Bruce W. Smith (above left) and Tom Jackson,Larry Walton (below)
Where did you learn what you know about pickups?
I’ll never forget the day in 1979 when I threw all our tools, equipment and supplies (plus two hitchhiking Mexican roofers) in the bed of my tiny Toyota pickup and piled two fellow carpenters into the cab and tried to outrun a nasty Texas thunderstorm. It was then that I realized a “quarter ton” doesn’t mean much.
Today’s full-size trucks, Toyota’s included, can handle five guys and a full load no problem. That much I’ve learned. But like most, what I’ve learned came from trial and error and word of mouth. People in construction like to talk trucks, but friends and coworkers can sometimes be wrong. Consumer magazines cover trucks as a hobby, but there’s never been a single source of information on trucks for contractors and construction workers—until now.
That’s the premise of ProPickup. Last year we surveyed the readers of our construction magazines, Equipment World, Total Landscape Care, Better Roads and Aggregates Manager, and found that you own more than a million pickups. That’s an average of eight per company.
What’s more, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that 75 percent of all full-sized pickup buyers were businesses.
Since businesspeople like you dominate the pickup market, we figured it was time you had your own truck magazine.
At the heart of this enterprise are two experts I wished I’d known back when I was shoveling concrete and standing up homes. First is Bruce Smith, the editor of our sister publication Custom Rigs. Bruce has been writing about trucks and automobiles for three decades with titles such as Four Wheeler, Auto World Weekly, Truck Trend, Truck Test Digest, Motor Trend, Diesel World and Diesel Power to his credit.
Then there’s, Oregon-based photojournalist Larry Walton who backs up everything he writes with more than 20 years of construction experience; and in the past six years Larry’s been putting that knowledge into print working as an automotive journalist specializing in pickups.
With these two I think we have the best combination of construction and trucking knowledge for the task at hand, and I hope you like the results you see here.
Fire off an email and let us know what you think. Tell us what you’d like to see in future issues. And be sure to check out our additional content, news, Project Big Boss updates (page 20) and discussion forums on our website
Tom Jackson
