The auto dealership is a staple of American life and it carries with it a sort of respectable cultural cache, if you will. It’s where people go to purchase one of the major items of American life and where, for better or for worse, they make the decisions about what sort of personality they are going to display to people on the road. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, of course. All it really means is that there’s a certain amount of pressure to perform for others instead of making the purchase based on your actual needs. You want your used jeep or your used ford or your used dodge to speak about you in some way rather than letting your actions speak for you. This is how a large part of culture has always been, however, and there’s merit in letting your purchases speak for your personality. At least, in some ways. To this end, we turn to the mighty truck, the pinnacle of many symbolic things in American life. Sure, there are trucks all over the world but there’s nothing quite as American as a place that has used trucks for sale. It’s a multitude type of symbol, containing a lot of things that are revered and cherished by the American people. But what, exactly, does it portray to the average American? What does it mean to the person who is driving the truck and, to a large extent, the people who might be driving by them? Let’s explore this question a bit and really see what the meaning of the truck is in contemporary American life.
- Starting at the beginning of the boom
There weren’t always used trucks for sale. There was a time when there were no trucks at all or even any cars for that matter. What’s really interesting is that large scale shipping and trucking was unknown before the early and mid thirties. Before then, most shipping of heavy objects and mass goods was done by literal ships and whatever teams of horses could be mustered to do the work. Horses may have fallen by the transportation wayside although large tankers continue to carry most international goods back and forth. But, as we know, it isn’t the tanker that’s a symbol in American life. It’s the truck, both large scale eighteen wheelers and the individual personal truck. The history might not seem important but, if you stop to think about it for a second, you’ll actually realize a slight and interesting discrepancy. If the truck only gained prominence in the last, relatively brief fifty years, then how did it happen? Why did something so comparatively new become such a powerful symbol?
The spread of all the used trucks for sale
It all began in the middle of the century with the post war boom. There had been some application for trucking before then but with the mass spread of goods that came with a booming economy, larger scale transportation was needed to carry everything. All of the vacuum cleaners and early televisions couldn’t carry themselves into homes and stores, after all. The truck quickly became a symbol of prosperity as well as the strength of American industry but it didn’t stop there. By the middle of the sixties, many Americans had enough money to buy a car of their own and guess what sort of car many people wanted? They say the symbol and wanted to make it their own. Hence the rise of the personalized truck and what it represented. In many real ways, it was the new horse like symbol of the frontier.
Symbolism into the future
So what does the truck represent to the American people, then? With this history, what does it mean? Wildness, for one. Freedom, for another. The ability to go anywhere and do anything. Used trucks for sale are the ultimate symbol of American endurance and strength over a long period of time. Having a truck means you can carry your own weight and take anything that comes at you. It is a fascinating and complex symbol with a long history and a complicated future.
