But even the new Unimogs only come with automatic transmissions.

Yes. Sad but true.

Having said that, my suspicion is that the automatic on a Unimog isn't even remotely similar to one on an American pickup. 

Unimogs are 4x4 first. 

Ahem.. . well have you actually driven one of the new automatics?

Yes I have.

And not just a new one, I've owned two automatic transmission 4x4s myself, and there's been an automatic around here ever since my wife convinced me, or at least wore me down, into accepting that our standard transmission Nissan Pathinder should be replaced by a Chevrolet Suburban.

A 1974 Dodge D150 and the Suburban are the only two vehicles I've had transmission problems with. . .ever.  Well, if I don't count a leak, covered under a silent warranty, on a 1990 Ford F150 (a ZK manual transmission). 

The D150 was well used, and a good truck, but it was an automatic and it developed transmission problems shortly before it engine blew up.  Make of that what you will.

The Suburban's simply failed.

Our neighbor's did as well, and we were forewarned about that.

Frankly, I didn't like the Suburban much and its replacement, a Tahoe, I'm not keen on either.  Part of that is the automatic transmission.  Indeed, the only automatic transmission vehicle I've driven in recent years was on a Ford Expedition.  I liked it, but I don't want one.

But I have test driven the new 3/4 ton trucks with automatic transmissions.  And I've driven the 1 ton ones.  I'm sure their transmissions are excellent.  But not for what I want them to do.

Blog Mirror: WHAT KILLED OFF THE MANUAL TRANSMISSION?

A question I've pondered myself.

WHAT KILLED OFF THE MANUAL TRANSMISSION?

This article does as good of job explaining it as any I've seen.

Frankly, whatever it was, I hate the fact that it's happened.

Underlying it all, however, is the fact that a lot of modern trucks are; 1) used in cities, and 2) just haul toys.  That's the real problem.

For those who use their trucks in the out back, and yes I've heard the arguments that have been around for ever (including the absurd one "you can rock with the transmission when stuck with an automatic) there's no doubt that manuals are superior transmissions.  Allowing the driver, rather than a bunch of liquid, to choose the gears in tight spots, while climbing, or going through a mud hole is infinitely better.

But then, for that matter, so are mechanical, rather than vacuum and electronic controls.

Again, no matter. The Big Three caters to the market and the truck market is driven by urbanites who are more likely to haul a boat to a lake than an elk from the high country. And even 1-ton and 3/4 ton work trucks are likely to be driven now by a workman who has no real exposure to manual transmissions and can't really use one.  Besides, in dense town traffic, automatics are better.

I've been pondering this because, as readers here know, my 07 diesel is at the point where I have to.  It needs new tires, all four, it has a cracked windshield and its starting to rust above one of the wheel wells.

Added to the problems I face, however, finding the time to simply address all of that is problematic.

And the truck has had certain issues that are long lasting, the most particular one being that even though it's a 1-ton 4x4 truck, the clearance isn't what it should be.

So what to do.

Based upon a little research, including this article, I'm now aware that the calendar year 2019 is the last year Chrysler has made an standard transmission for its trucks. Even its off road "Power Wagon" (not a real Power Wagon but only a truck appropriating the honored name) is fitted with a slushbox more appropriate for a Barbie Jeep than a real truck.  Indeed, I wouldn't regard it as a real off road vehicle for that reason.

The 2019 manuals fitted by Dodge are available in their 1 ton trucks but in the 2018 model. That's right, Dodge oddly made 2018s and 2019s in 2019, and so far as I know, it has't made 2020s yet.

I knew that earlier in the year, somewhat, when I looked on the lot.  I found a nice used one, but it sold quickly, belying the "manual's don't sell" story that the manufacturers are putting out.  There were several standards on the lot, but they were all plain Jane tradesmen models with street tires that would have required thousands of dollars in investment just to make them prairie ready.

Making one last effort to find an option to ponder, I entered the material details on the "build your own" option in the Chrysler site last night, and that site claims this can still be done.  We'll see.  I suspect that the answer will disappoint.

And even if it doesn't, the cost will likely detract from the option.

Which orphans my options.  I may have reached the point where what I've been pondering is the only option.

The 2007 is a decade old and has over 175,000 miles on it.  It has some downsides.  Those include its lack of clearance, but it doesn't have locking differentials and manual hubs.  Those can be retrofitted.

And the retrofits I might want would cost a lot less than sinking money into a new truck that still had the defects the existing one does.

And I'm not buying an automatic.  I know that everyone else, including the newer ranch trucks, are automatics, and that you have to go down to the light off road sport trucks, or up to to commercial haulers, to get a manual, but I'm not going there.  They're a bad option.

So making the 3500 a project it may be.  Which would make 100% of my own vehicles projects.

Sigh.

The Clearance Dilemma

The 2007 Dodge in the high country.

I have a 2007 Dodge 3500 4x4.  It's the crewcab with a long box.

It's a great truck and I have no intention of trading it away any time soon, even though my wife feels that I should be trading it in, and even though there are a few valid reasons to do so.*  Indeed, I have no intention whatsoever of getting any new vehicles in the future whatsoever.

It's been a great truck.  It's had a few problems over the years, as they all do, but by and large, as a vehicle with 180,000 miles now on it, it's been remarkably trouble free.  As I'll post here shortly in another thread, it's also been a very safe one.  It preforms very well, in that context, on highway ice and snow, and I've had it on some dicey roads to say the least.  There are things that it doesn't compare favorably to in regard to newer trucks, but there are things it compares more favorably with, in my view.  For one thing, it has a standard transmission, something which is now a thing of the past with American full sized trucks. Automatics, the favorite of urban dwellers, have taken over.

But there's one thing.

As a very long, and stock, vehicle, it doesn't have the kind of clearance that I'd like.

Another 07 in a parking lot, photographed from the cab of my 07.  This one has about the perfect tire size in my view, and is leveled (not lifted) about 2".  It looks great and has better clearance than mine.  Of course, he isn't towing any stock trailers either.  I wish I'd run up and taken a photo of the tire size.

I've whacked rocks with the front differential and slightly dented it.  And I've high centered it on snow nearly annually.

I'm tempted to try to boost the clearance, and that would mean larger tires.

It came equipped with 265/70R17s, and I have an off road (that will also do highway) example of that on now.  That tire is 31.5" in width.  It will, as is, go up one tire size. Which gives you an additional .5" of clearance.

That's right.  One half inch.

Hmmm.

