#1) Apologies for the generalization. I am fully aware that not all people living in rural areas own 20 cars, and there are plenty of people living in non-rural areas that exhibit this same behavior.
#2) This might be IMHO material, so mods of course move it as you see fit.
#3) Sorry if this has been asked before, I Googled it and didn’t find anything.
That stuff out of the way:
Why do people living in rural areas tend to own a lot of cars? “A lot” meaning a number of vehicles likely greatly exceeding the number of people residing on that property. Now, maybe there’s 20 people living there, each with their own vehicle, but that can’t possibly be the case in most instances I’ve witnessed this.
I’ve been through and to a lot of rural areas around the country and it’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed everywhere, so it’s not limited to a certain region. Again, it’s definitely not every single home in any given rural area, but there’s always noticeably at least a few. Many of the vehicles, if not most in a lot of cases, appear to be non-functioning and/or in widely varying states of neglect/disrepair.
Why don’t they just get rid of the vehicles they’re not using? Are they mining parts? Is it not worthwhile to have the old vehicles hauled away? They just have a lot of extra space, so “fuck it, just leave 'em”? All of the above?
I lived rural for a very short period of time and quickly added cars, a comfy car, a nice pick up, a rough pick up, a sporty car, an suv. If thier is room to park a car and good deals to be found they tend to stack up in a hurry.
People who live in the country and have land and barns are the same type of people who might like to fix up old cars. That’s why they live in places where they can keep more cars than they need. I’ve known quite a few people who do this, they may even race them or enter demolition derby’s. They are good people to know when you have car problems.
I think room is the major issue here. The proper question may be “why don’t urban and most suburban people have tons of cars?” the answer being because they don’t have space.
There is also less incentive to get an immobile wreck towed to a junkyard if it’s not in the way of anything and isn’t accumulating tickets. In cities, or anywhere else that such a car is parked on the street in public view, the municipality will do you the favor.
Those old fridges and washing machines in the weeds out back are also not spares.
Parts is one reason. I lived in the country and paid about $200 a month rent for a 7 BR on about 20 Acres. I bought an old ford for $150 and soon bought another one for $100 just to use for parts to keep the other one running. Eventually added a jeep for the winter snows and another one shortly after for the same reason. They do add up but I had more than enough space for them all. When I went away to the city for work I sold them all for junk and bought my first new car.
By the OP standards, I have one too many cars. By mine, I have about 5 too few and that’s only because I don’t have the garage space to keep them. Love cars. Love to drive them. Love to look at them. Love 'em like people love to own art.
I don’t know if I buy the whole “they do it because they have the space” arguement.
I know a lot of people with 1-2 cars in metropolitan areas and I don’t think a single one of them would say “You know, I’d probably have a lot more cars around if I only had the space.”
I see it more in income class divisions. Lower income people (rural) can’t afford a $25K vehicle so they instead but a handful of $1K vehicles and try to keep one running at any given time. Middle income people are buying the newer cars and maintaining the 1 or 2 they have. If one breaks down they have the funds to have it immediately taken care of.
People without those funds rely on the spares in their yard.
The opportunity cost is much lower for someone out in the country, especially if he or she knows how to get an old beater up and running without having to pay a mechanic.
I live in a rural area, and the best answer I can come up with: because we can. As others have mentioned, we have room for them, so why not? Having an extra vehicle or two is quite handy.
If they’re all functioning or near-functioning, that’s one thing, but a lot of these places look a lot like junkyards, with lots of old hulks not unlike this just laying about (I realize that’s a picture of an actual junkyard, but I’ve seen plenty of rural homes with yards that look just like that).
What are you doing with all of that junk (not you specifically, Crafter_Man)?
Most of the really rural as opposed to exurban people I know are good at fixing stuff, for a variety of obvious reasons. If you are in the habit of fixing most of your own stuff, you will need to develop the habit of keeping supplies around. Old cars, washing machines, refrigerators, tend to get saved, along with rope, fasteners, fencing, scrap wood, insulation, and an unbearable number of other categories. Because you just never know what is going to break next.
Then there are people who are slobs who never throw anything away. In the country you have a lot more room to spread out with that habit.
We used to have an old VW collection that when mrAru was laid off for a period of time we sold off to generate some income. [van, 72 beetle, 58 beetle, 64 squareback and 2 good condition parts cars with 3 spare engines]
Now we are down to our roomies Chevy s10, my 06 Grand Caravan, my 06 diesel Jetta and mrAru’s gas 02 Jetta.[though he normally drives my diesel jetta. 43 MPG is good when you drive 75 miles each way for work.]
All are paid off, only the diesel jetta has full replacement coverage the rest are state legal liability only so other than the state taxes and the registration and insurance, there is no reason not to own a couple extra cars. Being out in the countryside there is no taxi, no bus and a hella long walk anywhere so if a car is down for repairs or maintenance, we have some way of getting away to shop or doctors appointments.
Well, I know in the case of my parents they aren’t even rural and they’ve got two junker cars in the backyard. One’s been there so long a tree has grown up around the engine block and another through the bed. The other’s getting there.
For a short while they were keeping the cars for other family members. Then the cars no longer ran and needed maintenance, new tires, the works. Too much trouble. Family wasn’t around to do it. Eh, car is out of the way anyway. Towing it was too much trouble, might tear up the backyard. Then the plants and trees started growing through the cars - now it’s REALLY too much trouble to remove them. You’d have to somehow remove at least two ingrown trees from the chevy pickup to move it.
Eventually someone will have to get rid of the rusted hulks but it’s one of those things where you’ve left it so long it’s become a huge problem that nobody wants to deal with when you can just go to the other parts of the backyard.
It’s not that they’re collecting the junk for a reason. It’s that hauling the junk away takes money and effort. A junk car might be useless, but why bother towing it when it doesn’t cost anything to leave it rusting by the shed?
If you have a small suburban lot, you don’t want to leave a junked car in your driveway or garage, because that’s where you park your cars that work. You don’t want to park it on the lawn because that’s where your kids play. You can’t park it on the street because it will get towed.
