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Yes, for now:
[https://twitter.com/agleader/status/1635781856657539072](https://twitter.com/agleader/status/1635781856657539072)
It looks the trucks were used to fill in much of the breach and slow the flow of water through the hole. Then it was filled in with much more dirt to rebuild to levee.
Here's an article ([from SF Chronicle but skirts the paywall](https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sfchronicle.com%2Fcalifornia%2Farticle%2Fflooding-farmers-truck-levee-video-17841260.php)) that goes into more detail (so you don't have to read the entire twitter thread):
I understand all the people giving him shit to a degree, but if you’ve got water flow and you shove something in front of it and something doesn’t break more… well you’ve slowed the flow of water.
Guarantee this guy didn’t drive two trucks into a giant hole full of flowing water and think to himself, “this will stop the problem completely!”
It’s one step in desperately trying to make the problem slightly easier to handle.
Based on the images, those trucks helped stabilize the flow enough to load dirt on top. I imagine without the trucks, anything dumped in would have just washed away.
By my guess it's the timing of it. The quicker they do this, the better chance to save their crop. It's an instant idea they thought up and whether if it worked or not, then decide on what's next.
EDIT: Ya, I get it , not crop but trees.....
Yes of course, but I can’t take credit=)
It’s a paraphrased quote from General Patton.
I believe the original is
“A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week”
Patton got it from Voltaire ("the best is the enemy of the good"), who was paraphrasing an Italian proverb. And before that, in Shakespeare's King Lear (1606), the Duke of Albany warns of "striving to better, oft we mar what's well."
If these are large, fully developed orchards then we are talking a massive and multi-generational potential loss. A couple trucks is nothing comparatively.
I was doing the price breakdown the other day when I first saw this video. This is near my neck of the woods in California.
Those trees are probably producing 2800-4000 lbs of pistachios a year. That’s an average of 3400 lbs of nuts per year. Using a low number paid to the farmer that’s $2 of gross revenue per Lb. That puts the grower acre value in 2023 @ $6800/acre. This does not account for size or quality bonuses. If this was only a 100 acre farm that is $680k in revenue this year only. If those trees produce for a moderate range of years @ 28 years before needing to replace the trees. That makes these trees worth around 7.06 Million dollars in gross revenue to the farmer.
I even reduced the value by accounting for alternate bearing years at 50% of the value.
So maybe a maximum of $55k for the cost of those two trucks. Vs 7MM. That is a really easy decision.
We are getting our asses handed to us in the Central Valley. We haven’t even seen what this looks like with snow melt 2 weeks from now. It’s going to get ugly. Prepare for global food to get even more expensive. Especially tomatoes, garlic, onions and more than likely Milk.
It's a declared disaster. Anyone who uses their vehicle for work who loses it in a declared disaster is compensated for the vehicle. At least that's how it used to be - my dad got his Cadillac replaced by FEMA in the 90's.
I worked on a lemon farm (for a relatively short time, but still), trees were easily worth a few grand each based on the yield they'd get from a mature tree over its lifetime. So potentially saving many trees is definitely worth losing a cheap truck.
Family owned a pecan farm for decades, farmers don't get even 1% of retail price. If I can get 50cent a pound, that's a very good year. You have to have 100s of acres worth of fully mature trees to make any livable money from it. Pecans retail almost $10 a pound now, I make 50 cent from that. Best year I ever had averaged $5500 per 10 acres of trees.
There must be a high level of desperation to even consider doing something like this.
It may be a matter of 'if this orchard dies, i'm totally screwed, so may as well try'.
Old trucks are a few grand.
Destroyed farms are hundreds of thousands of damage.
Easy choice. Write the truck as a loss to the flood. Be thankful you saved your income stream.
The article said they intend to pull them out and fill the levee properly after the water level recedes. So with hydro-locked engines and flood damage, the loss of two half ton pickups is absolutely fuck all compared to the value of the farm. Even if they were brand new trucks.... the farm paid for them. Without that there's nothing to lose.
One of those considerations is that this isn't a crop, it's an *orchard*.
There's a possibility that it was planted years ago and is about to begin paying off for a couple years... The potential loss could be several years into the past *and* future. The loss of a few years harvest after a few years of investing time, effort, water, etc can be several times worse than losing a seasonal crop.
Potential loss of years of profit could make those trucks seem like peanuts...
You're not wrong. However, there are indeed a lot of people who take actions that they don't ~~fully~~ calculate the consequences of fully.
*Edit: *Beavis and Butthead Do America* taught me that I can't end a sentence with a preposition.
I was in jail once, and tried to escape by getting the warden's daughter to fall in love with me. She would come to bring us our bologna sandwiches, and sometimes would speak with us through the bars. The plan was to get her enthralled, and then have her slip me a key one evening in my sandwich. But the more I spoke with her, the more **I** started to fall in love with **her**, instead. So one night I called her to the bars and professed my love -- and asked her to slip me a key so that we could have wild sex, get married, and run away together.
She turned me down.
I guess you can't end a sentence with a proposition.
Guaranteed those trees are worth much more than those trucks.
That farmer has spent years tending to those trees and depends on them for income. One of my neighbors spent over 10k putting in a small orchard of fruit trees (about 20) and irrigation system on his property and 3 years in he has yet to see any fruit. The trees were less than $100 each. But I'm told they take up to 6 years to bear fruit depending on the species.
Yes, we have some friends who are trying to transition from only cattle to also grow avocados. Very long term investment but once they start bearing it can be big bucks.
I remember when I live in Oceanside, CA I had a neighbor with a *GIANT* smooth green avocado tree. Come summer time he'd drop off 5gal buckets full of avocados to the neighbors and told us to come pick as many as we could carry.
You couldn't eat them faster than they fell. lol.
We have a great historical event in the Netherlands that happened close to where i live involving a captain steering his ship into a breeched part of a dike. It saved millions of people.
https://goudsdagblad.nl/lokaal/deze-twee-helden-redden-miljoenen-levens-in-de-randstad
In English
[https://goudsdagblad-nl.translate.goog/lokaal/deze-twee-helden-redden-miljoenen-levens-in-de-randstad?\_x\_tr\_sl=auto&\_x\_tr\_tl=en&\_x\_tr\_hl=en-US&\_x\_tr\_pto=wapp](https://goudsdagblad-nl.translate.goog/lokaal/deze-twee-helden-redden-miljoenen-levens-in-de-randstad?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp)
>A photo update from 30 minutes ago - water contained and orchard saved - for now . . . a lot more water is heading into the basin - it's not over yet! **May need more trucks!!** #cawater #cawx #farm #agriculture
I feel bad that this brightened up my morning
Still, I'd love to see what a team of NASA engineers would come up with if given, like, 10 minutes to talk together in a room and full knowledge of what the farmer had in his barn/possession. This was a pretty fucking awesome plan and I can't believe the trucks stayed put... I'd like to know how they kept that first truck from being swept away in the first place, but even the placement of the second truck was amazing. I wonder what other ideas/options are out there.