High lift 1983 Dodge crewcab on a used car lot. Didn't this lift go a bit too far?  But It looks like it does have good clearance.  It also has a full sized crew cab, something that isn't the case with the 07 for some odd reason. The box here appears to be a short box, which isn't what I'd want.  The tires on this truck are likely 35" tires, maybe 40".

On the other hand, there are off road tires that will fit 17" rims that are 35" in width. And that would give me an extra 1.5".  That doesn't sound like a lot, but it may be.

40" tires are also made for 17" rims, but I'm not going there.

The father of all modern 4x4 trucks, the first generation of the Dodge WC truck from World War Two.  These had great clearance, but this 1/2 ton model was also too high and prone to roll overs.

I'm tempted to go with 35" tires, but that means the tread width is also wider, which I really don't want if it starts to impact performance.  I like narrower tires over wider.  I don't want to float on wet roads or mud.

And some people claim that if you put 35" on, you need to lift the truck or put on a leveling kit. Others claim that isn't so.

Second model of World War Two WC 4x4 truck. This 3/4 ton truck was about perfect.

What would also be the case is that it would impact the gear ratio by making it higher.  My gearing is the lowest possible but that would effectively make both 5th and 6th gears overdrives.  A person can adjust this, I think, by changing the ring and pinion gears in the axles, but I hadn't planned on really doing that.

And of course it might mean that I'd need to lift it as well, or a leveling kit that also lifted the rear.  Modern trucks are canted forward on purpose, for fuel efficiency purposes, and a leveling  kit does just that.  It lifts, probably about 2" in this case, which would be fine, but that also means if you have a trailer on the rear, it's going to have its nose in the air.

All of which leads me to believe that maybe no more than one tire size bigger, if that.

Which really won't achieve much.

The two Dodges.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*It's starting to get some rust over a wheel well.  It has a crack on the body of the box.  My brother in law, who is a diesel mechanic by training, warns me that sooner or later it'll need some major engine work, as old as it is.  And it needs a selection of odds and ends repairs to really get it back into ship shape if I'm keeping it, and that's money into an old truck.

Keeping the old ones. . .

I don't like to trade vehicles.*

The 97 Dodge.

Indeed, I sometimes wish I'd found a truck just like I wanted, a one ton 4x4, back when I first bought my first new truck, in 1990, and kept it.

That wasn't realistic at the time.  I did get, however, at that time a very nice, in my view, 6 cyl Ford F150 4x4. I loved it.  I traded that away a few years later when my son was just a baby to get a F250 diesel 4x4, a great truck, that I loved.  I still miss it.  That one went in 2006, however, when a single cab truck would just not work anymore for a family of four.  At the time, it had 165,000 miles on it and was just starting to have a few problems.

Its replacement was a 2007 Dodge D3500, a one tone 4x4 crew cab.  I still have it.  It now has 168,000 miles on it, which shows I guess that I drive about 160,000+ miles over a decade, quite a bit by the standards of some, and not so much by the standards of others.

Seven or so years ago the D3500 was supplemented here by the purchase of an even older vehicle, a 1997 Dodge 1500.  My son was getting near driving age at the time and we needed something so we bought that.  He's still driving it.  It has 155,000 miles on it.  And we added a 1997 Jeep some years ago.  That's my daily driver.  It had a lot of miles on it when I bought it and now it's at 165,000.  And my daughter is driving a ten year old Jeep Liberty.

And then there's the 1962 Dodge. We'll forgo discussing that.

Only my wife's car is newish.  She's not a fan of keeping the old ones.

Anyhow, I hate replacing vehicles which means that I likely keep them longer than I should.

In my heart of hearts, I just can't really grasp why a vehicle ought not to basically last forever.  I know that's not realistic for something that's a collection of moving parts, but that's sort of how I view it.  I figure that you get the vehicle you like, and then you keep it.

That's somewhat ironic, truly, for a person who has owned as many vehicles as I have.  I should know better.  My first vehicle was a 1958 M58A1, a surplus Army Jeep, that I bought at age 15 and had only a little into my legal driving years.  It seemed old when I got it, and was in mixed condition, but in thinking back now I own vehicles that are older now than it was when I got it.

After that I had a 1974 Ford F100, then a 1974 Dodge D150, followed by the addition of the 62, which I still own, and a 1954 Chevrolet Deluxe Sedan.  Then I added a 1974 Toyota four door Landcruiser.  The Landcruiser died in 1990 and I bought the brand new Ford F150, and then the F250, and then the D3500. In the mix, at the time I owned the F150, was a 1946 Jeep CJ2A and a Mercury Comet which I inherited.

I've omitted the things that I've owned with my wife, as those vehicles were largely hers.  If I add them in, there was the Nissan Pathfinder (a great 4x4), a Chevrolet Suburban and then a Tahoe.

Of everything listed, only the Pathfinder, the F150 and the D3500 were new when purchased. The Suburban and Tahoe were nearly new.

If it had been up to me, I would not have traded off the Pathfinder, which was a 1993 or 94.  And then, if it had been up to me, we would not have traded the Suburban.  I didn't like the Suburban, but I never grasped why we traded it for a vehicle that was similar to what we already had.

Of the vehicles listed, of course, most are now long gone.  The Comet went to the person I bought the F250 from, along with the F150.  The Chevy I sold when I inherited the Comet.  The F250 I sold when I bought the D3500, and it was having rust and engine problems at the time.  With high milage, the D3500 has done much better.

Which brings me to my current post.

The 97 1500 has always had a few problems with it, the biggest one being that it's been anemic.  It's equipped with the 318 engine, or what I call the 318,and its just never had a lot of go.  Recently it's been having a lot of problems and we endeavored to find a replacement.

We failed.

The reason we failed is that between my son and I we can't find anything that really fits the bill as well as it does and, moreover, which is affordable.  I can't bring myself at age 56 to buy a vehicle that's as expensive as they currently are.  They've just gotten enormously expensive.  That's why my Jeep is a 97.  When I decided I'd like to try a Jeep again, the new ones were way out of price range for what I was willing to pay, and most of the used ones were absurdly priced.  The one we found was on a salvage title due to an accident early in its existence, and so it was affordable, the way I define that. And it's been a great 4x4 car.

The replacement for the 97 1500 would have to be a pickup truck and it'd have to be a standard, that latter requirement being one I apply myself to my own vehicles but attempted to dissuade, unsuccessfully, my son from. The only thing we found that looked like a good option, financially, was a fairly new, slightly lifted, F150, but it was an automatic and was therefore rejected by the intended user, even though he'd be using a vehicle (we'd own) that was much newer than anything I drive.

So we determined to fix the 1500.

