Work Truck
When leaving the world better than you found it means beating the shit out of a Tesla
“That Tesla is beat to shit,” said one of the guys at Mile High Cold Storage in Denver, the freezer warehouse where we stage our salmon.
Shouldering through the vinyl flaps of the warehouse door with a 30 lb case of frozen fish, I laughed and said, “It’s a work truck.” We had the 2nd and 3rd row seats folded flat and were in the process of tetrising 400 lbs of product into the back for a quick run to our rented warehouse in Nederland.
It’s a 2018 Tesla Model X 75D that we bought used a year ago. Now it’s caked with mud from the road we live on, it has a cracked window in one of the falcon-wing doors, and a piece of the front passenger wheel-well trim sticks out and rattles, along with the gorilla tape that I patched it with that has since come mostly unstuck. That blemish was indirectly related to a baby elk, but that’s another story. And a chunk of steel recently fell off the driver side falcon door latch. It almost hit Mariah in the head, but it doesn’t seem crucial to the car, and you can’t see the jagged metal edge unless the door’s open.
The cold storage guy asked, “Do those things come in all-wheel-drive?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s really good in the snow, actually.”
I talked Mariah into getting the Tesla because I felt gross about driving so much to deliver salmon. And we keep our portable freezer plugged into it so we don’t have to drive so fast to make deliveries. If we have other stops to make along the way, putting the car in camp mode keeps the freezer on without an idling engine. We’ve even left it like that all weekend, but doing that might’ve voided the warranty.
I shoved down the hatchback to get it to click. We’d already put a box of fish in the frunk (front trunk, the extra space with no engine). Mariah had balanced a box on the center console, and slid one in the passenger side footwell, so she had to climb into her seat cross-legged. We put on our down jackets and set the air conditioning to LO. With the outside temp at 30 F, we weren’t too worried about the fish thawing, but we weren’t taking any chances.
I wished I’d worn gloves for the drive back, so I think the car was plenty cold inside. They don’t teach you those guidelines in an online food safety manager class.
I’m looking forward to an affordable electric pickup that can run a full-sized chest freezer in the back, or even tow a freezer trailer back and forth to Denver, but until then you’ll see us delivering wild sustainable salmon in a wild sustainable SUV.
I have $100 reservations placed for the Ford F-150 Lightning and the Cybertruck. I had a $1,000 reservation for the plug-in hybrid Workhorse W-15, but they scrapped that one and refunded me. The Rivian seems cool, but it only has a 4.5’ bed, while the Lightning has 5.5’ and the Cybertruck 6.5’.
The Rivian will not take a snowplow, and only seats 5, but it comes with an optional built-in kitchen, which could make it a sweet little food truck. It will not take a snowplow, which is kind of a must for our mountainside living situation.
I’m hoping to replace our ‘01 Dodge Cummins plow truck. Funny thing is that if we forget to plug the Tesla in on a cold night, it’ll still start in the morning. Not the Cummins. So if I’m going to have to plug a truck in all winter, it might as well be electric.
The Lightning should take a plow because it uses basically the same frame as the regular F-150, but it might not be able to handle the weight of the 8’ Boss plow I have now. But maybe it won’t drain the batteries like the plow does sometimes on the Dodge. Only 5 seats available in the Lightning too.
Who knows if the Cybertruck exoskeleton will have anywhere to attach a plow, or if the whole frunk is a crumple zone like the Rivian and Model X (you shouldn’t put any hard objects up there because they’ll wind up in your lap in a head-on collision. So don’t do what we did with the frozen fish).
But they’ve recently announced that the Cybertruck will have 4-wheel steering, which would make it nimbler than the Dodge for being about the same length and width. Lots of moving parts though.
And the Cybertruck’s retractable tonneau cover could be perfect for covering an 8 cubic-foot chest freezer then rolling back so I could open freezer lid and pull out a box of fish (not possible under the canopy of the Dodge. I have to slide the freezer out almost off the tailgate to load and unload salmon. Plus I can’t power the freezer in the back of the Dodge. Details). With the tonneau cover retracted, the Cybertruck could likely hold and power at least a 20 cubic-foot freezer, or me if I need a nap. Then there’s two bench seats up front to nap on as well. It could seat me, Mariah, our two kids, and one set of grandparents.
Plus I like the unpainted stainless steel look, sort of matches our aluminum Bristol Bay boat. The body panels of the Lightning and Rivian are mostly painted aluminum and plastic (why paint it? Give me a discount for one unpainted).
And the upper-end Cybertruck could have a 500-mile range, making it tempting to truck our own fish out from Seattle. With the Tesla Supercharger network it would be possible. Maybe even all the way from Alaska sometime soon.
We already road tripped the Model X 75D (75 kWh is the smallest battery they come in) from Colorado to Washington no problem. And the autopilot is awesome for taking in the sights on the open road, or stop-and-go in the city. Feels more like taking wheel watch on a seiner than driving a car.
I feel like I’m the only person in the world with these crazy criteria for a truck.
Anyone else been looking into this? What should I beat the shit out of next?