I Bought A Firetruck • Hacker News Board

Re: I Bought A Firetruck

#231

Post by GFischer » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 1:53 PM UTC

ivix wrote: post #207

alan_cx wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im a European, well British anyway.... Something occurred to me today regarding Americans and big huge stupid cars... I was watching the NASCAR earlier and there was a throwaway comment about some driver's sponsors being "local". By local they mean 60 miles away. Now to a Brit, maybe other Europeans, 60 miles feels like anything but "local". So, I get the impression that we don't understand the sort of scale of trave…

The sense of scale is noticable even in this article. The author is parking a fire engine on his driveway . Here in Europe a driveway is one or two car lengths of gravel or paving blocks. In the US, everyone's driveway is more like something approaching a major civil engineering undertaking, being the size of a tennis court, consuming several cubic metres of concrete, steel reinforcing, etc.

Most millionaires here in Uruguay don't have a house that large.

I can't believe how big U.S. houses are. A quick Googling shows they're much larger than the average house in my country:

Average House Size By Country Australia - 214.6 sq m (2310 sq ft), 2.56 people per household (pph) USA - 201.5 (2170), 2.6 pph New Zealand - 196.2 (2112), 2.6 pph Canada - 181 (1950), 2.5 pph Japan - 132 (1420), this year the pph in Tokyo dropped below 2 for the first time (1.99) UK - 76 (818), 2.1 pph

and those are averages, I'm sure median shows a different picture (small flats for Europe and urban Latin America, large houses for suburban U.S. and Australia).

The median for a flat here in Montevideo is about 60 square meters (the one I rent is 55 square meters, and most new ones are even smaller), and the median house is about 100 square meters (and forget about the humungous driveways and stuff the U.S. suburban house has).

http://notbuyinganything.blogspot.com/2012/03/average-house-...

Re: I Bought A Firetruck

#232

Post by GFischer » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 1:56 PM UTC

uogecko wrote: post #182

LarryMade2 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just don't come up for sale too often... http://www.kungfo0.org/theweb/ebay/carrier.html Never know what you may find on ebay... http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-050902a.html

I didn't make that up! I saw one a couple years ago that was for sale. I contacted the seller and asked if it came with a trailer. I just couldn't resist. He never wrote back but it WAS for sale on eBay!

rurounijones posted a link:

https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/British_warship_HMS_Invincible_...

Re: I Bought A Firetruck

#233

Post by jpitz » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 2:01 PM UTC

hfsktr wrote: post #187

jychang wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a mythbusters episode where they stuck a half a ton of clay on a regular car, and it didn't affect fuel economy. So there's that.

Rewatched and they did test with the full weight and as you said no (noticeable) change with the added weight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKxEkT2H8pI#t=322s I know that Mythbusters isn't generally hard science but you know.

Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/397/

Re: I Bought A Firetruck

#234

Post by josefresco » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 2:11 PM UTC

Maybe I missed it but did he end up shipping it? He mentions it would cost more than the truck itself, and mentioned his wife chiding him for not researching this more but no actual description of how he transported it.

Re: I Bought A Firetruck

#235

Post by imran » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 2:13 PM UTC

so you see we can do anything we want to ! Its much more related to the "out of the box thinking". If you can't do things you were planning since childhood how are you supposed to be creative and pursue your dreams let alone Change The World!

Re: I Bought A Firetruck

#236

Post by uogecko » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 2:14 PM UTC

shawn-butler wrote: post #194

uogecko wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying to forget about that part of this - the cost of shipping SUCKED.

Did you investigate rail shipping? I had a collectible truck shipped by rail and it was much cheaper than OTR. It was some time ago though, but I imagine for something as large as a fire engine it might have been very cost-effective.

Yep! I briefly looked into it but was told that it wouldn't be possible to get it anywhere close to me by rail.

Re: I Bought A Firetruck

#237

Post by amalcon » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 2:16 PM UTC

jychang wrote: post #160

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bus/RV conversion weighs about 18 tons. It has 6 ton front axle and in the rear it has an 11 ton and an additional 6 or 8 ton axle. While a fire truck has a ridiculously strong suspension, if you used that for an RV, you would get a punishing amount of vibration and shaking. I guess you could ballast it, but you'll waste a lot of fuel hauling ballast around, in addition to being dangerously underpowered in some si…

I remember a mythbusters episode where they stuck a half a ton of clay on a regular car, and it didn't affect fuel economy. So there's that.

As I recall that episode didn't test 'fuel economy' as most people think of it, but instead 'fuel economy when driving straight at a constant speed on flat ground'. This was not an error -- they were up front about it; it was more a question of controlling variables. Still, it keeps us from generalizing the weight data to actual vehicle cost of operation.

Re: I Bought A Firetruck

#238

Post by cglace » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 2:20 PM UTC

rdl wrote: post #44

cglace wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about him. But having had my home broken into many times its easy to become obsessed with preventing entry into your home.

I'm not really that concerned about people breaking and entering (I have guns...) while I'm in home or office, but secured parking would be awesome.

Guns don't help when you aren't home. That is usually when people choose to break and enter.

Re: I Bought A Firetruck

#239

Post by iliis » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 2:50 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #234

Maybe I missed it but did he end up shipping it? He mentions it would cost more than the truck itself, and mentioned his wife chiding him for not researching this more but no actual description of how he transported it.

He explained in a comment how he ended up transporting it with a flatbed trailer:

"It was transported by a semi on a flatbed trailer from Ohio to Montana. I looked into all kinds of less expensive alternatives including paying someone to drive it, but I couldn't get anything reliable to pan out."

http://geckodesigns.kinja.com/it-was-transported-by-a-semi-o...

Re: I Bought A Firetruck

#240

Post by mortenjorck » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 3:11 PM UTC

THE_PUN_STOPS wrote: post #230

tmoertel wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there some sort of crazy game of one-upmanship in the USA as to who can drive the most impractical gas guzzler? Not at all. It’s just that in the USA, things are on a different scale, and it makes sense to have larger vehicles. For example, a couple of years ago on eBay I bought a second-hand carrier battle group. Now, if you’re not from the USA, I can already hear you objecting that “it’s impractical” to drive…

I had a similar experience buying a MiG-17 as my primary vehicle to commute to work 17 miles away. The DMV was initially not happy about my taking off and landing on quiet highways, but luckily they became more understanding after many letters. How much did you end up paying for your CVBG?

Guys, I understand wanting to maximize your load-carrying efficiency, but decommissioned naval vessels and military aircraft are not the way to do it.

For my commute, I chose rail instead – Budd Pioneer III-series rolling stock go for surprisingly little on eBay these days, and at least where I live, it's not terribly expensive to file the paperwork for a zoning easement to add a 700v third rail to a local stretch of freight rail (you can usually find qualified installers on Craigslist).

These rolling stock are single-operator capable, so the staffing costs can be quite low, and generally buying electric for a home rapid transit system is far cheaper than buying fuel for a home naval vessel or home fighter jet, especially if you can power down the transformers while you're at work.