That's been a really odd experience and I've come to realize that by and large most mechanics now approach old vehicles like this with the concept that you don't want to fully fix them, but rather just maintain them in acceptable condition until they're replaced by something newer.  As a result, certain problems have just lingered for years.

One of those is the odd lack of real guts in the 97  Given as its a 318 I've just attributed it to that, but recently one mechanic said that he'd measured compression and that it was quite low in one cylinder, 70 lbs. That caused us to feel that it had to be replaced, but as we couldn't find anything to replace it with, we then thought of rebuilding or replacing the engine.

It used to be, back when engines gave up around 65,000 miles or so, that there were shops locally that routinely did that. But as one mechanic has explained to me, as engines now push 200,000, that's just not the case any longer.  So the options consistently seemed to be to put in an ordered engine.  My research on that dissuaded me from doing that however.  I did find a local shop that will rebuild them, and does a lot of racing engines, so there is a local option.

But in the meantime as the old truck had a brake problem develop and a scary rattle show up, it went back to the shop and it was determined, by a different mechanic, that the front brakes needed to be worked on and an axle u-joint had gone bad.  That was expensive, so as long as we were looking at rebuilds, I had the shop fix the loose steering as well. This truck has had loose steering for years.  They were reluctant to do it, given that its an old truck, but in explaining that I really wanted them to do it, they did.

And they are of the opinion that the truck really doesn't have low compression but that a leaky air manifold gasket is responsible for the check engine light being on intermittently, so that's being replaced. If they are correct, and they are confident they are, that should be the old truck back into pretty fair shape.

Not that it's been cheap.

In the meantime, the tires on my D3500 are nearly completely shot and I need to replace them. More money.

I've really liked the D3500 but it has a few issues as well.  One is that I've never found the clearance to be really adequate.  I've thought about lifting it slightly with a leveling kit and having a larger set of tires, and perhaps wheels, put on the truck.  Now, if I'm going to do that, I need to do that, or I'll be stuck with the current tire size for years.  As its now old, only cost keeps me from experimenting with it, I suppose.

I also now have rust above a wheel well, and a crack in my box.  Bare minimum I need to do something about the rust if I'm going to keep it.

Which I suppose I will. This is the last year for standard transmission Dodge trucks and I'm not keen on automatics.  And the trucks I have looked at on the lot, and I have looked at some, are gigantically expensive.

I guess on that latter point I can convince myself, therefore, that I'm saving money. Sort of. If they last for years, I guess.

On it all, at age 56, I'm perhaps oddly of the mindset that anything I buy now, or repair now fully, I will have until I die . . . or electric vehicles make them obsolete.  I may be unique that way locally, but I'm pretty convinced that we're in the final generation of combustion engine vehicles right now and in another decade electrics will be coming on really strong.  Indeed, they already are, and only solving battery longevity and recharging rates is really keeping them back. Once that's solved, and it will be, they'll start replacing everything else.  Or at least I'll be surprised if they don't. That's not advocating for anything, it's just guessing.  If I'm wrong, well maybe in a decade I'll be back on the lots looking at the newest diesels.

I'll note that I haven't mentioned the Jeep much in this tale of semi mechanical woe.  I really don't need to.  It has problems now as well,including that the heater is stuck on and I haven't figured that out quite yet, but it's remarkably durable in every way.  And Jeeps, it seems, you just keep rebuilding after they endure the last year's worth of automotive use.

So the perils of keeping and riving old vehicles.  I've often wished that while I was in school I'd taken mechanics classes along with everything else and really knew how really dig into them.  Having said that, one of my brothers in law did just that and he doesn't work on his own often.  Indeed, he doesn't keep the old ones either but trades vehicles off when they are nearly new.

A few queries for the few readers.

Do you drive old ones, and if so why?

Turn your own bolts?

Any experience with lifting, at all, D3500s and changing wheel and tire sizes?

_________________________________________________________________________________

*This draft post was started in 2016 and I never finished it.  That shows both how I really do keep the old ones and, moreover, how old some draft posts are here.  As there have been developments on the automotive front  here, as noted in the post, I finally finished it off.

The vintage military Land Rover pass in review.

Far from home and out of context, a nice British military Land Rover spotted on the street.

Speaking of 4x4s. . .

I miss these.

Vintage, first model, Ford Bronco.

The Long Weekend

Labor Day is the traditional end of summer in the U.S., and its of course a three day weekend for most folks, although not those who work in stores and the like.

It's also the opener for Blue Grouse and Dove in Wyoming.  I go every year, being pretty much as subsistence on those sorts of things as circumstances, time and my spouse will allow.

If this sounds like a mere rhetorical flourish type of introduction, it isn't.  I truly and very seriously believe that a lot of the problems the modern world faces is that the Western world has forgotten what we are, which is a hunting species.  That doesn't diminish any of our other accomplishments, but nearly all of our social problems, and most of our problems are social problems, stem from the slow, and it was very, very slow, change from most families, and again it was families, putting dinner on the table through the labor of hunters, which includes the subset of fish hunters, i.e, fishermen.*  As we've set out in our Third Law of Human Behavior, there's a lot going on here.  Perhaps in a greater sense, the odd subtitle of a former very good, and now defunct, outdoor blog. Eat More Brook Trout, which was "Save the West. . .Kill a Brookie", is not only true, but deserving of global application.

Anyhow, the opening of the hunting seasons on Wyoming is September 1, which is always coincident with Labor Day weekend.  And that's a long weekend for most of us.

This three day weekend turned out to truly be a long weekend, in more ways than one.

The Trek

The dog. This is our bird dog, and he's at this point at about 8,000 feet in elevation after hiking about 1.5 miles or so.  All on public land.

I don't really recall how young I was when I first went blue grouse hunting, but I was fairly young.  It was well before I was old enough to drive.

On that occasion, an oral surgeon friend of my fathers asked if we'd like to go with him.  That oral surgeon was a dedicated hunter in the way that I am now and have been ever since I was old enough to drive.  I really was before then, but being able to drive, in the West, means a lot.

My father hunted, but when I was young, and probably because I was young, he didn't hunt everything you could.  When I was a kid he never bought a big game license, although he started to buy deer and antelope licenses when I was old enough to hunt them.  He always went for sage chickens, however, and waterfowl.  We hunted ducks a lot.  He was a very dedicated fisherman, and I think he preferred fishing, but not ice fishing, to hunting, although he liked both.  I'm the other way around.