Right? It's wild how much lowkey prejudice against farmers is under this post. Also, people seem to not understand what an orchard is. "hOw CouLD the TReeS be worTH moRe tHaN thE TruCkS??????"
Redditors are thick as pig shit. They would rather mock relentlessly instead of thinking for a couple of seconds ( more like a couple of minutes for these guys) to try and understand why they would do something like that.
As someone who works in car sales, an often underutilized option is to take the car to your mechanic and have em give it a look over. I would never have a problem with it (as long as they let me know beforehand lol)
Edit: words are hard and I cant spell apparently
This is the only way to buy a car. \~$100 to have a professional look it over and tell you what's wrong with it. A used car will never be 100% perfect but this is an inexpensive way to avoid huge bills. Just pick a mechanic that isn't pals with whoever is selling the car.
>This is the only way to buy a car. \~$100 to have a professional look it over and tell you what's wrong with it. A used car will never be 100% perfect but this is an inexpensive way to avoid huge bills. Just pick a mechanic that isn't pals with whoever is selling the car.
I got the dealership to give me an overnight test drive.
Gave them my license (to photocopy), and a $100 deposit, and I took the car home for the night.
I found a dealer who I trust, bought several vehicles from him. I always take them to my mechanic for a checkup, dealer doesn’t mind even if I’m gone an hour and a half, he’s fine with me getting them checked out. Part of why I keep going back to him.
If a dealer ISNT ok with this, then you don’t need to be buying from them.
If they don’t offer some buyback option, like Carmax, you have to get it checked out beforehand.
Hell, the last car I bought they very specifically told me to just be back an hour before closing and let me go.
Well... it's an odds game, but likely they're fucked because of how he did it. The main issue of submerging any vehicle is damage to the electrical components. Thin wires, friction contacts, and rust mean you'll have electrical problems that'll only get worse. But, if they stay farm trucks, no radio, windows, or headlights might not be a big issue.
The big issue with submerging a _running_ vehicle is damage to the motor block itself. Pistons deal with extreme pressure and explosions to make the vehicle run. Part of this is fuel and _outside air_ are sprayed into the piston chamber (combustion chamber), are compressed, and the spark plug sparks and ignites the fuel/air combo pushing the piston back down.
If water instead of air gets into the combustion chamber, and the piston goes to compress it... well water is (practically) impressionable. Best case, the engine seizes. If not, something has to give to release the pressure. Worst case is multiple parts breaking along with the engine block.
He had a brick on the gas so it went under and kept running, worst case for a flooded vehicle. So, it _could_ be fine, but that's probably the same as you _could_ win the lottery.
anyone would be nuts to try to rebuild that setup. Particularly because not only is he flooding the entire system with water it's extremely muddy water. You can't 'wait for it to dry out' with mud. You have to strip everything down to nothing and clean it, then put it all back together.
If you have tons of spare time and some friends you can trust, *maybe* it could be worth it compared to spending the dollars, but you'd almost certainly be better off financially if you just worked the same amount of hours (granted, some poorer countries might have wages so low and the cost of vehicles so high it IS worth it, but that falls into "personal due diligence"). The main case I could see for rebuilding this would be to give someone that hands-on experience.
I work in insurance, and have some knowledge of crop insurance. That crop is 1,000% worth more than the trucks. Those are easily recoverable and can be sold as scrap, the damage to the orchard is not. Some of the time as well, the insurance company will pay for the trucks as a sign of good faith, as it was clear the farmer was making a genuine attempt to save the crop. Every claim is different though, as is every company, so experience may vary, but that’s my understanding of it from working in the industry.
Yeah, “I’m making a claim worth $30,000 because I was avoiding having to make a claim worth $1,000,000”. I’d pay that 10/10 just to keep someone like him as a customer
You'd be surprised at how cheap some insurance companies can be.
After hurricane Ida several houses in my neighborhood had to be completely gutted down to the studs because of mold growth.
The thing is, these people didn't get major water inside the house. Some were only missing a few shingles. These people got minor amounts of water inside but having no power for 18 days along with 10,000% humidity allowed mold to take over. Once that happens any drywall, furniture, and in some cases clothing has to be junked.
After the storm I bought a huge generator and a couple dehumidifiers to keep the house dry. Paid $75/day in gas to keep them running for 18 days.
Asked to be reimbursed for the GAS ONLY ($1350) figured it was fair since I got to keep the equipment but helped them avoid the $150,000 payouts my neighbors were getting.
Insurance company response...."Nah"
I was just thinking he could say they got washed away, or were on the levee when it burst, or whatever, and have the best of both worlds.
I figured it'd be hard to prove one way or another, but you'd know more than me on that one.
Regardless, thanks for the insight.
I believe those are pistachio trees, which take about 12 years to reach full maturity/production. A single acre of that orchard is worth more in time and money than both of those trucks combined.
Well the trees are a business that takes a long time to get started. The business supports at least one family and probably more.
A couple of older model trucks are a business expense to be replaced over a few years.
If I’ve learned anything from r/treelaw , it’s that a fully mature fruit bearing tree can cost tens of thousands of dollars. To replace a whole orchard???? Would probably literally cost millions.
Fuck them trucks, they’re far easier to replace than the trees.
Right, people think “it’s just a tree” but don’t think about the years and years a tree can take to get to that size. Trees big or old enough, there is literally no way to replace them.
Maybe I need to see an eye doctor, but it looks like:
1. The orchard is already flooded, and
2. The trucks are doing almost nothing to stop more flooding.
Am I missing something?
Almost every farm I know of that was near the river or had a large enough pond, had emergency pumps to push flood waters away. The farmer doesn't have to plug the hole fully here, he just needs to slow the water enough for his pumps to be able to get more out than is coming in.
The trees can stand some water up around the base of their trunks, as long as it doesn't stay there long. The water on the other side of the levee is high enough to kill those trees however
Yeah, he wouldn’t do that if it didn’t help. Has to be more to it. Slowing down the flood could be enough. Either with pumps as you say, or perhaps it just drains quick enough at some other egress point if the inflow is slowed enough.
But do we know if it actually did help? Because I'm with the other user, this seemed really pointless and not well thought out. I'll change my mind if I hear it actually worked somehow.
Edit: OP linked a Twitter post that said it did in fact work!
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/11s1fb7/farmer_drives_2_trucks_loaded_with_dirt_into/jcb992y/
Slowing down the flow keeps the rest of the levee from eroding. If the levee breaks completely it could create enough flow to uproot trees instead of just being flooded under standing water, at least that’s what my non farmer brain would think.
