I did. My first time behind the wheel of one of those was when I was 19 years of age. It was just as easy as driving a car. The only difference is this. You have to understand that one must be cautious when backing up. And you must also know that you cannot whip it into a curve or turn the exact same way you can a regular automobile. Its higher off the ground yes. But it is also built differently and much heavier. What do you think ? Have you ever drove a pickup truck before. Best story wins. 🙂
Not a pickup but over the years I have owned two long-wheelbase Landrovers, four 1-tonne vans and an ex-ambulance.
It's always a matter of knowing what each vehicle can do, and critically, what it can't do.
The biggest hurdle I found was judging where the vehicles' corners are relatively to their surroundings. In fact those large, older things with very rectangular bodies were considerably easier to judge than most modern cars whose external surfaces are largely invisible to the driver, and whose "horizons" are a long way beyond.
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I've sometimes wondered how railway locomotive drivers in the past (and nowadays with preserved traction) judged where to stop when the cab was at the back, far behind the vehicle's front buffer-beam.
The visibility was limited even further laterally by the long boiler on a steam-locomotive, and the machinery compartment on a single-cab Diesel one. I have never understood why the single, rear cab format on Diesels persisted so needlessly, for so long, in some countries.
I read recently about English Electric's 1950s development of a gas-turbine powered locomotive, which failed to interest British Railways in buying them. I suspect one major objection was it having only a single cab, and that at the back, while BR was already using double-ended Diesel and electric locomotives that both give excellent visibility for driving, and do not need turning round for the return trip.
Meanwhile, the car manufacturers went the other way: placing the driver so far back from a windscreen overlooking a long, invisibly sloping mass of steel that judging the position of the front nearside corner is a matter of luck.
The ambulance was heavy, and heavy to drive, with no power steering, and though it had a sychromesh gearbox the gear-lever was a great big wand about three feet long!
The Landrovers were not as heavy, though still all-manual.
@Poppies Ah, yes. Those were the days. I got to relive it in middle age when a relative offered to take my parents and I back to the old cattle ranch of my early childhood. My parents squeezed into the cab with him; my late wife and I got to ride in the back. Those bumps and jolts going down the dry Five Dog Run to the old farm house felt a lot different a half-century later.
And I have driven a pick-up, but it was the small size VW one so I don't know if that counts. It actually was my wife's car; her choice.
I learned to drive in one like this. Manual transmission no power steering. Since then I've driven all kinds of things. Articulated loaders a semi truck a dozer
