Built like a Mercedes (?)

MANY are, but there can be a whole lot in that MANY and still be a very small fraction of the trucks in use here.

Certainly not, but I can assure you, I'm not very hard on my truck comparitively speaking.

Ahh yes, thats called ANECTDOTE, just because all you saw was good, doesn't mean it all is good.

Factless stories tend to be short. Like yours.

Fair enough, it's barely sweater weather here right now. But that hasn't stopped the salt minions - we may actully have more salt and sand in the front yard right now that snow.

I aint pulling the good cars out of the barn until salt season is over, snow or no snow.

Someone else here said that there were more longer journies and *that* hammered the oil more.

In fact your average use is little different to anywhere else in the World. Some vehicles travel a few hundred yards to a few miles to the shops and school while others hammer up and down the freeways while others deliver stuff door to door and there is every kind of variation in between.

What really strikes as being rather odd is that some [rather loud] Americans [some of whom are here] insist that theirs is "worse, bigger, badder, better" than anyone else's according to the point they are trying to make at the time. In this context the car use in America is certainly average. More cars per head of population than most places, yes but the use, varied as anywhere, is only average. The conditions are similarly average, ranging from bad to good and from cold to hot. No particularly special conditions except Alaska and Arizona. Even these are duplicated in many other regions of the world outside N. America. An Irish farmer went to see a big ranch in the mid West of America and fed up with all the bigger/better stories that he heard every day out there replied when the rancher said "it takes me three days in this pickup to travel round the perimiter fence back to my start point" "I'm so sorry things are so bad, I once had a pickup like that"

Huw

I see. Well maybe next time when you want to use sarcasm in a written conversation, you can try to let people know.

Are you taking this skit on the road soon?

All squares are rectangles. Your reply - no they aren't, that is only because squares come when you buy one. What the hell does that mean?

Grab your dictionary off the shelf, if you have one, and try finding the word logic in it. Come back when you understand what it means.

Why? E-Mail, which is what I assume you mean, is not the same thing as Usenet, which is what I assume you mean. E-Mail uses SMTP over TCP/IP, while Usenet uses NNTP over TCP/IP. They have nothing in common, other than the fact that they both use words, just like Word, Excel, Adobe, Firefox, SAP, and a host of other programs.

Your considerable experience in using shitty software notwithstanding, other people really do know more than you.

Now this is at least a logical response.

I don't doubt it. Read back a few posts and recall what we're talking about- whether the engines were CAPABLE of running 200k with proper care. They were. I'll bet you if I had a time machine I could go back and pull any random Chrysler or Ford v8 off a 1968 dealer lot and run it for 200k miles. Every single one that I or my family had back then did so. Of course we knew people that used Quaker Sludge and changed it every 5 years whether it needed it or not, and wore out their engines in

No, no, Clare, there is no way you know what you are talking about. Steve's 3 examples are clearly a far better statistical sample than your hundreds of "actual" repairs.

omg, you have to be kidding. rallyed it all day long? no way man.

Never mind that top posting in a business conversation is the most efficient way in following up in a continuing dialogue (much like newsgroup posting) and you made your poor wife look like a fool.

Man - have you guys started a religion about not top posting? I thought I was anal-retentive! You are making a big deal about absofrigginlutely nothing, and your poor wife certainly realizes it too.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

I was going to say tongue-in-cheek that I wouldn't have been surprised to see replies on the order of "Well, if the business world jumped out of a 5-story building, would you jump out of a 5-story building too!?". Lo and behold, I see that my imagination wasn't far from what actually happened! (Example: "That's primarily because business people don't know shit about technology.")

Amazing!

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

You shouldn't have to scroll to see what the person emailing you wrote. There have been arguments about top or bottom posting on just about every newsgroup. Everyone has their own opinion and reasons why.

I have no problem scrolling to the bottom and moving up if I want to read through all the messages leading up the newest. Thing is, with top posting I have that choice. With bottom posting the reader is forced to scroll through everything. Reverse order makes more sense to me, most current message on top. Why people get confused is beyond reason. In the end it really doesn't matter but some people really get bent out of shape about it.

Proper trimming makes the reasons for bottom posting weak as well. It all comes down to personal preference. Why get bothered by something so simple either way?

Most in the UK or much of Europe do not have personal needs for hauling heavy loads as is common in the USA. 10,000 lb+ RV's are very common in the USA. They tow them for recreational purposes. They don't want a commercial grade truck to do so. They want something that is comfortable for a family. In the UK recreational trailers are typically much smaller and lighter and thus little need for a high towing capacity family vehicle.

Well Miles, please allow me try to answer you. When you have nothing else to do and you become a anal twit, bitching about where people respond to a friggin' mindless thread may soon be the high point of your life. Rest assured Miles if I had more time to devote I could probably come up with more bullshit just like these idiots. Please play nice with them.

Roy

Trim this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you have been here in Summer or in rural areas any time you will know that there are a far higher proportion of vehicles towing over here than in the USA. Yes both vehicle and load are lighter but the towed load is proportionate. The loads are heavy for the towing vehicle type and that is the cruicial comparison. Pickups of the hilux type commonly tow 6600kgs legally and a bit more on the sly. Cars of the Ford Modeo class tow caravans up to a ton and slightly more on dropside compact trailers. I regularly tow 4 tons behind my Land Cruiser and old Land Rover, sometimes over long distances and this is *very* common. There are rather stringent rules for towing that kind of weight though and apart from certain excempt occupations it needs the fitting and use of a tachograph and all that goes with it.

Huw

Huw