Maxidyne

I see your point, if Suburu et al can convince people in southern California that they need AWD to cruise the shopping malls, Ford can probably convince young buyers that don't know better that they need a jacked up 4WD Bronco to survive gravel roads. Heck, one of the best dirt road vehicles I've had was an '86 Golf diesel, on water logged roads it was light enough to go where the big pickups feared to tread and it's skinny tires gave good traction on the snow. But a lot of marketing was aspirational, reminds me of when my late mom was car shopping 20 years ago and I tried to talk her into something like a Focus wagon... She bought a 7 passenger minivan instead because she thought she'd need all the seats when all the family came to visit her in Florida! Twenty years later my brother has the minivan, I don't think all 7 seats have ever been used, and either one or both of the back seat rows have been out of it for years!

Your screed of a "question" was so full of lies it doesn't deserve a response.

Hopefully you're right. Saw an article where Ford thinks the Wrangler sales boom was inspired by "overlanding", which is basicly exploring the back roads. I've been doing that for a half century in front wheel drive and even rear wheel drive sedans, what do I need a jacked up 4x4 for? Reminds me of the ride on gravel country roads we did with motorcycles with sidecars last year, one of which was a BMW K bike with only 3" of ground clearance. While almost every other vehicle on that road was a 4x4 side by side ATV or Jeep, we got through with no problems with 1WD along with the mail carrier in a FWD car! Clearly, a lot of people are buying these high ground clearance 4x4s to pose with in the parking lots...

Perhaps the customer(s) ordered them as tractors to get the shorter frame that didn't extend far behind the rear wheels so the body installer didn't have to cut off the frame overhang beyond the rear axles? Another possibility is that if a customer wanted air and electrical hookups for a pup trailer, maybe it was cheaper or easier to order a tractor and extend the lines to the rear of the frame? And no doubt there were canceled orders for tractors that got dump bodies installed instead of fifth wheels when they were brand new. That said, there's ample evidence of a first life as tractors in thousands of Mack tractors now outfitted as dump trucks.

The question for Ford: Is the hard core SUV market big enough for both the Wrangler and the Bronco?

Flu mortality is about .1%, Current COVID-19 count is almost 3 million cases and almost 130 thousand dead, that's over 4% mortality: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html. Another Times article that puts the pandemic's mortality in perspective: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/10/world/coronavirus-history.html

No, while in his 60s he had the lungs of an 80 year old. While I was "extra board" driver I'd often get called in to cover his run when it was really cold out and the other drivers helped him load and unload. If we could help a vulnerable senior back then, why can't we now by wearing masks to protect them?

Seems most of the R685ST dump trucks I've seen were converted from tractors, which made sense because there were a lot of them and a dump truck would sell for a lot more than a used tractor. But it's entirely possibly that some tractors were converted to dumps before they even had a 5th wheel mounted on them. The opposite is certainly true- IIRC the Postal Service Macks often were noted as "MR688P" or "MR688S" with no "T" on the serial number plate but with Mack's full knowledge were delivered with 5th wheels and trailer connections.

First off, while we can come up with a good statistical estimate of the number of undiagnosed cases, sounds like your taking the high numbers for percent of tests that are positive and the low numbers for death, doing the math, and coming out with an improbably low mortality rate. If we did proper regression studies we could probably come up with better numbers, I'd just love to feed all the stats into a something like SPSS and see the results. But there's additional wrinkles like the weeks between diagnosis and death with a disease that doubles it's number of victims every week or so when it flares up. So were talking about a time series analysis on top of a regression analysis fed by data of varying quality- The supercomputers can handle that, but without better data the results may not be worth much. As for your libertarian fantasies, that might work in a perfect world, but your theory falls apart when you're not wearing a mask passes a disease on to an elder less able to fight off the disease.