Anyhow, at this time, which was likely around 1973 or so, the oral surgeon, asked if we'd like to go blue grouse hunting. We did. It involved a trip with his old style Ford Bronco that was really a Jeep trail type of thing.  Our 2x4 pickup could not have done it.  We crawled all over the Laramie Range and ended up back on a near extension of it, which is where we got into the birds. After that, we went every year thereafter, limited however to where we could go with a 2x4 pickup.

When I was old enough to drive I'd go with my friends or by myself after school.  I've never been shy about going hunting or fishing alone, although I've been warned repeatedly that I'd get hurt doing that. This will be mentioned again below.  At any rate, in my college days I started to go with my good friend Jeff.  And at that point, we started going into a remote part of the Laramie Range.

I'm not sure looking back, but I think he was the one who suggested the remote location.  I've been back every year since, and if it seems odd that I haven't mentioned him in this context, that's because he moved, first to Denver, and then to Cheyenne.  It's a really far trek for him.

But it's not a minor one for me.

Up until my 40s, the route in was by road, and then by foot.  But you could drive really easily to a drop off point. The road part of this was on an improved, bladed, road before the two track, and quite frankly the road is a stock trail.**  This is significant as the ability to close a stock trail to members of the general public was never even remotely conceived of at that time.  But a stock trail is, where it crosses private land, really only open for livestock.

At some point in time the rancher closed the road, but he continued to allow fishermen on. As I do understand the difference between private and public land, I didn't begrudge him that and I still don't.  Indeed, I'm grateful he allows fishermen on.   And I'm one of those people who are generally fine with there being less roads in the world.  But this did have the impact of closing, to vehicle traffic, a lot of access points to public land.

But not completely.

Being hugely road familiar, I realized I could still get there, on the back roads.  With a lot of effort.

That effort, the first time I tried it, involved a bicycle.  I drove to where I had to stop, as a practical matter, and rode for miles in on my old Trek Mountain Bike.  It would have been easier, frankly, with horses, and while I have access to horses, and had a good horse at that time, those horses weren't trained to gun fire and picking them up would have involved an additional 100 miles by the time I was done.  So mountain bike it was.

And then I acquired a Jeep.

I don't have a "four wheeler" or any kind of ATV and frankly I don't really approve of them.  I don't want one. But a Jeep is a car and I guess I'm willing to accommodate that much.  So with the Jeep, I could safely travel in on  the really rough, steep, narrow, bad roads and make it to the jump off point, while never trespassing on private land.

In the meantime, the ranch had become part of a Hunters Management Area, in which the rancher granted access to big game hunters. Again, I appreciate that. But it never included bird hunters.  I discussions with various area wardens later on, the Game & Fish just had never asked.  That doesn't mean that the rancher would have said yes if they had.  But the bird hunters, like myself, were just left out from the onset.

When it first was the HMA, I spoke to the rancher and got written permission for a couple of years. Eventually, however, he was of the opinion, or at least stated that he was, that maybe he couldn't do that as it was all in the hands of the Game & Fish.  So Jeeping it in was the alternative.

I've done that now for three years running.

The Game Warden

I've always been s strong supporter of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.  Indeed, when I was young I seriously thought of becoming a Game Warden or a Game Biologist with the department, with the warden position being the more sought after one.  They're outdoors all day in the wilds, and that strongly appeals to me.

It might, I'd note, appeal to me very inaccurately.   I've never done their job.  Maybe its nothing like what I imagine it to be, but then I wouldn't know.

I do know that we seem to cycle through game wardens fairly rapidly anymore.  This wasn't always the case.  We used to have the same game wardens in the area for years and years. But this is no longer true.  Now we tend to have young game wardens and most of the game wardens seem to be young.

This is significant for a variety of reasons. When I see an occupation occupied by the young, that means its not occupied by the older, and usually there's a reason for that.  Sometimes its the physicality of the occupation.  Other times its that the job features low pay.  Sometimes its the conditions of the job, which may have changed over the years. And sometimes its societal, in that occupying a job, for a variety of reason, doesn't appeal to people in one generation the way it did to a prior one.

Indeed, the few former employees of the game and fish I've known, and the one then current one, held pretty nuanced views on their employment.  The few former ones I have known were critical of their former employer in a really non specific vague way.  I have no idea what their complaints were, other than that they existed.  The one who was then working for the department had the complaint that being a game warden meant that he wasn't able to get out and enjoy the outdoors.  Indeed, he recommended that a person who loves the outdoors not become a game warden, but take up some other "good paying job" that "let's them get outdoors".

The problem with that statement ist hat "good paying jobs" that "let you get outdoors" largely don't exist in the modern world.  Increasingly in the modern world, good paying jobs put you in a steel and glass giant shipping container on 16th Street in Denver where you get to see the layers of pollutants separate each other out depending upon the day.  In our un-directed search for progress, we've made some odd progressions.

At any rate, as noted, I've generally held the Game and Fish and its game wardens in high regard.  Indeed, while I've never been a game warden, I once considered becoming one.  The thought first occurred to me when I was graduating with my undergraduate degree in geology.  There were no geology jobs to be had with a bachelors degree, but the Game and Fish didn't require masters or doctorates for game wardens, and I thought about applying to take the warden's exam.  I started to study for it, and then thought if I was going to do that I ought to pick up a degree in biology or wildlife management.  Trying that was one of my three options at the time, the other two being law school or a masters degree in geology.  I applied to the latter two not really thinking I'd be admitted anywhere, but as luck would have it I was admitted to the University of Idaho for geology, to my surprise, and the University of Wyoming's law school, the only law school I'd put in for.  I took that latter path, the future for geologist at the time looking fairly bleak.

Anyhow, even shortly after I graduated from law school I pondered the Game and Fish adn I took the warden's exam and passed it.  I was then offered a summer job, but I turned it down, being into a legal career at that time by over a year and on the verge of getting married.

So, suffice it to say, I don't dislike the Game and Fish or its wardens at all. Quite the contrary.

In recent years, when on the blue grouse expedition mentioned above, I've encountered the same warden twice telephonically, and then run into him sage grouse hunting a couple of weeks thereafter.  He was a super nice young man and in regard to the blue grouse expedition, he was very enthusiastic about how I'd gone in.  I offered to come into the office to show him the map, and he said there was no reason at all to do that, and that the next year I should just leave something in the window to show how I'd gotten there.  I think he appreciated that somebody would go to so much effort.

This year I did what the warden last year told me to do, left a note in the window.  But I didn't encounter a warden until the way out.

And he didn't believe me.

Not only did he not believe me, this very young warden called me a liar, in so many words.

