Trucks: And the Kitchen Sink

The pickup truck was once the mainstay of rural America. It was used for everything from hauling feed and machinery to taking the family to church on Sunday. Americans are still piling into the small trucks, but now their destinations are likely to be the beaches, mountains or woods. And their trucks have many of the comforts of home —beds, toilet and kitchen facilities, all tucked into a piggyback camper behind the cab. Last week, as the camping season began in earnest, a record number of those recreational trucks took to the roads.

Particularly in the U.S. West, the family that used to boast two cars in the garage now has one car and a truck. A market survey by Ford disclosed that 65% of all light trucks—or 1,600,000 units—are used for fun and personal traveling. They helped to boost truck sales to an alltime high of 1,900,000 units last year, and the figure is expected to top 2,000,000 in 1969.

Dolled Up. For the first time since 1935, Ford has overtaken Chevrolet in the light-truck market. But the margin is slim, and each manufacturer predicts sales of 700,000 trucks this year. Ford tops its line with the sporty Ranchero, while Chevrolet counters with the El Camino. A long list of options includes air conditioning, power steering, automatic transmission, wooden steering wheels, bucket seats and high-performance engines. The price of a dolled-up pickup can approach $5,000, and the cost of the piggyback camping unit that slides into the truck bed can add another $4,000.

A more spartan approach to motor camping is offered by some of the smaller companies, which together share about 9% of the recreational truck market. International Harvester and Kaiser Jeep sell rugged vehicles that can carry sleeping bags and campers into country so rough that it is beyond the reach of the trucks. In the future, this may become an important selling point because more accessible camping grounds are becoming as clotted as expressways on the Fourth of July.