Week of September 17 and 24: Ford Truck Man

Move over Toby Keith, there is a new Ford Truck Man in town! You can eat the exhaust from my big block 390 engine as I roll my rig into the gas station for my $100 fill up. That's right... I ain't got no boundaries, I don't compromise... I rather walk ten miles, then be down on my luck, then ride around the block in any other pick up truck.

Get Your Own! View Slideshow

For over 2 years now, Andrea and I have been getting by with just one car, the Audi A4 Avant. For the most part, it has worked out great. We both work down in Redwood City (about 10 minutes apart), so it has been very easy and enjoyable to commute together to work everyday. I call this our "HPH"... Hour of Pure Heaven (each way). But there has been times when we could have really used another car. And lately, with doing a lot of home improvement projects ourselves, we have been borrowing our friend's pickup truck for many Home Depot runs. We looked into buying a new car but it didn't seem quite cost effective to shell out a lot of dough for a car that will be driven about 3,000 miles a year. So we started looking around for a used pickup truck. After making our mind up to search solely for an older "classic", we found several pickups on Craigslist that peaked our interest. I was actually surprised to find so may trucks from the late 60s and early 70s still running around. After test driving a couple of junkers, we found the F-250 in Roseville and decided to make the hour-and-a-half drive up north to check it out (this was on Saturday, 9/23). I liked the fact that the truck was kept in original "stock" condition. I think the radio and the steering wheel are the only noticeablele aftermarket parts on the truck. Andrea on the other hand, loved the "Tiffany" blue color. After the test drive, we both agreed that this beauty was it. Steven was the owner of the truck. He's a really nice retired guy who fixed up cars for a hobby. He had over 20 cars that he was working on including a beautiful Ford Ranchero (early 60 model) and a 67 Ford F100 pickup.

We signed all the paper work and purchased the truck from Steven. However, since the truck was registered as non-operative, we were not able to "legally" drive it home. Steven offered go into the DMV during the week and have it re-registered and we could pick it up after it was street legal. We agreed to this plan and returned the following week (9/30) and drove it home. It drove very nicely and had lots of power. There are a few things I'm planning to work on during the winter to make the truck nicer... after all, I AM a Ford Truck Man!