I lead him out on the road I cam came in on, learning in the process that a 4x4 pickup truck could do it, to my surprise.  I stopped after I lead him out, which is what I did, which probably took about two hours or so to accomplish.  At that point he was somewhat sheepish and much nicer, but he never apologized.  He stated that part of the reason he hadn't believed me is that I'd gone to so much effort just to hunt blue grouse.

I don't know what to make of it, but I don't like it.  In an age in which a lot of hunters seem glued to ATVs, I'm not, and I don't even own one.  If it was possible, I'd frankly ride a horse in, which maybe next year I'll go.  But to get this treatment simply for putting in the effort really strikes me the wrong way.

And in saying that, I'm one of the supporters of the Game and Fish.  Not everyone is.  A long time friend of mine who has similar sporting views to me clearly is not, and he had a bad encounter with another young warden last year that really left a sour taste in his mouth (I've encountered the same one two years ago and she was very helpful to me, even allowing me to borrow her fairly untrained retriever to retrieve a goose).

Personal encounters mean a lot.  Maybe that's the lesson to learn here. Two encounters with the same super crabby policeman who ought to retire, both for minor traffic matters, has left me sympathetic with urbanites who complain about the police.  If you can't interact with the public without calling them a liar, you are probably in the wrong job.  Or it may be that your employer has the wrong man, or woman.

The Hat

I've posted my now absent 1911 campaign hat here before.

I always wear broad brim hats in the sticks and really appreciate a good fur felt hat, which is what this hat was, or is. I came by it in an odd fashion however.

I never went to buy a broad brimmed hat of this type.  Indeed, I never would have.  And at the time I acquired it I had a couple of good broad brimmed hats already.  Indeed, for general hunting, at that time, I wore a black Stetson that's since become my ranching hat, after my then ranching hat died.  And for bird hunting at that time I wore an Australian style Stetson I still have, appropriately enough termed their "Bird Hunter" model.

Anyhow, an organization I'm part of that's dedicated to the history of cavalry was looking at trying to have some hats made and the Jackson Hole Hat Company made some samples, including the hat depicted above.  The were all small sizes with the one depicted above being the only one that was really finished and the only one close to my size.  Truth be known, it was a bit small and always was, but it was a really great example of the early pattern of the M1911 campaign hat, complete with the brim stitching that served some unknown to me purpose.

When the project failed, we were allowed to keep the hats so this became my hunting hat.  Truth be known, it was always really too small and therefore uncomfortable for years.  When my kids were quite young they sometimes wore it as an outdoor hat and hence the stampede string that was affixed to it, made easy by the fact that M1911s had a hole for that purpose.  But for years I've worn it as a hunting hat in spite of it being a tad too small.  As its a beaver fur felt hat, it's nearly bullet proof and its endured.

It's endured but it's also become rather disheveled looking, quite frankly. Rain, snow, and whatever, have taken its tole, and the shape has deteriorated due to my pushing it on when its just not quite right.  The last couple of years I've thought of tossing it.

Indeed, I nearly did Sunday when we came back as its' just gotten so rough looking, but I didn't.  I left it looped over the driver's seat of my Jeep, where I tend to place it when going here and there.  Generally, it's stayed put there.

Well, even though I had the doors of the Jeep on and the top up on Monday, when I hit the highway to go look for doves, the string snapped and it went flying.  I went back to see if I could find it, and couldn't, and then traveled on. When I came back to town I went twice more.

The wind made the decision for me.  But I'm still thinking of going back one more time.

If somebody found it, I hope its a kid who it can fit who spends a lot of time outdoors.

The Boots, the Hole, the Dog and the Snake

As noted, on Monday, Labor Day, I went back out, this time for doves.

I went to a spot I always do and saw quite a few.  I took the dog with me, even though you really don't use dogs much for doves, as he likes to get out and gets upset if he doesn't get to go.

I probably should have left him at home as when we got out, he was clearly tired from the long, long hike the day prior.  But he went and we were seeing quite a few.

The grass in that spot is really overgrown this year and its covered up the ground and the terrain features pretty severely.  That always worries me a bit as I don't want to run into snakes.  As it was, it covered up a major erosion feature and I fell into it landing on my back.  I fell about five feet.

That scared me as if ever I was going to get bit by a snake, that was when it would occur.  I scrambled right out, which is saying something for a guy whose fallen five feet, hit his head on the way down, and is only 5'6" tall.

The dog jumped the ditch.

On the other side I walked past an area of tall grass.

Before leaving to go out for doves I almost put on my Red Wing service shoes. They're not really appropriate hunting boots, but most of the areas I was going to check were fairly close to roads and I was thinking that I could put them on quickly and get out.

I didn't.  Instead I put on my Hathorn (Whites) smoke jumpers, which I'd worn the day prior and which were still out.

I"m manic about good boots.

A person can skimp on nearly any item of outdoor apparel except for two things, and two things alone.  You need a good pair of boots and you need a good broad brimmed hat.  Most modern outdoorsmen have neither.

Indeed, about 99.99% of boots worn by outdoorsmen today are complete and total junk.  Synthetic crappy boots have come in which are no better, in my view, than wearing your Chuck Taylor's.  Almost any excuse of them is nothing much more than a bunch of unthinking crap.  A person needs, if they're really going to be out in the real outdoors, with the sole exception of some specialty uses, good leather boots.

I've given this lecture, I'd note, to more than one person who disregarded it and even argued against it.  In two such instances those people have blown out their ankles severely in the sticks.  I was with one of them when they did. The other had to be hauled out of the high country and doesn't talk to me about boots anymore.

Anyhow, I love smoke jumpers, which are the best general use outdoor boots of all time.  And Whites are the best of the best.

One of the features of boots of this type is that they feature really thick leather.  It's counter intuitive, but in really hot weather heavy boots are cool to wear as they keep they heat out.

They also keep the heat from transmitting from your foot out.

And that matters if you are in areas that are snakey.

Rattlesnakes operate off of heat, not sight. Their noses keenly sense any change in heat, and that change is usually when a mammal comes buy.  Nine times out of ten for htem that mammal is a mouse or rabbit and it gets no warning at all.  It's bit and eaten.

Sometimes that mammal is something the snake finds threatening, and as they have barely any intelligence at all, that's anything that's not edible and probably some things that are.  Horses, cattle, deer, dogs, and people.  If you are a people, and you are out where snakes are, you ought to be wearing a stout, high, pair of boots.

I don't care what some salesman or outdoor boot company that's going for the mass market tells you.  That boot had better be leather and stout leather.  Synthetic is just an invitation for the snake.

I walked right by the snake, which I never saw. The dog did, as the snake bit him in the face.

