The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks
Published on 1. May 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
220 pages
978-1-4962-4228-0 (ISBN)
Description
Of the sixty million pickups on U.S. highways today, just one in eight was bought for work purposes. The remaining fifty-four million are what truck dealers call "lifestyle purchases." Does the pickup impulse spring from some deep, organic longing? For agrarian roots, for simpler times, for a driving experience larger than life?
The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks is a memoir about the complex role pickups have played in Fred Haefele's life and in American culture at large. Growing up near the GM truck plant in Flint, Michigan, young Haefele was delighted by these centaur-like vehicles. In his adult life as an arborist, teacher, and father, pickups bore him through hard times and disaster, high adventure, triumph, and love. Through his tenure with twelve trucks, Haefele recounts his experiences with tree climbing and academia, masculinity and motor culture.
For Haefele, pickup trucks hold a unique place in the American psyche-equal parts fantasy steed and dray horse, they're avatars of the American spirit. The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks is, like his trucks, uniquely free-spirited: love story, blue-collar writer's tale, and motor-head memoir.
The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks is a memoir about the complex role pickups have played in Fred Haefele's life and in American culture at large. Growing up near the GM truck plant in Flint, Michigan, young Haefele was delighted by these centaur-like vehicles. In his adult life as an arborist, teacher, and father, pickups bore him through hard times and disaster, high adventure, triumph, and love. Through his tenure with twelve trucks, Haefele recounts his experiences with tree climbing and academia, masculinity and motor culture.
For Haefele, pickup trucks hold a unique place in the American psyche-equal parts fantasy steed and dray horse, they're avatars of the American spirit. The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks is, like his trucks, uniquely free-spirited: love story, blue-collar writer's tale, and motor-head memoir.
Reviews / Votes
"What better way than a memoir about pickup trucks to forge from steel, rubber, and enamel paint a rumbling portrait of an individual American life. . . . [This is] a brilliant, compelling, and wryly humorous road trip through the motorized heart of the American soul."-Peter Stark, author of Astoria and Gallop toward the Sun "Ain't just trucks. Also chainsaws and typewriters, canoes and climbing rope, a distant dad and an undying dream, love and sex and marriage and children, failure and perseverance and mortality. Haefele delivers a three-quarter-ton load of nontoxic masculinity that smashes expectations to reveal something universal, let's call it the soul: soaring, striving, suffering. What a joy to ride along with a master at the height of his powers, hitting his stride after the decades of fits and starts he recounts with deadpan glee, now disarmingly humble-and humbled. A life fully lived, a tale exquisitely told."-Mark Sundeen, author of The Man Who Quit Money and Delusions and Grandeur "It's clear that Fred Haefele loves Montana as much as he loves old pickups. This memoir serves as a cultural history of a writer, a state, and the wheels that got him around. If you take The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks for a ride, you won't be let down."-Steven Rinella, author, podcast host, and founder of MeatEater "A great book, by a masterful practitioner. I marveled at the writing. Laughed out loud at the predicaments and antics of the dusty tree-climbing writer. Was humbled by a wise human's insights, humility, and warmth. I envied him his amazing life, wished and hope to live something similar in the American West. Now I will try to."-Robin McLean, author of Pity the Beast and Reptile House "I found The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks to be deeply pleasurable. It is honest and hilarious, simultaneously lyrical and super fucking grounded, and also tender, poignant, reflective, and real."-Jeremy N. Smith, author of Epic Measures and Breaking and Entering; the Extraordinary Story of a Hacker Named "Alien"More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Lincoln
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
8 photographs
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
259 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4962-4228-0 (9781496242280)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Fred Haefele is a writer, teacher, and retired arborist. He is the author of the award-winning motorcycle memoir Rebuilding the Indian (Bison Books, 2005) and the nonfiction collection Extremophilia. Haefele's work has appeared in Outside, Wired, the New York Times Magazine, Salon.com, Montana Magazine, and other venues, and he has written documentaries for the PBS American Experience series. He lives in Missoula, Montana, with his wife, Caroline Patterson.
Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Working-Class Hero
2. Prodigal Dude
3. Full Moon Solstice
4. Turning Pro
5. The Big One
6. The Lessons of Light Bulb
7. Vintage Natal
8. Aging Out
9. Arbor Emeritus
10. The High Ropes
11. Patina
12. Last Pickup
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Working-Class Hero
2. Prodigal Dude
3. Full Moon Solstice
4. Turning Pro
5. The Big One
6. The Lessons of Light Bulb
7. Vintage Natal
8. Aging Out
9. Arbor Emeritus
10. The High Ropes
11. Patina
12. Last Pickup