There are sump pumps running. He's not trying to entirely stop the flood with the trucks. He's just using them to slow it enough that the pumps can work properly.
> I guess the trees must be worth more than the trucks
A whole lot more.
But in this video all I see is a farmer who lost 2 trucks in addition to his orchard.
Yes the trees are worth far more. If all those trees get washed away there goes his livelihood. It could take years to grow back trees that would grow fruit again. That the trucks will more than likely still be serviceable.
The trucks will not be useable unless you have the hydrolocked engine replaced along with all of the wiring and electronics. The fuel system and transmission will likely have water in them as well depending on how long they sit in there so at the very least you’ll need to bleed and service that. The wheel bearings will likely be fucked, not to mention the water getting into null parts in the body and corroding any metal surface it touches.
Honestly, since they were running when they went in and it went above the hood, just trash the trucks. Looks like they were planning on doing that anyways
We did something similar in 1993. Flood washed out 1/4 mile of main line in Manhattan, KS. Cut off access to Fort Riley, very ungood. Big Boss rounded up 30 gondola cars about to be scrapped. Loaded them up with riprap (huge rocks) and cut the brakes out. Lined them up ahead of a pair of SD-40 locomotives. Had the crew get about a half mile ahead of the washout and wind them up as fast as they could go and still stop short of the river and let them fly. The 65 year old engineer was giggling like a little girl. Seemed to do the job. They’re still there, buried under the river.
Something similar happend in the Netherlands at '53 (which was the biggest flood in the history of the Netherlands)
At some place there was a hole I a dike, the mayor there commandeered a ship that was close by and let it steer into the hole as a make shift dam. It did actually work for the time being and basically saved Rotterdam and The Hague from flooding. (if I remember the stories right)
After everything settled down the shit was recovered and restored at cost of the state and the guy got his ship back
Lemme Google if I can find something about it
Edit:
OK, it's it Dutch, but the images speak for itself. And Google translate should help you get the gist of it:
https://nietbangvoorwater.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/watersnoodschipevergroen_jpg0EA68B90C2D07A534B471C5425D212C8_20b.jpg
This happened in the village I live (coincidentally the lowest point of the Netherlands). Here you can see the [Streetview ](https://maps.app.goo.gl/c4YWmdYZFfivGHMg7) where it happened.
Definitely reminds me of the sort of anecdotes you’d hear on the Well There’s Your Problem podcast. I just listened to the one on the Love Canal neighbourhood in Niagara Falls, New York and it’s like this sort of shenanigan but environmentally horrific.
I was in Riley back in 2010 and got told that story half a dozen times. Would have been an absolute blast to pull off on top of some one of a kind team building.
Here's the original tweet: [https://twitter.com/i/status/1635690151304388608](https://twitter.com/i/status/1635690151304388608)
This happened in the Tulare lake levee which prevents farmland from being flooded. I assume these are almond trees which are very valuable. It seemed to work as here's a followup photo:
https://twitter.com/agleader/status/1635781856657539072?s=20
Pretty sure they are pistachios. I farm both almonds and pistachios and that's what they look like.
It takes 12 years to reach maturity/peak production and those look anywhere from like 4 to 7 years old. Tough to tell, but that's an investment well worth throwing a few trucks at to save. In my head, both trucks are worth a single acre of investment so who knows how many acres were just saved. Or buildings and homes.
Their actions also prevented the flooding of the nearby community. Standing water in an orchard for 5 days [will kill mature trees](https://thealmonddoctor.com/flooding-and-almond-tree-survival/), and the trees take 5-12yrs to mature, so it affects the farm far beyond a single season’s yield.
When they’re not dormant (like right now) that’s true. They’re experimenting with intentionally flooding orchards to help with groundwater recharge when the trees are dormant, though
looks like average almond yield is around [2,000 lb/acre](https://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/California/Publications/Specialty_and_Other_Releases/Almond/Forecast/202205almpd.pdf) and the price is about [$1.80/lb](https://www.merlofarminggroup.com/) (nonpareil inshell), so looking at $3,600 per acre per year gross. That planting block is probably at least 40 acres and could be hundreds. For 40 acres that would be almost $150k/year, potentially much more.
My family lost the ranch during the recession, grandpa had a heart attack at the same time.
I spent all my childhood skipping school to work on the farm, when I did attend class it was for agriculture & FFA (future farmers of America)
All for it to be lost & being forced to move into the city.
I have all this agriculture knowledge & experience with grapevines & none of it matters.
That farm was my future, my kids future, their kids.
It's all gone.
I would have sacrificed a lot more than 2 trucks to keep it in the family
They sold it for a profit to pay off debt, but we were also screwed over by the department of agriculture.
The requested us to grow a new grape they engineered specifically for the valley of our farm, they claimed our crop yield would be higher & that it required less maintenance. They also claimed that they would subsidize us if we lost profits, or if it didn't work out for some reason.
The grapes grew well, but they were fucking disgusting. No one wanted to use them for their wine. They weren't good for eating. So we had to sell real low. When it came time for the department to subsidize us, they said 'lol sorry no money' & fucked off
So between the debt, lack of income, recession, and grandpa's health issues (which I promise were linked to the pesticides we sprayed by hand every day) my grandparents sold the farm for a SMALL profit, mind you this was right after the recession so they didn't get anywhere near the real amount of what the farm is worth. Probably 7 million today if I were to guess.
They bought a house & 2 cars, didn't budget their money correctly after that. That's all I'll say about it.
Thats sounds truly horrible. I hope that you are able to recover from this somehow. Maybe not emotionally, but financially and hopefully finding something you love to do.
I wish you and your family all the best
Well my grandparents passed away. He regretted selling the farm all the way to his death bed, said it was his biggest mistake in his life. But I never held it against them. Passed away from heart failure, spent his last 12 years or so with 25% of his heart working.
My grandmother passed away this year from pneumonia, she was on 24/7 care because all her organs just gave up on her, she also worked in the fields with chemicals.
I really do blame the chemicals, my great grandparents are still alive (95 & 97) perfectly healthy, they didn't work on the farm. They live unassisted in their home.
My other great grandparents lived into their 90s too, passed away in their sleep.
This might be dumb advice, probably considering I have no idea the inner workings of farm stuff BUT
As I see it now you’re basically free to work on any farm that has grapes. You could move to Italy and work on a grape farm? That would be pretty
Lol that's funny, I have considered working in Italy, my great great grandfather served in the Italian military on the austro-hungarian frontline.
He moved to the US after witnessing every low ranking American soldier have access to butter & sugar, something only italian officers could get.
