Four-wheel-drive pickups are an almost indispensable piece of equipment on Ozarks farms today. It’s hard to imagine any farmer or cattleman getting across pastures or feeding without one.
But it wasn’t always so. They weren’t so common when I was a boy. Dad never had one. None of the farmers I worked for had one. They had tractors with trailers for feeding hay or silage.
Their pickup trucks were traditional rear-wheel-drive, often fitted with heavy duty farm tires, but not like the off-road rigs common today. Of course, they were off-road much of the time down farm lanes and across hayfields, as well as well-suited for trips to the grocery store, farm supply or even the movie theater.
Though not four-wheel-drive, the trucks I recall were tough rigs with steel hides— Chevy, Ford, Dodge or any other — built for work, seldom sporting carpeted floors and mostly strangers to a car wash bay. A good many of them had stock racks on the bed, too.
Despite their two-wheel axles, they weren’t often stuck in snow and mud. Common sense kicked in where four-wheel-drive does today.
I recall Dad being mighty impressed one winter when he saw a Jeep pull out of snowbank in Buffalo just like it was a summer day. I know from that time on he would’ve liked to own a four-wheel-drive, but not just for farm work. Too many winter mornings were spent digging Mom’s car out of the snow and spreading ashes just to get her off to work.
But, Dad never owned a four-wheel-drive. He never even owned a brand-new pickup of any sort. All of his trucks were well-used by the time they got to him.
After a few years he didn’t really need to buy one. I did, not just for him, but for my peace of mind getting to work on snowy roads. As it worked out, I really used it more getting trailer loads of hay through Dad’s muddy barn lot.
For many years, though, I didn’t have a four-wheel-drive. I didn’t think I could afford one; but my first winter living in Bolivar. and still working in Buffalo, I rationalized I couldn’t do without one.
It worked out great, because about that same time Dad started counting me to locate and bring in loads of hay for his beef herd. So for the next decade or so I was in and out of his knee-deep mud and manure lot about every month. I couldn’t have done it without four-wheel-drive and stout pickup trucks.
A few years after Dad died in 2005, I reckoned I could get by with two-wheel-drive again, so I bought a brand-new Ford F-150. The first time I got stuck in a skiff of snow trying to borrow a neighbor’s trailer, I knew I’d made a mistake.
I’d become too used to the “go anywhere in any season” security of four-wheel-drive. I couldn’t get another good night’s sleep without it. I was as lost as a teenager without his cell phone and soon headed for the Ford/Dodge dealership.
Somebody got a mighty good deal on a late-model F-150, and I got back my peace of mind.
I’ve owned four-wheel-drives most of the last 30 years. They’ve served both as family vehicles, tow trucks, hay transports and substitutes for tractors to drag logs, pull fence posts and move outbuildings.
I don’t know how Dad ever got along without one, even with me a telephone call away. I guess he never thought he could afford one, but he paid the price of one for a high-powered Belgian Blue bull. Animal husbandry, not a truck, was his priority.
Still, I wish he could have had a new 4WD. He needed it and he deserved it.
But, “deserving” has nothing to do with it when your principal income is a paltry Social Security check.
That makes me doubly thankful I was able to be there with mine in that muddy barn lot to deliver hay for his cows and prize bull. He deserved better, but that I could do.
Copyright 2024, James E. Hamilton; email [email protected]. Read more of his works in Ozarks RFD 2010-2015, available online from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or from the author.
A former feature writer for Ozarks Farm and Neighbor, Jim Hamilton is a retired newspaper editor/publisher. Hamilton was reared on a small dairy farm in Dallas County, Mo. Contact Jim at [email protected].
