No problem.
I Love Me, Vol. I, I think I might love you too, now. Well done.
I wonder if any of the many Dopers that own SUVs for regularly hauling horse trailers up and down mountains are selling. What are they going to use for pulling their horse trailers?
Oxen?
I predict that the Amish lifestyle will experience a huge explosion in popularity.
Duh. Horses.
Well,* I * for one, had to sell my SUV and my horse trailer, and really took a bath. So I have to ride the horse up and down the mountains.
As a result, even the horse is complaining about the high price of gas. He is, however, grateful that I finally took a bath.
What about if you needed an SUV at one time, but don’t need one now?
My sarcasm meter detects that you’re implying there are no Dopers regularly hauling horse trailers. (Could be wrong, but that’s what the meter says.) Actually, I know there’s at least one Doper who does regularly haul horse trailers. IIRC she said she’s keeping it.
In all seriousness, in the past when gas was cheap, and Dopers regularly posted complaints about SUV owners, there would often be a chorus of “I own a horse trailer, and haul it up and down mountain passes”-type replies. Since then, I’ve mentioned the SDMB horse trailer phenomenon in a couple of other threads, specifically those about a mythical place I call Doperland. In Doperland, nobody talks in the movies, nobody chats on their cell phone loudly, nobody has ever bothered their neighbors by playing loud music or leaving barking dogs in their yards, and everybody that owns an SUV uses it to haul their horses up and down Loveland Pass every few days.
My friends with horses are keeping their pickup truck and the horse trailer. Though funny thing, when we do equestrian events locally it’s usually a better idea to ride the horses down the mountain – they freak out (and no wonder, it’s a damn steep grade) when going down that road.
Great OP! Love the sarcasm!
We own an SUV – but these days it’s retired to life as the Dogmobile, taking the dogs on exciting trips to the dog park, the dog beach, or the pet store. Plus it gets quite good mileage for an SUV, since it’s a Saturn; it gets 25+ city and 35 highway. Commuting gets done in a small Toyota. If the Dogmobile gets as much as 20 miles a week on it, I’d be surprised; we put 1/2 tank of gas in it and it lasts 3-4 weeks.
We could live without it, but with two large dogs, it’s much more convenient to have it. Plus it’s paid for. And we bought it for about half what it would have cost new when it was only six months old with 3400 miles on it. Very rarely, if we go out of town with the dogs, we drive it, but it doesn’t get 5,000 miles a year on it now.
But when (if) it ever dies, it’ll get replaced by a much smaller vehicle, I have no doubt.
Just chipping in with one other alternate explanation, even though I totally agree with the OP’s broad sentiment.
I wish we could have put off buying our new SUV to take advantage of the recent glut on the market. Alas, it wasn’t to be. My wife and I have a Honda Civic we use for almost all our driving but, since we moved to a rural locale and have to drive ~8 miles on a dirt road to/from work, I insisted that we buy a 4WD for the winter as a matter of safety (I slid off the road in the Honda after an early snowfall). And we used it to haul some of our firewood, seeing as how we used the woodstove exclusively for heat this winter. We did opt for a Hyundai that gets 23-27 mpg, almost comparable to the Suburu Outback that was a likely alternative.
Fortunately, we got 0.0% financing, otherwise we’d not have been able to afford it – I’m not sure what I would’ve done, because my wife is a bit more reckless than I and was OK with taking the risk of relying on the Honda. I think we’d have had a nasty argument on our hands. We’ve only put ~2K miles on the SUV in the 6 months we’ve owned it and probably won’t add more than another 100 miles over the next 5 months (y’know, taking it out so it doesn’t sit for an extended period), so hopefully the low mileage will enable us to get some return on the eventual resale – I don’t think we’ll be here permanently, and if we move, the SUV becomes unnecessary. It sure would’ve been nice to be able to choose from a wider selection at lower prices, though.
Where do I get a brush like yours? I could paint my whole house in one stroke.
crosses fingers
Please let the cost of cell-phone minutes skyrocket
Please let the cost of cell-phone minutes skyrocket
Please let the cost of cell-phone minutes skyrocket
Please let the cost of cell-phone minutes skyrocket
SUVs and vans did not exist forever. Not long ago horse trailers got to where they had to go.But, if the world has changed that much then buy away. Just do not complain about gas. They will be harder and harder to sell. But, then you knew that could happen.
You know, one day as I walked into my office in the morning, I started looking at and estimating the number of large SUVs and full-sized pickup trucks in my office parking lot. Of which it’s safe to say 99% of them are driven by a single person, only to work, from a New Apartheid Subdivision that’s 10-30 miles away.
I stopped counting in despair when I hit 93 SUVs/full-sized pickup trucks, and 7 “other”. The mean fleet economy of my co-workers is probably something like 10-15 mpg. Imagine - in this day and age, a suburban squire can claim with a straight face that he needs an F-350 Crew Cab Dualie so he can carry his fucking golf clubs, and folks will just stand there and nod their heads, saying “Oh, don’t you know it!”
Damn, don’t you wish?
I’ve had this conversation with people before.
“Why do you have an SUV?”
“Because we need it.”
“Oh, really? Tell me.”
“Well, about once a year, we go camping, and there’s 6 of us.”
“So take two cars.”
“No, no, you don’t understand, we neeeeeed the SUV.”
“Seems like an inefficient use of time and money. You could fulfill that need by just taking two cars.”
“Why can’t you accept the fact that we neeeeeed the SUV?”
I totally get where the OP is coming from.
Do I count? Just finished a 2700 mile trip with my trailer. And yep, it was through those ever-present mountain passes (NM, AZ, UT, CO). Chevy with 7+ liter V-8; 8.5 mpg. AFAIK, a lesser vehicle couldn’t manage the load. I needed it last year. I need it now, and I’ll need it in the future. Pretty sure I haven’t moaned about the price of fuel on these boards, and I’m not selling, so maybe I’m not the owner you’re looking for.
It’s a pickup, tho’. I still haven’t figured out if that’s an SUV or not. Maybe it’s just a “UV”.
First of all, most SUVs aren’t very good for hauling horses. The wheel base is too narrow and short, unless you have an ultralite European-style trailer, which most people don’t. Probably the only SUV widely considered to be safe for hauling a standard steel or steel-framed horse trailer is the Suburban.
Most people in the horses business haul with a full-sized pickup, F-250 or equivalent. As to what they are doing about high diesel prices, the short answer is driving them a hell of a lot less. Choosing events closer to home, attending fewer events period, charging more for trailering if its their business to trailer others. driving a fuel-efficient car when running personal errands that can’t be charged to the business. Seeking out biodiesel where it is available. That kind of stuff.
The high price of gas is affecting every angle of the horse business – feed is up, hay is up, vets have to charge more for a farm call, etc. And keeping a horse was never cheap to begin with. In economically depressed areas, like Michigan, the bottom is falling out of the horse market.