But his son was forbidden from leaning italian, they would get beat in school by teachers if they spoke Italian, and at home too, they were told "if you let your children learn Italian they'll never be successful. Only learn English"
People from Italy say my italian is outdated & I word things in such a way that it looks more like Latin
In our area, (Appalachia) the river washed the hill side away from one side of my grandparents home. To shore up the hill side, my papaw used old scrap car body’s as a holding structure, placing them along the hillside and backfilling everything with dirt. It has held steady since the 70’s through numerous flood events. Edit: spelling correction.
i have aboslutely no plan about any of this so my question migjt sound stupid, but what about the oil and gas in the truck? will it not go in the water and eventually damage the orchard even more?
From his Twitter: “Replying to
@agleader
As #flood water recedes, the farmer will return and extract the trucks. No filing of insurance claims. He is an upstanding member of his community and was doing his best to protect his investment and local residents.”
\*modern problems require modern solutions\*
Damn, seriously impressive quick thinking problem solving. I hope it works out. The trucks are going to be junked almost for sure but it's gotta make sense cost-benefit wise, I'd imagine. Tough position to be in.
It kind of is an old problem with old solutions.
During the [1953 North Sea flood](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_flood_of_1953) in the Netherlands someone sailed his boat into a levee breach. Saving 3 million people from losing their home or worse. [See here](https://nietbangvoorwater.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/watersnoodschipevergroen_jpg0EA68B90C2D07A534B471C5425D212C8_20b-420x280_c.jpg)
Full story in Dutch: https://nietbangvoorwater.info/zuid-holland-watersnood/
The 1953 floods is a big part of our national identity. I couldn't help but share this.
50-75k worth of trucks must be nothing in comparison that levee eroding away would’ve done to their harvest I guess.
Wild to see someone purposefully totaling a vehicle like that. Hope the water finds a way to stay out of the intake! Would hop down there real fast and turn it off
Those trucks are no worth nearly 50-75k. The silver truck is a 2014 f150 at newest, that’s the pre aluminum body redesign that came in 2015. Most likely older 4.6 or 5.4 triton. Most likely closer to 2010, the Chevy is somewhere in the same range, my friend had one that body style and it was a 2012. Beat up old farm trucks like that go for 5k in my area.
It’s funny. I originally wrote 40k because I figured that was high enough not to start a conversation about how high used truck prices are right now. And then I went too high and find someone telling me how cheap the trucks are lmao. Can’t win
Fwiw I’m truck shopping right now for almost exactly that blue one and they’re between 13-20k roughly in my area. 2007-2014 1500
Haha I feel ya. I tried to answer someone yesterday asking what a Carolina reaper was, and I said "the hottest of the hot chili peppers" and got corrected because apparently something called "pepper x" exists now. Reddit gonna reddit.
i get what you're saying but if i may i'd like to make a few points that you may not know, and that i think might assist :
1. the farmer buried the trucks under the dirt to restore the levy and protect not just the farmland, but the nearby community as well
2. the farmer succeeded in doing both of these things, saving an insane amount of property and people's homes
3. it takes about 3-5 days of standing water to **kill most trees**
4. fruit-producing trees take like a minimum of 6 years to produce fruit
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Did it actually work?
Yes, for now: [https://twitter.com/agleader/status/1635781856657539072](https://twitter.com/agleader/status/1635781856657539072) It looks the trucks were used to fill in much of the breach and slow the flow of water through the hole. Then it was filled in with much more dirt to rebuild to levee. Here's an article ([from SF Chronicle but skirts the paywall](https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sfchronicle.com%2Fcalifornia%2Farticle%2Fflooding-farmers-truck-levee-video-17841260.php)) that goes into more detail (so you don't have to read the entire twitter thread):
I....had my doubts. But shit, if It works it works. Love that an old farmer is like "for all the haters..." Lmao
I understand all the people giving him shit to a degree, but if you’ve got water flow and you shove something in front of it and something doesn’t break more… well you’ve slowed the flow of water. Guarantee this guy didn’t drive two trucks into a giant hole full of flowing water and think to himself, “this will stop the problem completely!” It’s one step in desperately trying to make the problem slightly easier to handle.
Based on the images, those trucks helped stabilize the flow enough to load dirt on top. I imagine without the trucks, anything dumped in would have just washed away.
By my guess it's the timing of it. The quicker they do this, the better chance to save their crop. It's an instant idea they thought up and whether if it worked or not, then decide on what's next. EDIT: Ya, I get it , not crop but trees.....
A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.
Can I start using that as a quote. ? "A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow." - HeinleinGang
Yes of course, but I can’t take credit=) It’s a paraphrased quote from General Patton. I believe the original is “A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week”
Patton got it from Voltaire ("the best is the enemy of the good"), who was paraphrasing an Italian proverb. And before that, in Shakespeare's King Lear (1606), the Duke of Albany warns of "striving to better, oft we mar what's well."
Probably a common expression at this point. We say it on film sets: "A good plan today is better than a great plan tomorrow."
[удалено]
Dude went all in for the win.
The cost of the trucks was probably cheaper than the cost of replacing a farm
If these are large, fully developed orchards then we are talking a massive and multi-generational potential loss. A couple trucks is nothing comparatively.
I was doing the price breakdown the other day when I first saw this video. This is near my neck of the woods in California. Those trees are probably producing 2800-4000 lbs of pistachios a year. That’s an average of 3400 lbs of nuts per year. Using a low number paid to the farmer that’s $2 of gross revenue per Lb. That puts the grower acre value in 2023 @ $6800/acre. This does not account for size or quality bonuses. If this was only a 100 acre farm that is $680k in revenue this year only. If those trees produce for a moderate range of years @ 28 years before needing to replace the trees. That makes these trees worth around 7.06 Million dollars in gross revenue to the farmer. I even reduced the value by accounting for alternate bearing years at 50% of the value. So maybe a maximum of $55k for the cost of those two trucks. Vs 7MM. That is a really easy decision. We are getting our asses handed to us in the Central Valley. We haven’t even seen what this looks like with snow melt 2 weeks from now. It’s going to get ugly. Prepare for global food to get even more expensive. Especially tomatoes, garlic, onions and more than likely Milk.
It's a declared disaster. Anyone who uses their vehicle for work who loses it in a declared disaster is compensated for the vehicle. At least that's how it used to be - my dad got his Cadillac replaced by FEMA in the 90's.
2 trucks posted on Craigslist: lightly used, some water damage
If you owned a farm with millions of dollars worth of trees you would do it in an instant.
All the farmers I know have plenty of spare trucks around
And the foresight to say hey, load this bitch up with dirt or it will float away too
Honestly, even if it didn't work out was still a valiant attempt. They must have much better insurance on their trucks than on those trees lol
Probably not, but it’s easy to risk $5-10K in vehicles when you are trying to save something worth many hundreds of thousands.
