Ranch wife tails
In my last column I wrote affectionately about my dog and how much she helps out on the ranch. This week, I will continue the tribute series with something a little less beloved but no less important: the ranch pickup.
My husband and I have a small used car lot in our driveway. Between the two of us, we have four vehicles. Each of them serves a very specific purpose, we can’t afford to buy one that can do it all. There’s my car that I drive to work, the diesel pickup that never gets unhooked from the trailer, my husband’s daily driver and, finally, the pickup whose sole purpose is to feed cows.
The ranch pickup gets a whopping six miles to the gallon on a good day and requires a quart of transmission fluid just to start it. You have to drive with the windows cracked so you don’t pass out from the gas fumes and third gear is going out of it. I typically go from second right into fourth. Its max speed down the highway is about 55 miles per hour and that’s if you don’t have a bale on the back.
The fuel gauge doesn’t work, you just have to keep track of the odometer and not put more than 100 miles on a tank of fuel. We learned that the hard way. The cab has dust from the Bush Administration and the windshield looks like Charlotte’s Web, but at least the heater works!
When you take off from a stop, the engine floods, sputters then tries to die. If you rev the motor just right, you can keep it going, but it sounds like you’re trying to challenge someone to a drag race down Main. The flatbed is always covered in empty feed sacks, net wrap and pitchforks. There’s usually at least one taillight out, but if you wiggle the plug just right, it will come on. We like to say that it “looks ranchy.”
Despite its many flaws, the ranch pickup is the best tool for the job. The number 452 can still be seen on the hood, indicating it was a fire rig in its prime. It has a low gear ratio which allows it to crawl through the pastures and has enough power to haul anything. The bale-bed mounted on the back has rolled out bales for cattle in -30 degree temperatures and is a welcome sight to the cows. Once it gets going, it rides smooth and purrs like a kitten. The bench seat allows me to sit in the middle next to my husband on our cattle-feeding dates. It may have left us stranded a few times when we ran out of gas or died in the middle of the intersection in town, but we always say “She’s just gotta feed cows!”