Death, Taxes and Steel

Seems as if we can hardly go more than a few days without the occurrence of another tipping point moment. Tipping points refer to one of those instants in time in which a new way of doing things has taken over and life as we’ve known it to be has gone forever. Translation: The trajectory has changed, baby!

There have been many tipping point moments in modern history.  The first one I can recall came decades ago when Madison Avenue figured out that an unfailing way to make  any product have mass appeal was to give it a foreign name (if it was a French name, so much the better) and then grossly overcharge for it. Another trajectory changing moment came in the early Seventies when a struggling Seattle coffee shop owner applied the Madison Avenue theory to the twenty-five cent Cup of Joe. Voila! The $4.95  latte was born. Americans have been spending unconscionable amounts  on overpriced latte’s ever since.

Another tipping point moment came in the early 1970’s, when someone, probably a corporate suck-up, invented service fees –i.e.charging for stuff heretofore provided more or less for free: checking accounts, television, airline seat selection, air for automobile tires, etc. Thus began mankind’s bumpy slide down a slippery slope and the free world very quickly became the fee world and we’ve all been paying “more for less” of everything ever since.

A latest tipping point moment may have come a couple of days ago.  The Ford Motor Company, the same folks who have employed the slogan “Ford Tough” for decades  announced the F-150 pick-up truck, their best-selling vehicle by far (for decades), will no longer be made mostly of steel.

If you’ve tried to purchase – or tried to secure long-term financing for– a pack of razor blades lately, it occurs to you that cost is likely the primary reason for Ford’s decision. Ford swears this is not the case, however. Instead, the company insists the exchange of aluminum for steel is because the former is lighter and the new design shaves-off  a whopping 700 pounds off the weight of the vehicle.

I get it. I do. But 700 pounds is a lot of weight. By my way of thinking, 700 pounds is the equivallent 350 DIET YEARS, one ‘DY’ being the length of time it takes the average American to lose two pounds. I betting that 700 pounds is more weight than they lose on that TV show, Biggest Loser, in TWO seasons!

You can’t help but wonder whether the 700 lb. lighter thing will blow away on a windy day? Or maybe you figure Ford is going to offer a Mast and Mainsail Option Package so you can increase gas mileage by hoisting sail and tacking the pick-up truck down the causeway even in light winds! ‘Avast thar ye matey’!

The swap of aluminum for steel is admittedly a bit disconcerting at first. When I was a kid, growing up in the late Fifties and early Sixties,  steel — like death and taxes– was a certainty! Steel was reassuringly in EVERYTHING — from construction hats to steel-toed boots to freight car wheels and even to the plates in some people’s heads. Galvanized steel was in backyard fences, stainless steel in kitchen appliances and even Superman was nicknamed ‘the Man of Steel’. In those same days, it seemed everybody –even doctors and other role models– smoked like chimneys. Some company might have even marketed stainless steel cigarettes. (OK, steel ‘loosies’ is a bit over the top, but the reader gets the point: steel components in every thing was a fact of life in the Fifties, Sixties and even beyond)

The main thing made of steel was vehicles.  Cars and trucks, baby! American families traveled the new Eisenhower National Highway ensconced inside a wraparound steel  body mounted on a steel chassis that rolled along on steel belted tires. Every vehicle on the road was a gas-guzzling, air-polluting, 48 monthly payment rolling shrine to the U.S. steel industry, the finance company and the American way of life.

1954 Ford Customline Tudor 019Our family had its own steel bucket on wheels.  My mother was a loving parent, a great  conversationalist and a brilliant academician. (Believe me, the woman knew enough both about foreign languages and nuclear physics so that she could probably have split the atom. In Spanish!) But despite these wonderful intellectual abilities, it turns out Mrs. Cantrell  was not a great driver — or even a good one! Riding in the car with Mom behind the wheel was always a hair-raising, ‘life flashing in front of your eyes’ cinematic experience. More often than not, you got to see a ‘Double Feature’, more proof that you one routinely cheat death even if your last name wasn’t Knievel or Wallenda.

None of my boyhood friends (a few of whom I actually met when my mother ran into the back of their parents’ car!)  were allowed by their parents to ride in our car if my mother was driving it.  We may have left home enroute to school, church, Little League or say, Scout meeting, but on numerous occassions, we ended up at the junkyard in a smashed up car that was no longer drive-able…and being towed by a wrecker. 

Mom made shrapnel out of three different steel-bodied Fords in four years in the late Fifties. But there was nary scratch on us.  Ever! Seat belts were not the law of the land in those days and while luck may have had played a role in these episodes, the plain truth, I still  believe, was that it was mostly the tensile strength of steel ––all those closely packed atoms — that ultimately kept me and the ol’ lady from being in a bunch of broken pieces.  

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Ford-F150-Pickup-Truck1Despite my admittedly old school reservations about steel versus aluminum, I’m sure the Ford design engineers know what the hell they are doing. ( One is reminded however, that while aluminum has long been the chief material used to build airplanes, the aircraft’s black boxes are made of steel). Nevertheless I’m betting Ford’s idea will truly be turn out to be one of those tipping point moments and the aluminum idea will catch on. The concept will be copied by other folks and we’ll all be driving heavy-duty foil convertibles soon enough.

Who knows? Tin-foil sails for pick-up trucks might become vogue. Of course, let’s hope  the trend doesn’t go viral right away though and we Americans do the one thing that we do better than anyone else– i.e. take what seems like a good idea and run it into the ground! Next thing you know, the Land of Oz’s Tin Man will have become a fashion icon, the rest of us will be sporting aluminum hats and tin shoes; and the fans of the NFL Pittsburgh franchise will be cheering for the Alumineers.

Better steel yourself, baby!

 

 

 

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3 thoughts on “Death, Taxes and Steel”

  1. I’d imagine the change was made because of the upcoming Federal gas mileage standards, which are strict enough that I assumed nobody was going to make pickups anywhere in America. In that case, the good news is that we can just blame the government for this, too. But on the brighter side, we’ll get way better mileage before we die in a fiery crash.

    Fun fact: In later Oz books, the Tin Man had himself plated for protection … with nickle. I guess they didn’t have aluminum then.

  2. Ah, the $56,000 tin can. Ford’s version of the latte. When I first heard about this, the first image that came to mind was Godzilla smashing it against his forehead like a drunken sailor with a Bud Light can. I like to go with the first gut feeling personally.

  3. Somehow I feel more comforted by the idea of cars being made of steel than from the idea of having them made by the stuff they use to make frying pans.

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