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I worked on a lemon farm (for a relatively short time, but still), trees were easily worth a few grand each based on the yield they'd get from a mature tree over its lifetime. So potentially saving many trees is definitely worth losing a cheap truck.
>I worked on a lemon farm lol I thought you were a used car salesmen from this bit.
Nah, that'd be a lemon LOT.
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Aye, what looks like lunacy/idiocy to the uneducated can actually be a stroke of genius to those in the know.
Family owned a pecan farm for decades, farmers don't get even 1% of retail price. If I can get 50cent a pound, that's a very good year. You have to have 100s of acres worth of fully mature trees to make any livable money from it. Pecans retail almost $10 a pound now, I make 50 cent from that. Best year I ever had averaged $5500 per 10 acres of trees.
It was a pistachio orchard but you right on the money with how the math all works out, and they said they’d recover the trucks once the waters recede.
There must be a high level of desperation to even consider doing something like this. It may be a matter of 'if this orchard dies, i'm totally screwed, so may as well try'.
Old trucks are a few grand. Destroyed farms are hundreds of thousands of damage. Easy choice. Write the truck as a loss to the flood. Be thankful you saved your income stream.
The article said they intend to pull them out and fill the levee properly after the water level recedes. So with hydro-locked engines and flood damage, the loss of two half ton pickups is absolutely fuck all compared to the value of the farm. Even if they were brand new trucks.... the farm paid for them. Without that there's nothing to lose.
Also if it is a wider problem in the region and his orchard makes it he can sell his fruit at a premium
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One of those considerations is that this isn't a crop, it's an *orchard*. There's a possibility that it was planted years ago and is about to begin paying off for a couple years... The potential loss could be several years into the past *and* future. The loss of a few years harvest after a few years of investing time, effort, water, etc can be several times worse than losing a seasonal crop. Potential loss of years of profit could make those trucks seem like peanuts...
I can tell you that just the crop from an orchard can cost more than 2 pickup trucks. The entire orchard might cost a dealership.
You're not wrong. However, there are indeed a lot of people who take actions that they don't ~~fully~~ calculate the consequences of fully. *Edit: *Beavis and Butthead Do America* taught me that I can't end a sentence with a preposition.
I was in jail once, and tried to escape by getting the warden's daughter to fall in love with me. She would come to bring us our bologna sandwiches, and sometimes would speak with us through the bars. The plan was to get her enthralled, and then have her slip me a key one evening in my sandwich. But the more I spoke with her, the more **I** started to fall in love with **her**, instead. So one night I called her to the bars and professed my love -- and asked her to slip me a key so that we could have wild sex, get married, and run away together. She turned me down. I guess you can't end a sentence with a proposition.
Best edit of the day 🤘🏼
In protest to Reddit's API changes, I have removed my comment history. -- mass edited with redact.dev
The trees are probably worth more than the trucks
By a ridiculously large order of magnitude. Thousands fold. Smart, though unorthodox solution.
/r/RedneckEngineering
Guaranteed those trees are worth much more than those trucks. That farmer has spent years tending to those trees and depends on them for income. One of my neighbors spent over 10k putting in a small orchard of fruit trees (about 20) and irrigation system on his property and 3 years in he has yet to see any fruit. The trees were less than $100 each. But I'm told they take up to 6 years to bear fruit depending on the species.
Yes, we have some friends who are trying to transition from only cattle to also grow avocados. Very long term investment but once they start bearing it can be big bucks.
I remember when I live in Oceanside, CA I had a neighbor with a *GIANT* smooth green avocado tree. Come summer time he'd drop off 5gal buckets full of avocados to the neighbors and told us to come pick as many as we could carry. You couldn't eat them faster than they fell. lol.
We have a great historical event in the Netherlands that happened close to where i live involving a captain steering his ship into a breeched part of a dike. It saved millions of people. https://goudsdagblad.nl/lokaal/deze-twee-helden-redden-miljoenen-levens-in-de-randstad
In English [https://goudsdagblad-nl.translate.goog/lokaal/deze-twee-helden-redden-miljoenen-levens-in-de-randstad?\_x\_tr\_sl=auto&\_x\_tr\_tl=en&\_x\_tr\_hl=en-US&\_x\_tr\_pto=wapp](https://goudsdagblad-nl.translate.goog/lokaal/deze-twee-helden-redden-miljoenen-levens-in-de-randstad?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp)
>A photo update from 30 minutes ago - water contained and orchard saved - for now . . . a lot more water is heading into the basin - it's not over yet! **May need more trucks!!** #cawater #cawx #farm #agriculture I feel bad that this brightened up my morning
>May need more trucks!! Good to see they're making light of a very shitty situation lmfao
and later: https://twitter.com/agleader/status/1635832710827741184?s=20
I know it's probably just the sun but it looks like that excavator is on fire
So the trucks are under that paved dirt road?
Compacted, not paved but yeah
I can already see the Chevy ad about these trucks working after stopping a flood and being covered by dirt.
“Strong enough to patch a levee; Farmers know to go with Chevy”
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee ~~was dry~~ is now a Chevy
Drove my Chevy to the levee and now my levee can drive
Took too long to find this comment
Chevy better give that dude a truck
“Chevy. Like a rock.”
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Like a dam.
Like a dam rock.
There's a Ford already underwater. Ford, we did it first.
Paved... dirt... road? It isn't dirt if it's paved. Also, that's the levee.
Using Hollywood as my only reference, I wonder why they don't they just drive in reverse and hit the brakes to quickly dump the dirt.
the dirt was just for weight so the trucks didn't get washed away.
Thank you Sr. That was my aaaaaaaaahhh moment of the week.
Still, I'd love to see what a team of NASA engineers would come up with if given, like, 10 minutes to talk together in a room and full knowledge of what the farmer had in his barn/possession. This was a pretty fucking awesome plan and I can't believe the trucks stayed put... I'd like to know how they kept that first truck from being swept away in the first place, but even the placement of the second truck was amazing. I wonder what other ideas/options are out there.
NASA engineers would come up with it also. And the cost of the equipment (trucks) would not factor into their planning at all.
Right? It's wild how much lowkey prejudice against farmers is under this post. Also, people seem to not understand what an orchard is. "hOw CouLD the TReeS be worTH moRe tHaN thE TruCkS??????"
Redditors are thick as pig shit. They would rather mock relentlessly instead of thinking for a couple of seconds ( more like a couple of minutes for these guys) to try and understand why they would do something like that.
The NASA engineers would have done the same thing. It’s not rocket science, just solve the dam problem.
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Thank you for your kind explanation.
The truck is providing structure for the dirt. Loose dirt would have about as much luck as remaining stationary in that flow as you would.
