How did we become a nation of truckers?

Why is everyone driving a truck?

The stats don’t lie. Trucks have been outselling cars in Canada by about three to one for a number of years. According to our Driving pages in this newspaper, the Ford F-150 has been the best-selling vehicle in Canada for 10 years in a row. And what was second in 2018? The Ram 1500.

In fact, in the top five best-sellers, there is only one car. I don’t get it. I drive a VW Jetta, “salsa red” in colour. Perfectly respectable passenger car, when it isn’t in the shop. And it’s a Wolfsburg edition, so it was hand-buffed by Heidi, over in the Black Forest. Or so we humour ourselves.

Here’s something to worry about, though. If I ever got crushed between an F-150 and a Ram 1500 at high speed, I wouldn’t need a casket. Just bury me in the compacted cookie tin left on the road.

I mean, look at these beasts. They have giant grilles that look as though they’re about to eat you. Ridiculous. They’re so high, you don’t slip into them, you climb. If they’re tailing you at night, the headlights are blinding. We won’t mention those idiot mufflers with their industrial belching.

And the aura around them? Like a Rock. Guts. Glory. Ram. Built Tough. Professional Grade.

Sweet Jesus, I’m toodling along to the grocery store, or going to Ikea, not driving a tank on D-Day. I don’t want guts or glory, especially not guts. A smooth, quiet ride would be just fine — sorry if that sounds so “amateur,” Mr. Tundra Titan Sivvvlverado.

The television commercials are crazy. Drivers are often crossing streams or emerging from mud lakes or clambering up boulders. One of these babies, I swear, is happily towing an aircraft carrier up a mountain side. Damn right it can — it’s built like a rock, not a tree or a brick, stupid. Like a rock.

And the voice-over announcers? God’s voice isn’t that deep. If you own a little car, obviously, you’re a pathetic, inadequate excuse for a motorist and probably a lazy, flabby human being incapable of ripping massive trees from the woods. Trucks are how Canada gets ’er done, weakling.

Why so many? Are Canadians suddenly hauling great bales of things they never hauled before? Don’t think so.

I ran into a fellow who worked for years at a car dealership in Kanata. What, I asked, were people putting in all these pickups? Nothing, he said. Guys just want a truck.

We should never, after all, underestimate the male’s desire to project power and aggression in their ride. I interviewed a retired man recently who lived in a quite modest house in the country, but was keen to say he had ordered a loaded GMC truck for $105,000. His home, seriously, could not have been worth a whole lot more.

Undoubtedly, there are societal consequences to converting the nation’s fleet from cars to trucks. (On the road, for instance, they can make visibility more difficult.)

A recent report by an international energy outfit said Canadians drive, on average, the second heaviest vehicles in the world, behind only the U.S., and our carbon dioxide emissions are No. 1, per kilometre driven.

And fuel economy? An illuminating analysis by the University of Calgary’s Blake Shaffer shows an impressive downward trend in consumption until 2013, after which it has flatlined or gone up. Not hard to imagine it has something to do with engines powerful enough to tow aircraft carriers up a mountain. Engines are more full efficient, sure, but a Hemi’s still a Hemi.

Safety? According to data collected by Statistics Canada, the number of people injured on the country’s roads has gone down, almost unfailingly, since 2002. But in three of the years between 2009 and 2017, the number actually went up. Cause? Well, we can only guess, but one assumes in a car-truck crash, the truck is inflicting more damage.

The industry is obviously paying attention to this trend. Ford announced last year it would stop making traditional-looking cars (except the Mustang) by 2020. I mean, it sounds nuts: Ford not making cars anymore, but that appears to be where we’re headed.

The messaging, especially in sports broadcasting, does wear you down. My pal Biff was looking for a car a couple of years ago. “I think I’ll just give up and buy a truck,” he said in frustration, like it was the only honourable Nepean thing to do.

Trucks, trucks, holy truck.

Pick me up, drive me mad.