Where are all of the SUVs going?

I’ve been ruminating on this for a couple of weeks and I think I’m ready to write about it. I read it in the Business & Farm section of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, the July 20th, 2008 edition. I don’t normally read that section, but the title caught my attention: “Traded-in SUVs a hot commodity abroad”.

You can view the first paragraph here:
http://www2.arkansasonline.com/news/2008/jul/20/traded--suvs-hot-commodity-abroad-20080720/?business/arkansas
The paper wants to charge you $1.95 to read the story online, HOWEVER if you click the “print story” link on the left you can read it for free-go figure, sigh. Not my fault; I didn’t hack crap.

Anyway the basic gist here is that since the USA and other countries are being pinched hard by oil and subsequent gasoline prices we are buying smaller cars with better gas mileage and not the big gas gulping SUVs. Along the same lines we are trading in those big SUVs when we buy the smaller cars. So we have a glut of big cars and SUVs on our used car lots and they are being snapped up for a song by entrepreneurial people (such as the brothers mentioned in the article) and are being shipped overseas “to places such as Middle East, West Africa and Mexico.”

The kicker here is that these places (where these vehicles are being shipped) all pump and sell oil to the rest of the world. Because they do this they can offer subsidies to their citizens so that their gasoline “costs less than 50 cents a gallon.”

I don’t need to remind you what we are paying!

There are two reasons why this should tick you off!

First reason - the environment. Supposedly we are concerned about mileage because of the environment. Better mileage, we waste less gas, fewer hydrocarbons in the atmosphere, better for everyone.
So no matter how many tiny cars we drive, the rest of the pumping world is still driving gas gulpers and globally nothing is being conserved and hydrocarbon production is not being reduced by our green efforts!

Second reason – economy. So the US builds big cars out of pride or gluttony, call it what you want, we still built them, we should get to drive them. There is no lesson being learned here. If we’ve built such behemoths that shouldn’t be driven because they are larger than we need and are wasteful then no one should get to have them. The wastefulness is being prolonged while we get squeezed.

It fries me to know that somewhere else someone who only pays 50cents a gallon for that sweet go-go juice is riding around enjoying my SUV with plenty of leg and head room, while I’m putting along in a little car bumping my knees and head on the roof.

There is plenty of oil out there; we're being played for suckers.
Cya on the road.
-Fat

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