Women have purses in which to carry all their junk; farmers have their pickup trucks. Each pickup is as individual as the farmer who drives it. Some are pristine and kept as polished as the day they left the dealership. Others -- well they’ve never been WASHED since the day they left the dealership.
Because I frequently help unload or load mechanical stuff into the beds of farmers’ pickup, I’ve noticed that no matter how clean or dirty the vehicle is, there are certain, almost mandatory, things in their beds, such as:
- An assortment of wooden blocks. At least some 4 x 4-inch and 6 x 6-inch blocks, but usually at least one 8 x 8-inch block and one chain-sawed chunk of old railroad tie.
- At least one, leaky, 1-gallon jug of hydraulic oil. Ostensibly to top off hydraulic reservoirs, but in reality a way of rust-proofing the bed of the truck by distributing a thin layer of oil all over the floor.
- Five worn-out field cultivator sweeps. It doesn’t matter if it’s spring, summer, winter or fall, there’s usually at least a couple worn-out field cultivator sweeps banging around in the truck’s bed.
- Empty paper seed corn or feed sacks. Often used to wrap or pad gearboxes or other mechanical components during transport, they often devolve into an organic mulch in one of the front corners.
- A rusty claw hammer with broken claw, one battered Crescent-style wrench missing the adjusting screw, and/or one pair of Vise-Grips with a broken spring. No farmer can bring himself to throw away a broken tool, so they just throw them in the bed of their truck.
- Empty beverage cans. One of the hallmarks of a farmer’s truck is that when they coming roaring around the corner of our dealership’s main building, headed for the rear Parts Department loading dock, you can usually hear the clattering of one or two beverage cans rattling across the bed of the truck. I’m not saying every farmer’s truck has all of the items I’ve listed, but...I’ll bet your truck has one or more of these “essentials.”
