Son, we call them “Alabama tool sheds.”
None of the rural folks I know (and I know a lot of them) have more cars than people.
Spares.
I love seeing an old farm with the car fence: every car or truck they’ve ever owned since 1940 lined up in a row.
We have a guy near us whose whole home plot (the part of his land where his home and barns are located) is encircled by nose-to-tail rock crushers.
It’s like with cats – when people from the city have too many, they drive out to the farmlands and just leave them there, figuring they’ll survive on their own or get taken in and cared for.
I would. We live in the suburbs. If we had more space we’d have at least a pickup to go with our SUV and hybrid sedan. But we don’t have the space so we don’t and rent one occasionally instead.
I have family who live in the serious backwoods, and collect cars and junk - or Valuable Building Materials as they consider it. I think the answers above hold true for my family members too. having spares, for parts or in case your main vehicle breaks down. having vehicles for different circumstances. Seeing a great deal on a car you always wanted, and hell there’s room to park it so why not. Expense of hauling junkers away.
About a year ago I was looking at a hobby farm for sale in my old township. Knew it was kind of run down but couldn’t remember it exactly, and the ad only had pictures of the inside of the house (never a good thing when you’re selling property). So I looked it up on Google Maps. Must’ve been 40 vehicles out back on the satellite view. Ended up driving past it a couple of weeks later after it sold and they were all gone. Probably a condition of the sale.
IMHO this is a major factor. A lot of rural folks don’t have much money, and there are not handy options for hauling big stuff away, and there is not a lot of stigma to leaving it hanging around. So, why spend time and money and effort “getting rid of” an old car?
The comparable would be in-town and suburban people with their garage/attic/basement full to the rafters with old stuff.
Any car that runs is worth $1000 or so. If you’re looking at a big repair bill it may be easier to just buy another cheap car. Especially if it is the same type you already have, then you can swap parts.
If my SO and I lived in the country, we’d probably have 3 more cars (we have 2 now).
2 daily drives
1 truck/4-wheel drive/hauling vehicle
2 fun drives
But I live in the city, and my garage holds 2 cars. So two cars it is.
Do they keep them all registered and insured? It seems like that might add up quickly.
Don’t mean to generalize, but I’m going to generalize. Rural citizens tend to enjoy automobiles more than your average urbanite. I’m sure I can find statistics somewhere, but NASCAR fans probably sample overwhelmingly rural. More enjoyment of automobiles equals more ownership of automobiles.
Additionally, city-dwellers and suburbanites likely sink more funds into homes, not cars. The opposite tends to be true for rural folks.
One issue is that looking at a farm as a single-family dwelling often isn’t exactly accurate. Because of the various ways farm inheritances are done, often you’ve got one branch of the family that actually resides on the farm, but many other people may have a formal or informal interest in the farm. So when you see something that looks like a used car lot around a farmhouse, it might just be because that chunk of land is the default vehicle depository for a large extended family that mostly lives in town. There’s a farm in my SO’s family that’s like that-- currently there’s only two people who live there and probably a dozen cars and trucks, but the actual residents only own two of them. The rest are owned by the extended family that live and work in the nearby urban area but occasionally help out on the farm.
A reason not yet mentioned as to why a rural person can keep extra vehicles that they seldom drive, older trucks, nostalgic cars of their past, is that most rural areas have no DEQ smog testing stations.
You do not have to pass the DEQ to keep your seldom driven cars and truck licensed.
I live in a state where DEQ testing only applies in a few cities. The rural areas do not have to comply. That old Ford truck that you have had for years is just fine to drive, needs a little oil now and then. But it could never get a renewal tag in the city.
And the muscle car with the modified exhaust, the jeep you keep for the snow, the big truck for hauling the boat, these are all still road legal.
In the city you would have to get rid of most of these part time vehicles because they would not pass the licensing inspection.
I can see this. When I first saw the topic, my first thought was: it is not rural people, but poor (or at least poorer) people who have tons of cars. Seriously, why do you need a fleet of shitty cars?
I spent my childhood in the boonies, and I’ve noted this too. Besides the fact that there is more space to park them all and fewer regulations, a large part of it is that you need a car to get everywhere and do everything. So that means, ideally, owning one car per adult or child of driving age in the household, plus spares (if you own a bunch of older cars, the more the better) in case you have a breakdown at a critical time, plus trucks and SUVs to deal with winter conditions if you live in the North. It stacks up pretty quick, especially considering rural people have more kids than urban.
ETA: I’m poor and don’t drive, but I’ve never understood why people spend so much money on newer vehicles. Beaters can serve you quite well for years and are incredibly cheap to buy. If maintenance on your current car is too costly, just get another beater (or start driving one you have in reserve). I know people with enough money for new cars who use this strategy with great success.
- It costs more to live in the city. (more disposable income available to rural people)
I grew up in a tiny farm town (Just over 1,000 people). Housing is ridiculously cheap compared to living in any large metropolitan city. It wasn’t unusual at all to have a new car that costs more than your house.
I call bullshit. Slavery was abolished almost a century and a half ago.
Wouldn’t tons of cars be like 1 or 2, depending on the size?