No clue who wrote this, but it's FUNNY!



High Speed Performance
Characteristics of Pickup Trucks


I'm an experienced pickup truck driver. I was driving my pickup the other
Saturday night after having - as I made very clear to the police - hardly
anything to drink and while going - honest, officer - about thirty miles an hour
when, I swear, a deer ran into the road, and I was forced to pull of the
highway with such abruptness that it took the wrecker crew six hours to get
my truck out of the woods.

An experienced pickup truck driver is a person who's wrecked one. An
inexperienced pickup truck driver is a person who's about to wreck one. A
very inexperienced pickup truck driver doesn't even own a pickup but will
probably be mistaken for a wild antelope by people jack-lighting pronghorns
in somebody else's pickup truck. The foremost high-speed-handling
characteristic of pickup trucks is the remarkably high speed with which they
head from wherever you are directly into trouble. This has to do with beer.
The minute you get in a pickup you want a beer. I'm not exactly sure why this
is, but personally I blame it on Jimmy Carter having been President.

You see, everyone in America has always wanted to be a redneck. That's
why all those wig-and-knicker colonial guys moved to Kentucky with Davy
Crockett even before he got his TV show. And witness aristocratic young
Theodore Roosevelt's attempt to be a "rough rider." Even Henry James used
the same last name as his peckerwood cousin Jesse. And as Henry James
would tell you, if anyone read him anymore and also if he were still alive, the
single most prominent distinguishing feature of the redneck is t hat he drives a
pickup truck. This explains why all of us are muscling these things around
downtown Minneapolis and Cincinnati.

You may be wondering where Jimmy Carter comes in. Well, Jimmy Carter
was a redneck just like we're all trying to be, but he was a sober redneck.
Most of us had never seen a sober redneck, and we have the Reagan
landslide to testify that none of us ev er want to see on again. It was a
horrifying apparition. And ever since Jimmy Carter all of us rednecks have
had to be very careful to be drunk rednecks lest we turn into some kind of
awful creature with big buck teeth and a State Department fu ll of
human-rights yahoos.

Thus the pickup truck has become the world's only beer-guided motor
vehicle. Let's examine one unit of this guidance system. Let's examine
another. Let's examine the whole six-pack. Now let's drive over and see if
any ducks have come in on Hodge Po ng. Whooops! Crash! Forgot the
camper back wasn't bolted down.

The Pickup: Design and Engineering

A pickup is basically a back porch with an engine attached. Both a pickup
and a back porch are good places to drink beer because you can always
take a leak standing up from either. Pickup trucks are generally a little faster
downhill than back porche s, with the exception of certain California back
porches during mudslide season. But back porches get better gas mileage.

Another important difference between back porches and pickup trucks is the
suspension systems. Back porches are most often seated firmly on the ground
by means of cement-block foundations. Nothing nearly that sophisticated is
used in pickup trucks. The front suspension of a modern pickup truck is fully
independent. Each wheel is independently bolted right to the frame. The rear
suspension is a live axle usually attached by a rope to someone else's bumper
while he tries to pull you out of the woods .

This suspension design is ideal for use in conjunction with the pickup's 100
percent front/0 percent rear weight distribution. This weight distribution is
achieved through engine placement. The engine is place just where you'd
place it on a back porc h - hanging off one end so you can get under it and
take a look at the giant dent in the oil pan you got when you ran over the
patio furniture last night.

Theoretically such forward-weight bias should cause gross understeer. But
everyone involved with pickup trucks is whooping it up too much to have any
grasp of theory, so the forward-weight bias causes oversteer instead. What
happens to an unloaded pi ckup truck in a curve is that the rear end has
nothing to do - is unemployed, metaphorically speaking - so it comes around
to ask you for work, up there in the front of the truck where all the weight is.
And the result is exactly like one of those revolv ing restaurants that they have
on hotels except it's on four bald snow tires instead of a hotel, and it's in the
middle of the highway, and it tips over.

In order to correct this handling problem, the pickup's load bed is filled with
leaf mulch, garden loam, hundred-pound bags of dog food, two
snowmobiles, half a cord of birch logs, your son's Cub Scout pack, and a
used refrigerator to put beer in out o n the back porch. The result is an
adjusted weight bias of 0 percent front/100 percent rear that causes a
handling problem different from either understeer or oversteer, which is no
steering at all because the front wheels aren't touching the ground.

The same kind of thinking that went into pickup truck suspension design has
also been applied to the pickup engine, which is basically the same device Jim
Watt was using to pump water out of coal mines in 1810 except that, in
accordance with recent EPA ruling, a hanky soaked in Pinsol has been
stuffed into each cylinder to cut down on exhaust emissions. There are three
types of pickup truck engines: the six-cylinder engine, which does not have
enough cylinders; the eight-cylinder engine, which has to o many; and the
four-cylinder engine, which is found in "mini pickups" driven by people who
thing John Denver is the right kind of redneck to be and believe they can talk
to whales. The less said about four-cylinder engines the better. But all these
eng ines have a common fault in that they continue to run after the ignition has
been switched off, a phenomenon known as "dieseling." Engines that actually
are diesels have been introduced for pickup trucks and they rectify this
problem by not starting in t he first place.

It doesn't matter. The real power for pickup trucks is generated inside the
gearbox, or at least it seems to be because it's so noisy in there. And if it isn't,
it soon will be after you get blotto and start shifting without the clutch.