Swollen muzzle a day after the snake bite

We were not far from the Jeep and I walked him back to it, lifting him over the fence.  He's a big dog and he seemed okay. I called my wife to call the veterinarian anyway. By the time we hit the highway, he was not okay.  Now, several days later, and after a night in the vets, he's doing much better, but still on medications.

My wife loves the dog.  It took me sometime to get used to him really as I"m not a dog person.  He's a big, gentle thing, and a good bird dog as long as he doesn't have to go into water, which he's not particularly keen about. As he was purchased due to my wife's assertion that as an aging, often solo, hunter, I shouldn't be wading out into the North Platte, that's a bit of a disappointment, but I hope he'll come around.

The dog is a Double Doodle, which in his case means he's 3/4s Standard Poole and 1/4 Golden Retriever.  He's from a hunting line and both of those breeds are hunting breeds.  Poodles, in fact, are an ancient German hunting breed, their name evolving from Pudelhund, "puddle dog".  Golden Retrievers are a Scottish breed descended from a laird crossing a Spaniel with a retrieving dog of some sort, in search of an all purpose breed.

Poodles are the second smartest breed of dog, right behind collie, and are are third only to wolves.  There's a lot of wolf brain in them and they an odd dog for hunters who have never been exposed to them as they're a lot more like the hunting dogs in Medieval paintings than they are like the dogs on the cover of Field & Stream.  They're odd to train for that reason and they take most trainers off guard.  We bought some books as I thought I could train him myself. That thought was foolish, and the books were really deceptive. The author of the books, a highly respected series, had trained modern retrievers and water dogs, not poodles who are a really good hunting dog, but who have stepped out of the 1400s more than the 1940s.

So we took him to a trainer, who was really skeptical of him at first, but then really impressed. Oddly enough, by the end of that summer the same trainer had three hunting doodles in his classes. The breed, or rather cross breed, is really coming along.

Owning a doodle or a standard poodle is an interesting experience for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that people have opinions about it, and not always the ones you are expecting.  Hunters are pretty opinionated about dogs in general, but again that isn't quite what a person might think.  Beyond that, outdoorsmen are super opinionated about outdoor things, and this too works a bit differently than what a person might initially suppose.

What I've noted about this is that there are "experts", Experts, and then folks, so to speak, and their views vary considerably.  Everyone seems to believe that they are "experts", but few actually are on a lot of these topics.  Indeed, real Experts are a tiny minority of supposed "experts" on the topics of at least guns, dogs, trucks and the like.  Real Experts, which can be found anywhere, often have very nuanced opinions and tend to be careful and reserved where as "experts", which can also be found anywhere, but who are particularly vocal on the Internet, often have opinions derived from trends, each other, and from sporting journals on magazine racks.  Folks, on the other hand, have opinions, but they're their own opinions.

Anyhow, if you a outdoorsy guy with a great big Doodle, and they are large, regular folks don't really know how to take it.  It doesn't seem super manly, so they're surprised as as rule that he's a hunting dog, particularly as he's very gentle and friendly.  Folks who have doodles, on the other hand, are usually super enthusiastic to see any other doodle.  Lots of folks in general are surprised that doodles and standard poodles are hunting breeds, let alone good ones.  "Experts" on the other hand, think that's the most absurd thing ever and will tell you so. Doodles are dumb, they maintain, apparently not realizing that poodles are Einstein's next to Labradors.  Or maybe what they are is like mules as to horses.

Labradors and the like aren't bad dogs by any means, but the debate and doubt have been bread out of them so they're like machines in the field.  Labs know from day one that they are to retrieve waterfowl.  They're iffy, usually, on other types of retrieving but can learn it.

Poodles, and by extension doodles, also have that instinct, but it's a 15th Century instinct when to be a hunting dog, was to be a hunting dog. Today we're hunting waterfowl. . . tomorrow upland birds. . .next week roebuck.  Hunting.  They know that they're a hunting dog, but they're a generalist and the specifics have to be learned, or maybe more accurately explained, as in "Jim, I know that that's a fine flock of ducks but I don't see a really good reason why you shouldn't shoot that deer instead., now pound per pound. . ."  They will learn it, but it has to be learned.  That means the trainer has to be good (as ours was) and you have to be good with them.  I doubt they'd work for a heavy handed hunter.  Indeed, I think that's another reason that doodles and poodles are much like earlier hunting dogs.  Gerhard the Jaeger lived with that dog, and it was his pal.  He didn't go to the cubicle every day and put the dog in a dog run.  It worked for him, but he lived with it.  Doodles are like that.

Real Experts tend to know that, and that's why their opinions tend to be very carefully voiced.  Some guys I know who know a lot about hunting dogs simply ask a series of questions when they learn the dog is a hunting dog, which is how they're weighing his merits.  How does he do in water?  Does he retrieve sage chickens?  How is he in the field?

Anyway, I'm not much of a dog person and have become less of one over the years.  I've been attacked by dogs a couple of times, including by a German Shepherd once, and that's made me dog leery.  But this dog has such an odd personality and has been such a good dog that the thought of his getting injured on my watch while he was helping me was simply awful.

Day after accident with swollen muzzle, going home.

So, what's the moral of all of this?  Well, I don't know if there is one.  Or maybe there is one, or several closely connected ones.

One is that perceptions of things can be pretty inaccurate, but impressions, no matter how inaccurately formed, can have a very long lasting effect.  If a guy like me, who has been a strong backer of the Game and Fish for half a century is now suddenly reserved about game wardens, what must the view be of a person who experiences something like I did who isn't so vested in them?

And maybe another lesson has to do with the utility of the proven that works over the nifty and new.  I probably didn't get bitten last weekend as I was wearing a stout pair of outdoor boots.  I got where I wanted to go as I know how to read a map, and use a GPS, and knew the country.  Native knowledge and experience.

And the dogs doing fine.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*This reflects an interesting language evolution as well.  That fishing is fish hunting is self evident, but a lot of fishermen or, to use the less common term, anglers, fail to realize that.  But earlier on, English included other words that also delineated various other types of hunting.

Fowling, for example, is the hunting of birds, and a fowler is a bird hunter.  Lots of people today bear this common last name, stemming from the day when one of their ancestors was principally employed in that activity.  My guess is that other terms existed in older English at one time, but I don't know that for certain.  Certainly more than one for hunter exists in English, with hunter being one and names based on the German Jaeger being others.

**The fact that its a bladed road means its a maintained road, and that, combined with its distance from any town, means that its almost certainly a government maintained road.

I note that as its curious.  The road is closed most of the year, but somebody is maintaining it, and generally ranchers don't maintain roads, particularly ones far from town.  If a road is being maintained on the public's dime, in my view, it ought to be a public road, but none the less, I respect the closure.