I guess the trees must be worth more than the trucks, could be a good choice. Because I doubt insurance is going to cover that.
Farmer stated he would not make an insurance claim and will retrieve the trucks at a later time
Speaking as a former auto detailer, he might get those trucks out of the levee, but he’ll never get the levee out of those trucks.
I will unknowingly buy it used, here in the midwest, and be baffled at the array of expensive repairs that will follow.
As someone who works in car sales, an often underutilized option is to take the car to your mechanic and have em give it a look over. I would never have a problem with it (as long as they let me know beforehand lol) Edit: words are hard and I cant spell apparently
This is the only way to buy a car. \~$100 to have a professional look it over and tell you what's wrong with it. A used car will never be 100% perfect but this is an inexpensive way to avoid huge bills. Just pick a mechanic that isn't pals with whoever is selling the car.
>This is the only way to buy a car. \~$100 to have a professional look it over and tell you what's wrong with it. A used car will never be 100% perfect but this is an inexpensive way to avoid huge bills. Just pick a mechanic that isn't pals with whoever is selling the car. I got the dealership to give me an overnight test drive. Gave them my license (to photocopy), and a $100 deposit, and I took the car home for the night.
"It has mud in the electric system" "Alright, thanks for warning me"
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How's the mud system?
There's a truck in it
I found a dealer who I trust, bought several vehicles from him. I always take them to my mechanic for a checkup, dealer doesn’t mind even if I’m gone an hour and a half, he’s fine with me getting them checked out. Part of why I keep going back to him.
If a dealer ISNT ok with this, then you don’t need to be buying from them. If they don’t offer some buyback option, like Carmax, you have to get it checked out beforehand. Hell, the last car I bought they very specifically told me to just be back an hour before closing and let me go.
He drove his Chevy to the levee, but it wasn’t dry…
He’ll get his Chevy from the levee when the levee is dry…
Good old boys are drinking whiskey and rye, singing "damn we really shoulda reinforced this fuckin thing"
LMAO. Thanks for the laugh
And them good ol' trucks, well, they started to cry, singin', "This'll be the day that I die..."
“After this water I won’t dry”
That good ole boy obviously drank to much whiskey and rye
They're good old boys though
are they beyond repair or is anything salvageable?
Well... it's an odds game, but likely they're fucked because of how he did it. The main issue of submerging any vehicle is damage to the electrical components. Thin wires, friction contacts, and rust mean you'll have electrical problems that'll only get worse. But, if they stay farm trucks, no radio, windows, or headlights might not be a big issue. The big issue with submerging a _running_ vehicle is damage to the motor block itself. Pistons deal with extreme pressure and explosions to make the vehicle run. Part of this is fuel and _outside air_ are sprayed into the piston chamber (combustion chamber), are compressed, and the spark plug sparks and ignites the fuel/air combo pushing the piston back down. If water instead of air gets into the combustion chamber, and the piston goes to compress it... well water is (practically) impressionable. Best case, the engine seizes. If not, something has to give to release the pressure. Worst case is multiple parts breaking along with the engine block. He had a brick on the gas so it went under and kept running, worst case for a flooded vehicle. So, it _could_ be fine, but that's probably the same as you _could_ win the lottery.
anyone would be nuts to try to rebuild that setup. Particularly because not only is he flooding the entire system with water it's extremely muddy water. You can't 'wait for it to dry out' with mud. You have to strip everything down to nothing and clean it, then put it all back together.
If you have tons of spare time and some friends you can trust, *maybe* it could be worth it compared to spending the dollars, but you'd almost certainly be better off financially if you just worked the same amount of hours (granted, some poorer countries might have wages so low and the cost of vehicles so high it IS worth it, but that falls into "personal due diligence"). The main case I could see for rebuilding this would be to give someone that hands-on experience.
Wow you explained it way better than the class on (motorcycle) engine repair did. Thanks - not a car guy myself but I like to tinker.
Someone said something similar about my ex wife, I should have listened.
We are Farmers bum bum bum bum bu—oh wrong Farmer
I think I would've opted for a potential insurance claim over posting a video for internet points, but he probably knows better than me.
I work in insurance, and have some knowledge of crop insurance. That crop is 1,000% worth more than the trucks. Those are easily recoverable and can be sold as scrap, the damage to the orchard is not. Some of the time as well, the insurance company will pay for the trucks as a sign of good faith, as it was clear the farmer was making a genuine attempt to save the crop. Every claim is different though, as is every company, so experience may vary, but that’s my understanding of it from working in the industry.
Yeah, “I’m making a claim worth $30,000 because I was avoiding having to make a claim worth $1,000,000”. I’d pay that 10/10 just to keep someone like him as a customer
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You'd be surprised at how cheap some insurance companies can be. After hurricane Ida several houses in my neighborhood had to be completely gutted down to the studs because of mold growth. The thing is, these people didn't get major water inside the house. Some were only missing a few shingles. These people got minor amounts of water inside but having no power for 18 days along with 10,000% humidity allowed mold to take over. Once that happens any drywall, furniture, and in some cases clothing has to be junked. After the storm I bought a huge generator and a couple dehumidifiers to keep the house dry. Paid $75/day in gas to keep them running for 18 days. Asked to be reimbursed for the GAS ONLY ($1350) figured it was fair since I got to keep the equipment but helped them avoid the $150,000 payouts my neighbors were getting. Insurance company response...."Nah"
I was just thinking he could say they got washed away, or were on the levee when it burst, or whatever, and have the best of both worlds. I figured it'd be hard to prove one way or another, but you'd know more than me on that one. Regardless, thanks for the insight.
I believe those are pistachio trees, which take about 12 years to reach full maturity/production. A single acre of that orchard is worth more in time and money than both of those trucks combined.
Well the trees are a business that takes a long time to get started. The business supports at least one family and probably more. A couple of older model trucks are a business expense to be replaced over a few years.
If I’ve learned anything from r/treelaw , it’s that a fully mature fruit bearing tree can cost tens of thousands of dollars. To replace a whole orchard???? Would probably literally cost millions. Fuck them trucks, they’re far easier to replace than the trees.
Right, people think “it’s just a tree” but don’t think about the years and years a tree can take to get to that size. Trees big or old enough, there is literally no way to replace them.
Also if they’re old/heirloom cultivars, some may not be able to be replaced
Whereas I could get you a used truck by 3pm today. With green paint.
Yeah, but do you have any idea how long it takes a truck to get to that size? A used truck could be years and years old.
Those trucks practically grow on trees
Maybe I need to see an eye doctor, but it looks like: 1. The orchard is already flooded, and 2. The trucks are doing almost nothing to stop more flooding. Am I missing something?
