsourcing your responsibilities to someone else. what other things you can save on to make your operation profitable, at the expense of safety and well being of hoss?
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1. PaulHoule ◴[25 Apr 25 17:07 UTC] No.43796082[source]▶
Often these "farmers" are horse traders or people I know with a CDL who have the right equipment and also do other work for me like cut my hay. One of them is "retired" but he waved to me driving a dump truck when I was photographing a sign for my Uni that had a field of daffodils in front of it this morning.

The farmers I associate with care a lot about their animals and I expect them to take the same care with mine. As a rural person I judge people based on relationships and reputation and not on how much insurance they have. I'd trust any of these people to haul a horse in a big-ass trailer than I would trust myself or my wife.

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2. x436413 ◴[25 Apr 25 19:14 UTC] No.43797519[source]▶
you're not a rural person, c'mon, you're a wealthy cornell tech with a vanity farm. ithaca is dollar horse country, everyone knows that, so yeah i totally buy that in your fairly unique circumtances running a horse business off a back of a ford focus works. i read you as suggesting that the rest of the industry is silly for buying trucks, and you've got it figured out, but you simply punted on the hauling problem.
3. HeyLaughingBoy ◴[25 Apr 25 19:36 UTC] No.43797742[source]▶
And for a horse that's not used to loading, a livestock trailer is often much easier because they're more comfortable getting into it than, e.g., a 2-horse slant.

Judging by the number of horses my wife hauls, most horse owners don't have their own truck/trailer. Which makes sense: for most people, the trailer won't be used very often, and hay is usually delivered by the farmer, so don't need a truck for that.

How did we get so far OT?

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4. x436413 ◴[25 Apr 25 20:16 UTC] No.43798096[source]▶
you're limited to one horse at a time with livestock trailer, and if load is a problem, you can use a straight load and i guess remove center divider in a straight load. because i train rather than haul, i'd opt for taking time with load of course.

personal farms don't need to haul, there's no disagreement about that, but op suggested that you can run a horse business this way. it took me a while to realize that he has a vanity farm that's funded by his tech money, so you know he can gradually grow, he doesn't need to board, or train, or any of those other things people in the business diversify their income sources with.

i don't think we're OT at all. in horse business and generally farming you have two types of vehicles relevant to this conversation, trucks and gators. you absolutely need both. your truck can act as a gator, but your gator can't act a truck. you can use pretty much anything as a gator, i've got an old cherokee, an atv with a hitch and an actual gator doing the gator business. op uses a ford focus. the electric pickup from original post is probably a solid gator. kei trucks can be used as gators. but none of this stuff replaces a truck, which you still have to pay shit ton of money for.

usually in conversations like this it's horse people who come in and say "nah we need a truck to haul", but this time op suggested that you can in fact run a horse business with a gator, which prompted some questions from me