August 24, 1919 "That this pass was successfully negotiated without accident considered remarkable". Ray Caldwell remarkably continues pitching after being hit by lightening. U.S. "Invasion" of Mexico continues

On this day in 1919 the Motor Transport Convoy negotiated Shellbourne Pass.

Not too surprisingly, four wheel drive FWDs came through the best on this days' travel. 

The unit made it to Ely, Nevada, after 77 miles over 8 hours, fairly good time by the standards of the convoy.  They arrived mid afternoon after once again failing to to take a Sunday's day rest, and camped in a municipal campground that was already a destination for tourists, showing how quickly motor tourism was advancing in spite of the poor state of the roads and the primitive condition of the cars.  Shoshone Indians, who have a very small reservation near Ely (which is not noted by the diarist) visited.

On the same day, pitcher Ray Caldwell was hit by lightening while pitching for the Cleveland Indians in a game against the Philadelphia Athletics.  Caldwell was knocked unconscious for five minutes but upon being revived asked for the ball back and resumed playing.

He completed the game, having pitched 8.2 innings and threw the winning pitch.  The blast of lightening knocked the hat off of the catcher and players and spectators at first thought that Caldwell might have been killed.

Caldwell was a great pitcher but was notoriously personally erratic, being an alcoholic and having, a self destructive streak. That would result in his having a shortened major league career, after which he played in the minors.  His reputation as a drinker and a partyer was a deterrent to teams picking him up.  He became a farmer, railroad employee and bartender in his later years and, in spite of his early life, lived to age 79.

Caldwell worked as a shipbuilder during World War One, an occupation taken up by a variety of baseball players as it allowed them to continue playing baseball rather than being conscripted into the Army.

In other news, American cavalry continued on in Mexico in search of bandits.  Mexican Federal troops were reported to be engaged in the same activity.

The intervention was apparently causing speculation in Mexican newspapers about various ways that the U.S. might more fully intervene in Mexico.

This Sunday edition of the Cheyenne State Leader also featured an article about "Jap" immigration.  A current newspaper would never use this pejorative slang term, but this was extremely common for newspapers of the era.

The paper also had an odd line about a woman whose "husband brings home the bacon" being "the better half of a good provider".  That's is hard to discern now, but what it referred to was the reluctance of a lot of women to leave their wartime jobs and resume to traditional pre war roles.  This was an issue at the time as it was felt that it was keeping men out of work, their traditional role.

Oh no. . .

Rust above the wheel well.  And it's only eleven years old.

This is my Dodge 3500.  I've had it since it was new and it was (and is) my confirmed plan never to trade it in and to never buy a new truck.

Never.

But the engine on starts now runs sort of weirdly out of time occasionally.  I can hear the turbocharger seemingly coming in and out at prolonged highway speed.  And now rust.

It was rust that took out my black 1996 Ford F250. . . poor thing.  That and the engine having a lot of miles on it and having a really hard time on cold winter mornings.

Uff.

The Jeep to receive competition from the Ghost of Jeeps Past?

Folks who stop in here from time to time know that I not only drive a Jeep, I'm on my third Jeep now and I use the Jeep I currently have, the best one I've ever had, as my daily driver.  I love it.

Which hasn't stopped me from lamenting the sad abandonment of the 1/4 ton 4x4 truck by the automobile industry such that what were once a proud assortment of semi dangerous off road utility vehicles is down, now, to just the Jeep.  Indeed, the SUV has gone from a collection of off road vehicles to a bunch of wimpy urban soccer transporters.  Bleh.  And Chrysler Fiat, having a really great product where it's the only one in the field, actually was pondering last year selling the product line to a Chinese fan, which might kill it with fickle Jeep owners.

Well, perhaps a slight turn of events has occurred as the Jeep is now getting competition from. . .itself.

Eh?

Yes, truly.

One of the oddities of the 4x4 around the world is that there are actually a fair collection of really rugged 4x4s made globally that never see the light of day in the US for a variety for reasons.  As, contrary to what people in the Western World think, the entire globe isn't made up of a bunch of Hollywood influenced narcissists in touch with their feelings as long as that doesn't take them much past the city park and transporting sissypooh hounds with vegan dog treats, there's a real market in a lot of places.  Toyota, fwiw, has a lot of that market sewed up globally with vehicles that it doesn't offer here, less it make the tight trouser crowed cry, but they aren't the only ones.

Indeed, one of the oddities of the 4x4 story around the world is that American military vehicles of the 40s, 50s, and 60s received a lot of local production and they still do.  We just don't think of them here.  Included in that production are Japanese and Indian versions of the Jeep.

Well, now Mahindra, an Indian company, has determined to open up a production line in the United States to sell the Mahindra Roxor.  The Roxor is a diesel engined M38A1. . the early CJ5 to most of you.

Being sold as "off road only", it will only get up to 45 mph. . . but then early Jeeps were slow and the diesel Jeeps used by various armies were not speedy.

I hope it does well.  It's taking on a titan. . even if a wounded one.

Evolution of the Jeep 4x4 Utility Vehicle | Donut Media

The Sad Emblem of American Industry, the Jeep: Fiat Chrysler looks at selling Jeep to Great Wall Motors

And I'm not thrilled about it.

The original, or almost the original. An abandoned M38 in rural North Dakota, a vehicle basically identical to the CJ2A and the immediate descendant of the Jeeps of World War Two.

I have a Jeep. It's the third one I've owned.

But not one of them was made by the same manufacturer.

My first was military M38A1.  It was made by Kaiser.

My second was a 1946 CJ2A.  It was a Willys.

My third, and current Jeep, is a Chrysler.

Now, we learn, Fiat Chrysler is pondering selling the Jeep line, which is doing well, to Great Wall Motors, a Chinese automobile maker.

Don't do it Fiat.

One of those silly little cars that Fiat is known for.

Jeeps were the original vehicle in their class and, in the US, they only survivor in that class.  Once populated with rivals, some very good rivals (oh, Toyota Land Cruiser, where are thou?), its' outlasted hem all as it stayed true to its original off the track form. The others morphed into bigger family trucksters, or weenie pathetic SUVs.  Not the Jeep.

And that's how the Jeep has managed to endure being traded around like a prized marble from maker to maker as its owners became troubled.  Willys, Kaiser, American Motors, Chrysler-Fiat.  And now, potentially, Great Wall Motors.

