Weird Little Trucks

Having updated on so many travel related items that are actually interesting, I thought I would go for a Kiwi cultural correspondence about which few people will have any interest at all.  In fact, my own kids have been wondering why in the world I have been taking pictures with my cell phone around town of various, ummm, trucks, and how in the world I can possibly think of writing about trucks, sandwiched as it will be between posts on two great vacation destinations.

At any rate, yes, this is a post about trucks.  Cute, little, weird trucks (words which don't typically go together.) Kiwis would definitely not understand this post, since these tiny trucks are totally normal to them (OK, I admit that most others will not understand this post either).  But, finding peculiarities in New Zealand culture is both easy and fascinating to me as a foreigner.  And, trucks are just one thing totally different from the US in NZ.

They have cute little trucks here.   Like these.

And this. Which is part delivery truck, part advertisement, and part go-Kart.

Perhaps due to the cost of petrol here being so much more than in the US, it seems like all of the trucks have these small, low profile cabs, are much narrower overall, and have very unique/custom trailers.  At our local new car dealers for instance, they sell the "normal" pick-up trucks but without the bed.  There are just trucks with the cab and then the guts of the car in back on the showroom.  Apparently you just pick the bed out to customize it, or get it from some other source.  Here is a perfectly "normal" pick-up truck.

Then there is the typical contractor/worker truck.  This is fairly similar from field to field, and just about always resembles this.  It looks kind of like one of our vans, but the profile would show it to be about a foot narrower.

Here is a typical lawn maintenance truck, and a wood delivery truck.  I just love the fact that they are all so custom in appearance, i.e. no two between different companies really mirror another the way they might in the States (where they are mostly differentiated by the logo on the side.)

I will finish with another shot of my personal favorite, since I see it all over town.  I wish this picture had another car alongside, just to give it a sense of perspective on how tiny this truck (?) or car is.

Now, having gotten that out of my system, it will be back to travel-related posts.  For now.