There are usually five gears in a pickup. One is a mystery gear which is
illustrated on the shift knob but cannot be found. Then there is first gear,
which is good for getting stuck in the woods. When you aren't stuck in the
woods it's good for yank ing your bumper off while trying to help a friend
who owns a pickup when he's stuck in the woods. First gear has a top speed
of three. Third gear has a slightly higher top speed but you can't climb a
speed bump without downshifting and the truc k still only gets eight mpg. It is
not known exactly what third gear is for. All normal pickup truck driving is
done in second. Pickups also have a reverse gear, which is good for getting
more completely stuck in the woods than first gear can do alone.

Because pickup trucks get stuck in the woods so often, four-wheel drive has
become a popular option. The four-wheel-drive feature is either operated by
a lever which fails to put the truck in 4WD or by a lever which fails to take it
out. Four-wheel d rive allows you to mire four wheels axle-deep in the
woods instead of just two.

Perhaps the most novel aspect to pickup truck engineering is that pickups
have no brakes. True, there's a parking brake which, if you set it, allows you
to let your driverless pickup roll downhill into a busy intersection with a clear
conscience. And there is a brake pedal, but stepping on it only produces a
poignant desire for one more beer before you crash into the woods, but
sometimes the spare tire, which hangs down behind the bumper in the back,
will fall partly out of its mounting and produce d rag force. And very often a
pickup will run out of gas and coast to a stop. And right in front of a bar, too
- according to what you told your wife.

That just goes to show how thoroughgoing the relationship is between
pickups and drinking. I mean it sure looks like these things were designed by
people who'd been drinking. And the level of finish indicates they were built
by people who'd been drin king. It only stands to reason they should be
driven by people like us who are half in the bag. As a result, the most popular
pickup truck performance modification is - you guessed it - having a drink.
For instance, at sixty miles an hour take a tight turn and notice that if you
hadn't been tight you never would have taken that turn in the first place. Now
you call a wrecker and I'll go get some tall ones.

Driving Technique

Driving a pickup at high speed is a difficult skill to master. The first step is to
assume the proper driving position: Use one hand to firmly grasp the drip rail
on the roof. This takes the place of shoulder harness, lap belt, and air bag and
lets you give the finger to people with anti-handgun bumper stickers on their
cars. Then place you r other hand on the gearshift knob so you'll always
know what gear you're in (which is second, as I pointed out before). Now
take your third hand...Perhaps som e picture of the difficulty is beginning to
emerge. Anyway, be sure to balance your beer can carefully in your lap.

The second step is to drive over to the 7-Eleven and get more beer. Use your
down vest to mop up the one you spilled all over your crotch as you backed
out the driveway.

The third step is cornering technique. There are three ways to take a
high-speed curve in a pickup. The first way is to use the traditional racecar
driver's "late apex": Go deep into the curve at full speed doing all your
downshifting and useless br ake-pedal pumping in a straight line. Then, in one
smooth motion, turn the wheel to the full extent necessary for the curve. Aim
for an apex slightly past the geometrical apex of the inside edge of the curve
and slowly bring the steering wheel back to s traight ahead as you reapply the
throttle. This will put your truck into the woods. The second way to take a
fast curve is to come into the curve slightly slower, dial in a greater amount of
steering, and stay on the throttle so as to propel the truck i nto a "power
slide." This will put your truck in the woods too. The third method is to come
to a full stop before entering the curve and have a beer. While you're doing
that someone else will come along in another pickup truck and knock you
into the wo ods anyway.

Now that you've wrecked a pickup and are an experienced pickup truck
driver, it's important to know what to tell the police. Tell them a deer ran into
the road. This happens very frequently in the places where we rednecks live,
especially when we've been drinking. For example, below are the five most
common explanations made to the North Carolina Highway Patrol by drivers
who have put their pickup trucks into the woods:

1. A deer ran into the road.
2. A deer ran into the road.
3. A deer ran into the road.
4. A deer ran into the road.
5. I was stopped at a stop sign but I had to start up again real fast and run my
pickup into the woods because otherwise it would have been smashed by this
deer that ran into the road.

Purchase, Repair, and Maintenance of the High-Performance Pickup
Truck

If, however, you still haven't wrecked a pickup truck and are weighing the
obvious delights of having an opportunity to do so against such considerations
as wanting to be a redneck but only having enough money to be middle-class
or having a wife who th ought she was marrying a college-educated account
executive, here are some points for you to consider. First, how much will a
pickup truck cost?

Pickup: $9360.00
Beer: $2.89
Another pickup to replace first one that you wreck: $9360.00
Rabbit for wife, who won't drive truck: $8750.00
TOTAL: $27,472.89

That's a fair piece of change. But on the other hand, pickup trucks are
virtually maintenance-free. In fact, all pickup repairs can be done with a long
chain. Attach one end of the chain to the pickup truck, drop the other end of
the chain on the gr ound, and go buy a real car.

You may also want to know if a pickup truck is truly useful. I'm afraid the
answer is yes -- all to much so. But, when all is said and done, it really would
have looked silly at the end of Easy Rider if Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper
had been shot by a couple of guys in a Fiat Brava. And what's life for if you
never get a chance to shoot the likes of Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper?
Besides, you'll never really appreciate the profound and astonishing beauties
of nature if you don't get stuck in the woods now and then. And you won't
appreciate them half as much if you don't have a lot of beer along.