Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Lil' girl, big truck

That’s the comment I got a lot whenever I had to drive a super-duty pickup. I didn’t drive them regularly, but sometimes you’re planning on transporting a lot of purge water or drums of soil, and a regular pickup doesn’t have enough of a load rating.

I know trucks aren’t designed with short females in mind. But super-duty trucks are uniquely bad. I had to physically leap into the truck if I didn’t want to do a beached-whale impression to drag myself in. I had to kick my partner and most of the gear out of the front seat so that I could yank the (bench) seat far enough ahead that I could reach the gas. On a couple of these trucks, the dashboard was so high, I actually had problems seeing over it. I’m short, but not outside the range of normal female height. And if there’s any “lumbar support”, it hits me midback and is crippling for driving more than a half hour or so.

Back to the comment. It irritated me because it’s not like big pickups are any more difficult to drive than any other vehicle, especially compared to, say, box trucks. Is it really so unusual for a female to drive a large vehicle? And who thinks it’s appropriate to yell random comments while I’m trying to fill the gas tank, anyway?

1 comment:

Fuso Trucks said...

Ignore the comments, small people are better anyway.