Is the love affair over ???

[timbo]

I have been driving since I was 14. Could not wait to hop behind the wheel and see what was out there. Didn't do anything wrong, we just wanted to drive and play with our cars. Swapping radios, wheels, carburetors with friends just to see and hear the difference it would make. I'm still that way today.
Tim

 

[BigIrish]

Whenever I see one of those "cube" type cars that look like a box on wheels it makes me understand why kids today do not see cars as anything but a means to get somewhere. For those of us who are older it meant a lot more.......it meant freedom, the ability to take girls out, and the driving experience was exciting.........especially if some horsepower was involved.

All I can say is I am glad I wasn't born 60 years later than I was.

Don

I don't know Don, I have to disagree with this point. In "my day" the available cheap high school cars were either horrible 80's s***boxes with 70hp or terrible late 70s land yachts of maybe 100hp. Didn't matter how ugly or slow, I wanted to DRIVE!! First car was a turd brown Volare with 90hp slant six and I only turned the engine off to go to sleep!

I think its all do to with social networking. You can text, video chat all day and never have to go anywhere. In the past, if you didnt have wheels you missed all the action and were stuck at home and bored. Not so today.

 

[Bamamav]

I always wanted to drive. Before I was old enough for the road, I moved cars in the yard, drove a pickup in the hay field, drove a tractor every chance I got. Driving and machinery were my thoughts day and night. Never seen a piece of equipment I couldn't operate after I sat on it and played with it a few minutes. When I got my license at 16, I was on top of the world. Only thing that topped that was when I first drove a semi truck, wow, such a big thing to go down the road in. I always loved the smell of diesel smoke! Had to wait until I was 26 to start truck driving full time, nobody would hire a kid with no experience. I got that experience lot driving trucks to be be unloaded, driving any straight truck I could get under the wheel of. Had to fib a bit to get that first over the road job, but I passed the road test and they didn't check up on me on anything else. Now, 28 years and several million miles later, I still enjoy it. [cl

The trucking industry has been in a shortage of drivers for a while now. While there are many factors such as low pay, lying dispatchers, DOT laws, and just general "churning", where drivers jump from company to company looking for that perfect job, one thing missing is young folks wanting to drive trucks. As us veterans of the business get older and retire out, there are not as many young folks to take our place. They don't want to stay away from home for days or weeks at a time, they don't want to be out in the glaring sun or freezing cold tying down a load or dragging a tarp. They all want cushy jobs in an office punching keys on a computer or as my Mom would say, pushing a pencil. We all want our kids to have a better life than we have had, but I'm afraid we have spoiled some of them too much. There is nothing wrong with getting your hands dirty working, but some act like it's a sin to ask them to do anything like that. We were taught to be self sufficient, I'm afraid many kids today would starve waiting on somebody to bring them food.

Ok, let me get off the soapbox before I say too much......

 

[choppinczech]

I think its all do to with social networking. You can text, video chat all day and never have to go anywhere. In the past, if you didnt have wheels you missed all the action and were stuck at home and bored. Not so today.

I agree. It's such a different world today. Kids today want for nothing. They have everything at their fingertips with not many reasons to even leave the house.

 

[EnglishBob]

My 16 yo just got home from his summer job and I showed him this post and his words were 'a bunch of old farts complaining about the kids of today spending all their time on gadgets' on their gadgets and I have to agree.
Lots of people whine about 'ricers' then complain kids don't love their cars....
My kid loves his 03 sunfire and puts up with his 51F3 because I force him to.
We have to be the ambassadors and embrace all cars and even bikes and educate them rather than put them down because they have different tastes.

 

[Willowbilly3]

When I was 3 my brother started school so I was on deck to help Dad feed the cows. He would put the Jeep in low-low, slide out and slide me behind the wheel so he could get in the back and feed the hay. By the time I was six, I could drive the pickup, car, and the little case tractor. The summer I was 8, my Dad went off to work on the Minute-man missiles so my sister and I did most of the farming. We had some share crop ground that was 5 miles from the house.
I always went everywhere with my dad and sometimes he would stop off for a beer or ten. He wasn't very good at drinking and would get puking drunk so I would sneak him out of town and drive the 17 miles home. That was when I was 10-12. I don't ever remember not driving.