Frankly, the entire Chrysler episode worried me in the first place.  Not because I dislike Chrysler's, I like them, or rather I like Dodge.  No, because Chrysler has been in trouble ever since the  Cold War ended.  And as part of that the Chrysler brand has been tossed around a fair amount itself, going through a Daimler ownership on to an American holding company and then on to that maker of silly little Italian cars.  Fortunately, all those holders have avoided messing with Jeep, and messing much with Dodge, other than the Daimler attempt to put European diesels in Dodge vans, a Germanic flight of fancy that worked out about as well as Operation Barbarossa.

Now Fiat, which presumably doesn't really completely grasp its American market, or maybe doesn't care, is pondering selling Jeep to Great Wall, which certainly doesn't.

Jeep won't survive Great Wall.

Jeep is a red blooded American vehicle and, quite frankly, only soccer moms in New Jersey track homes are going to buy a Chinese Jeep.

The whole thing, really, is sadly symbolic of American industry in general, or maybe the United States in general.  From the arsenal of democracy, to a major industrial power with a strong rural base, to an anemic also ran that grows acres of safe blue grass for cubicle dweller dog walkers who buy, and must buy, everything from a rising non democratic Asian giant and rival.

A sad state of affairs.

Regular Car Reviews: 1998 Jeep Wrangler TJ

 Another one that's funny.  We have a 97 TJ. . . its even that color.

Jeep celebrates its history.

We noted the 75th anniversary of the issuance of the contract for the 1/4 ton truck, that came to be known as the Jeep, here the other day. 

Well, not too surprisingly, Jeep has a really nice feature on its website celebrating its own history.

Well worth taking a look at, and not only on the 1/4 ton models, but on the other Jeep brand vehicles that have been made over the years.

Happy (one day late) birthday Jeep!

 

Well, sort of.

The contract to produce the 1/4 Ton truck was given by the United States on July 15 in 1941. The contract went to Willys whose principal competitor for the contract was Bantam.  As it was, Ford would end up getting a contract to produce the Willys variant as well.

We've written about Jeeps a fair amount here.  It's become a 4x4 standard and the Jeep has outlasted all of its competitors, surviving competition from numerous companies that made near Jeeps. Willys didn't last however, and the brand has gone from company to company.  Still, the modern Jeep looks a whole lot like the original, even though improvements have definitely been made over the years.  Truly an amazing vehicle.

Studebaker 4x4 truck

Studbaker's were converted to 4x4 by NAPCO.  Whether this is an original conversion, or one done later, I couldn't say, although the wheels clearly aren't original.  Nice Studebaker, however.

NAPCO conversions, which manufacturers other than Chrysler to compete in this market with Dodge, have been covered earlier in this blog. The Studebaker NAPCO conversion actually increased the cost of the truck by 1/3d.

There's just something about these old four wheel drives.

Blog Mirror: The Ranger Station: The History of the American 4x4

A website devoted to Ford Rangers has The History of the American 4x4 on it.   Some neat photographs are there, and an interesting history.

I've covered that here in a couple of posts, including:

Automotive Transportation I: Trucks and Lorries 

Truck Train, May 1920.

We have, in this continuing series on transportation, looked at trains, planes, ships, and shoe leather.  We're going to start looking at the type of transportation now that's just part of the regular background of our lives, for most of us.  Automobiles.

In doing this, I've broken the topic up into two, and perhaps oddly, I've started with trucks and lorries.  That probably seems backwards, but for what we're doing it really isn't. Transportation by truck has been a major change in the basic distribution system for the nation.

And also:

A Revolution In Rural Transportation

 

When I seemingly had more free time, I used to occasionally publish articles in various journals.  This posts has its origins in one such article, which came about, as a concept. right about the time that I became to busy to really keep at that endeavor, so I never wrote it.  Perhaps, if worthwhile, I'll develop this blog entry into an article later.  I'd also note that this is a topic which I've actually posted on here before.  And its a topic I consider every year during hunting season.  The topic of back country travel, and indeed travel in rural areas in general.

Advertisments in History: 2016 Super Bowl Jeep Ads

Jeep apparently ran two ads during the 2016 Super Bowl. Both are getting a lot of discussion.

Unlike Chrysler's series of adds recalling their founders, Jeep's ads are not focused on one single episode, but they do incorporate their past in an interesting fashion, noting that they've been around now for 75 years. The one getting the most press is their black and white stills ad, which is a still in all but one photo.  One photo features a moving tear.

It's quite well done, and it nicely recalls its military history.

The other does just a bit as well, but just a bit.

Be careful out there. . . and how we go when we didn't used to.

Highway near Casper, January 30.

We're entering Wyoming's snow season.

We really aren't there yet.  Generally, April is the month of the year where we really get hit with snow.  But we're starting to see more of it, and we got hit by a heavy wet snow on Friday and Saturday.  Indeed, it felt like an April snow, rather than a late January one, which generally feels like getting hit with frozen sandpaper.

Those trucks (there are two of them) are out in that snowstorm.  They're off the road.  I thought that they'd slipped off, and the back one probably did.  When I passed them, they were chaining it up. The driver in the front truck had walked back to help the other driver chain his truck up.  Chaining was probably necessary to get it out of the ditch.

Truck drivers have to drive in weather like this all the time. But, in Wyoming, so do a lot of other people.  Ranchers, to be sure, but also oilfield workers and, as odd as it may seem, lawyers.  In the old, old days, lawyers rode a circuit by horse, today in the Rocky Mountain West they ride it by 4x4.  Our travel is dictated solely by our schedule, not by the weather.  We occasionally have to cancel something due to the weather, but that's rare.  Usually, if things are going to get really bad, we try to get there a day prior if we can, and then we have to ride it out wherever we are.

I've written on it many times here, but this is one of the things that's really changed, in this region, about how we live just since World War Two.  The only 4x4s in the US prior to the Second World War were heavy industrial trucks.  4x4s came onto the civilian market right after World War Two, their worth having been proven by the war.  But the only "light" 4x4s that were offered at first were Jeeps.  4x4 trucks came on, but they were heavy trucks and appealed only to industry, ranchers, and serious sportsmen.  That really didn't change until the 1960s, when lighter 4x4s started to be relatively common around here.  By the 1970s they were pushing out 2x4s, and vehicles like Suburbans and Travelalls were common.  In the 1980s "Sports Utility Vehicles" started coming in, and now they're everywhere.  Most SUVs are pretty good in snow, but I still drive a 1 ton 4x4 on the highway in snow.  It's very dependable and safer than nearly any other alternative.

But, having said all of that, there's really no safe driving in weather like this. But because we can do it, we do.  And some of us have to.  A real change since 1945.