Rowdy, 'bout 30 years ago I shared a truck with an old driver who wore a mask much of the time, IIRC he'd had damaged lungs and just about anything in the air could send him to the ER. Was a good deal for both of us as I was a nonsmoker and he kept the truck very clean so there was no dust to harm his damaged lungs. I didn't need a mask, but I would have gladly worn one around him if needed.

ST means it was built as a semi-tractor, probably has 10.5 or 12k front axle and 34k or 38k rears. Won't have the capacity of an RD or DM with heavier axles, but the 6 speed has a low hole which is good, will make a fine dump truck if it's in good shape and has enough capacity for your needs.

Rowdy, thanks for coming up with a cite to support your argument. I agree with the article, and if you look at the data the mortality is around 1% in countries that have better managed COVID-19 than ours. But killing off 1% of our population by refusing to take simple precautions like wearing masks is totally unacceptable, especially by people and a political party that claim to be "pro life". And this is nothing new- back in the 1930s life expectancy after diagnosis for a person with MS was about 5 years, now death from MS is rare. Same with HIV, it was a near death sentence in the 1980s and it's now a manageable disease. The bigger issue is the personal, social, and financial costs of chronic diseases- Some people with MS are still very much disabled, HIV is still running the lives of many sufferers, and even though less than 1% of the population has MS, just the drugs to treat the disease are costing over $20 billion a year in the U.S. alone. We are just starting to see COVID-19 persist as a chronic disease in victims, and what we see is scary- Working age people who may never again be able to contribute to society and will need expensive care for decades. I haven't seen any studies yet, but the personal stories the press has been covering are very worrying- here's an excellent one: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/06/covid-19-coronavirus-longterm-symptoms-months/612679/ Historically nations that lose the contributions of even a few percent of their working age adults to disease or war are hobbled by that loss for decades. Facing that great risk, it makes sense for us to take simple precautions like wearing face masks to keep such a national disaster from happening.

I agree- I worked a summer on a Yellow dock back in the 90s and the place was a disaster- They'd hire a bunch of us casuals but not enough fork lifts so we could accomplish much. Or they'd have you breaking down a trailer of GM parts going to 50+ different dealers, and after you had a system set up with 50+ different pallets and piles and were half way through the trailer, instead of letting you finish the job they put you on a different trailer at the other end of the dock and somebody else had to figure it out. Saw an expensive IBM computer sit in OS&D for weeks because management couldn't figure out where it came from and where it was going, and probably was afraid to ask IBM. If anything, the union kept YRC from totally falling apart.

So if a doctor tells you that you have cancer and you fire the doctor, does that mean you don't have cancer anymore?

And regarding your amateur "diagnosis": https://www.cbsnews.com/news/world-health-organization-removes-gender-dysphoria-from-list-of-mental-illnesses/

Sexing animals and even humans is a good example of the superiority of science over "common sense". The initial assignment in humans is made when the attending medical professional takes a quick look at the genitals and then fills in the birth certificate, and 99% of the time that suffices. It's the less than 1% of the assignments that aren't so simple and prove the superiority of science over "common sense".

Well said, better to debate your position than censor someone elses.

How would you know?

Sounds like you're confused, the mask doesn't stop the virus, it stops the aerosolized saliva and sneezes that carry it... So that psuedo science COVID-19 denial ain't gonna work for you.

Do you know what the "95" in "N95" means?

Most places I've worked that kind of remark will get you escorted of the property, permanently.

That's the 2nd trans woman you've posted about...

Weren't you the one trying to put tractor hydraulic fluid in a Mack manual transmission?

And your "re-education" attempts aren't working either.

People in the trades wear our PPE proudly- It's a sign that we care about our trade and ourselves and of our competency. And when I see someone without PPE, it tells me that they don't take their work seriously and I try to avoid working with them. After decades of riding with a helmet, wearing a reflective vest when you're working in the street, wearing safety glasses in the shop, and N95 masks when working with dust hazards... Wearing that same N95 mask when you can't socially distance to keep from getting a deadly virus is no big deal.