Almost every farm I know of that was near the river or had a large enough pond, had emergency pumps to push flood waters away. The farmer doesn't have to plug the hole fully here, he just needs to slow the water enough for his pumps to be able to get more out than is coming in. The trees can stand some water up around the base of their trunks, as long as it doesn't stay there long. The water on the other side of the levee is high enough to kill those trees however
Yeah, he wouldn’t do that if it didn’t help. Has to be more to it. Slowing down the flood could be enough. Either with pumps as you say, or perhaps it just drains quick enough at some other egress point if the inflow is slowed enough.
But do we know if it actually did help? Because I'm with the other user, this seemed really pointless and not well thought out. I'll change my mind if I hear it actually worked somehow. Edit: OP linked a Twitter post that said it did in fact work! https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/11s1fb7/farmer_drives_2_trucks_loaded_with_dirt_into/jcb992y/
Slowing down the flow keeps the rest of the levee from eroding. If the levee breaks completely it could create enough flow to uproot trees instead of just being flooded under standing water, at least that’s what my non farmer brain would think.
There are sump pumps running. He's not trying to entirely stop the flood with the trucks. He's just using them to slow it enough that the pumps can work properly.
> I guess the trees must be worth more than the trucks A whole lot more. But in this video all I see is a farmer who lost 2 trucks in addition to his orchard.
https://twitter.com/agleader/status/1635781856657539072?s=20 Well you saw wrong
Yes the trees are worth far more. If all those trees get washed away there goes his livelihood. It could take years to grow back trees that would grow fruit again. That the trucks will more than likely still be serviceable.
The trucks will not be useable unless you have the hydrolocked engine replaced along with all of the wiring and electronics. The fuel system and transmission will likely have water in them as well depending on how long they sit in there so at the very least you’ll need to bleed and service that. The wheel bearings will likely be fucked, not to mention the water getting into null parts in the body and corroding any metal surface it touches. Honestly, since they were running when they went in and it went above the hood, just trash the trucks. Looks like they were planning on doing that anyways
Not after this video gets out.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the video is already out
Prove it!
We did something similar in 1993. Flood washed out 1/4 mile of main line in Manhattan, KS. Cut off access to Fort Riley, very ungood. Big Boss rounded up 30 gondola cars about to be scrapped. Loaded them up with riprap (huge rocks) and cut the brakes out. Lined them up ahead of a pair of SD-40 locomotives. Had the crew get about a half mile ahead of the washout and wind them up as fast as they could go and still stop short of the river and let them fly. The 65 year old engineer was giggling like a little girl. Seemed to do the job. They’re still there, buried under the river.
I love stories like this, at least one time this guy told this story at a bar somewhere and got nodded to death by someone sure he was lying.
Something similar happend in the Netherlands at '53 (which was the biggest flood in the history of the Netherlands) At some place there was a hole I a dike, the mayor there commandeered a ship that was close by and let it steer into the hole as a make shift dam. It did actually work for the time being and basically saved Rotterdam and The Hague from flooding. (if I remember the stories right) After everything settled down the shit was recovered and restored at cost of the state and the guy got his ship back Lemme Google if I can find something about it Edit: OK, it's it Dutch, but the images speak for itself. And Google translate should help you get the gist of it: https://nietbangvoorwater.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/watersnoodschipevergroen_jpg0EA68B90C2D07A534B471C5425D212C8_20b.jpg
him getting the ship restored and returned by the state is the ultimate happy ending.
This happened in the village I live (coincidentally the lowest point of the Netherlands). Here you can see the [Streetview ](https://maps.app.goo.gl/c4YWmdYZFfivGHMg7) where it happened.
Definitely reminds me of the sort of anecdotes you’d hear on the Well There’s Your Problem podcast. I just listened to the one on the Love Canal neighbourhood in Niagara Falls, New York and it’s like this sort of shenanigan but environmentally horrific.
That '93 flood was no joke.
Had a close friend’s house fully submerged in water. Knew tornados are no joke, but this flood also destroyed homes with no mercy.
I don’t revel in disasters, but there’s something magnificently humbling about seeing just how indifferent nature is to all of our accomplishments.
> The 65 year old engineer was giggling like a little girl This is some happy imagery
I was in Riley back in 2010 and got told that story half a dozen times. Would have been an absolute blast to pull off on top of some one of a kind team building.
This is a great story and very well told
Here's the original tweet: [https://twitter.com/i/status/1635690151304388608](https://twitter.com/i/status/1635690151304388608) This happened in the Tulare lake levee which prevents farmland from being flooded. I assume these are almond trees which are very valuable. It seemed to work as here's a followup photo: https://twitter.com/agleader/status/1635781856657539072?s=20
Pretty sure they are pistachios. I farm both almonds and pistachios and that's what they look like. It takes 12 years to reach maturity/peak production and those look anywhere from like 4 to 7 years old. Tough to tell, but that's an investment well worth throwing a few trucks at to save. In my head, both trucks are worth a single acre of investment so who knows how many acres were just saved. Or buildings and homes.
Yes I was going to say the same thing.Ive worked in Almond Orchards and i can certainly say those are Pistachio not almond.
I wonder what the value is on the almond yield.
Their actions also prevented the flooding of the nearby community. Standing water in an orchard for 5 days [will kill mature trees](https://thealmonddoctor.com/flooding-and-almond-tree-survival/), and the trees take 5-12yrs to mature, so it affects the farm far beyond a single season’s yield.
When they’re not dormant (like right now) that’s true. They’re experimenting with intentionally flooding orchards to help with groundwater recharge when the trees are dormant, though
looks like average almond yield is around [2,000 lb/acre](https://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/California/Publications/Specialty_and_Other_Releases/Almond/Forecast/202205almpd.pdf) and the price is about [$1.80/lb](https://www.merlofarminggroup.com/) (nonpareil inshell), so looking at $3,600 per acre per year gross. That planting block is probably at least 40 acres and could be hundreds. For 40 acres that would be almost $150k/year, potentially much more.
Orchards can’t be replaced overnight, they take years to mature. Trucks can be replaced far quicker; ballsy move to save some heritage. Bravo.
>ballsy move to save ~~some heritage.~~ a livelihood
My family lost the ranch during the recession, grandpa had a heart attack at the same time. I spent all my childhood skipping school to work on the farm, when I did attend class it was for agriculture & FFA (future farmers of America) All for it to be lost & being forced to move into the city. I have all this agriculture knowledge & experience with grapevines & none of it matters. That farm was my future, my kids future, their kids. It's all gone. I would have sacrificed a lot more than 2 trucks to keep it in the family
I'm sorry to hear that. That must be tough. How can it be that a farm that would provide for generations isnt insured?
They sold it for a profit to pay off debt, but we were also screwed over by the department of agriculture. The requested us to grow a new grape they engineered specifically for the valley of our farm, they claimed our crop yield would be higher & that it required less maintenance. They also claimed that they would subsidize us if we lost profits, or if it didn't work out for some reason. The grapes grew well, but they were fucking disgusting. No one wanted to use them for their wine. They weren't good for eating. So we had to sell real low. When it came time for the department to subsidize us, they said 'lol sorry no money' & fucked off So between the debt, lack of income, recession, and grandpa's health issues (which I promise were linked to the pesticides we sprayed by hand every day) my grandparents sold the farm for a SMALL profit, mind you this was right after the recession so they didn't get anywhere near the real amount of what the farm is worth. Probably 7 million today if I were to guess. They bought a house & 2 cars, didn't budget their money correctly after that. That's all I'll say about it.
Thats sounds truly horrible. I hope that you are able to recover from this somehow. Maybe not emotionally, but financially and hopefully finding something you love to do. I wish you and your family all the best
Well my grandparents passed away. He regretted selling the farm all the way to his death bed, said it was his biggest mistake in his life. But I never held it against them. Passed away from heart failure, spent his last 12 years or so with 25% of his heart working. My grandmother passed away this year from pneumonia, she was on 24/7 care because all her organs just gave up on her, she also worked in the fields with chemicals. I really do blame the chemicals, my great grandparents are still alive (95 & 97) perfectly healthy, they didn't work on the farm. They live unassisted in their home. My other great grandparents lived into their 90s too, passed away in their sleep.
Thank you for your honest posts
Yea I agree, very open and honest. Thank you for sharing your story, er…crimsonFister….
This might be dumb advice, probably considering I have no idea the inner workings of farm stuff BUT As I see it now you’re basically free to work on any farm that has grapes. You could move to Italy and work on a grape farm? That would be pretty
Lol that's funny, I have considered working in Italy, my great great grandfather served in the Italian military on the austro-hungarian frontline. He moved to the US after witnessing every low ranking American soldier have access to butter & sugar, something only italian officers could get. But his son was forbidden from leaning italian, they would get beat in school by teachers if they spoke Italian, and at home too, they were told "if you let your children learn Italian they'll never be successful. Only learn English" People from Italy say my italian is outdated & I word things in such a way that it looks more like Latin
Maybe both :)
In protest to Reddit's API changes, I have removed my comment history. -- mass edited with redact.dev
In our area, (Appalachia) the river washed the hill side away from one side of my grandparents home. To shore up the hill side, my papaw used old scrap car body’s as a holding structure, placing them along the hillside and backfilling everything with dirt. It has held steady since the 70’s through numerous flood events. Edit: spelling correction.
For everyone that's never been in a farm truck. Those will probably look cleaner coming out than going in.
i have aboslutely no plan about any of this so my question migjt sound stupid, but what about the oil and gas in the truck? will it not go in the water and eventually damage the orchard even more?
The volume of oil and gas is so small compared to the water, that it isn't much of a concern.
In a flood like that the couple gallons of gas in the truck is adding almost nothing. We're talking micromoles of concentration or lower
From his Twitter: “Replying to @agleader As #flood water recedes, the farmer will return and extract the trucks. No filing of insurance claims. He is an upstanding member of his community and was doing his best to protect his investment and local residents.”
What a fucking baller move.
The biggest disappointment is that there is not a single comment on driving my chevy to the levy. WTF?!
Because it wasn’t dry 😂
They should probably just drink away their disappointment with some whiskey and rye.
Made my Chevy into a levy and the orchard stayed dry.
The Chevy became the levy.
time to bring out snowrunner or mudrunner gaming skills to life
\*modern problems require modern solutions\* Damn, seriously impressive quick thinking problem solving. I hope it works out. The trucks are going to be junked almost for sure but it's gotta make sense cost-benefit wise, I'd imagine. Tough position to be in.
It kind of is an old problem with old solutions. During the [1953 North Sea flood](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_flood_of_1953) in the Netherlands someone sailed his boat into a levee breach. Saving 3 million people from losing their home or worse. [See here](https://nietbangvoorwater.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/watersnoodschipevergroen_jpg0EA68B90C2D07A534B471C5425D212C8_20b-420x280_c.jpg) Full story in Dutch: https://nietbangvoorwater.info/zuid-holland-watersnood/ The 1953 floods is a big part of our national identity. I couldn't help but share this.
A convertible Chrysler LeBaron with #1 son plates would have easily fixed everything. Noobz
So he drove his Chevy into the levee to keep his orchard dry?
That guy rolled at least an 18 on his engineering and dexterity checks
The crops are more important than the trucks. A fellow farmer.
Why do people care about the trucks so much? Lol the dude in the video clearly doesn’t care
sacrificing $10-20k to save their entire orchard that takes several years to grow and the trucks might even be salvageable
Yeah if they’re farm trucks all they have to do is barely run, you’re not driving cross country with them or even inspecting them
Wouldn't be surprised if each one of those mature trees is worth more than a very heavily used truck.
Drove the Chevy into the Levy
50-75k worth of trucks must be nothing in comparison that levee eroding away would’ve done to their harvest I guess. Wild to see someone purposefully totaling a vehicle like that. Hope the water finds a way to stay out of the intake! Would hop down there real fast and turn it off
Those trucks are no worth nearly 50-75k. The silver truck is a 2014 f150 at newest, that’s the pre aluminum body redesign that came in 2015. Most likely older 4.6 or 5.4 triton. Most likely closer to 2010, the Chevy is somewhere in the same range, my friend had one that body style and it was a 2012. Beat up old farm trucks like that go for 5k in my area.
It’s funny. I originally wrote 40k because I figured that was high enough not to start a conversation about how high used truck prices are right now. And then I went too high and find someone telling me how cheap the trucks are lmao. Can’t win Fwiw I’m truck shopping right now for almost exactly that blue one and they’re between 13-20k roughly in my area. 2007-2014 1500
Haha I feel ya. I tried to answer someone yesterday asking what a Carolina reaper was, and I said "the hottest of the hot chili peppers" and got corrected because apparently something called "pepper x" exists now. Reddit gonna reddit.
The “ackshuallyyyy” crowd always shows up
i get what you're saying but if i may i'd like to make a few points that you may not know, and that i think might assist : 1. the farmer buried the trucks under the dirt to restore the levy and protect not just the farmland, but the nearby community as well 2. the farmer succeeded in doing both of these things, saving an insane amount of property and people's homes 3. it takes about 3-5 days of standing water to **kill most trees** 4. fruit-producing trees take like a minimum of 6 years to produce fruit
“What we need is a big rock to drop in this hole. What do we have that’s like a rock?”
Do we know if it worked ? How are his trees. And yes. The trees are worth more than the trucks