G. R. Whale
Whale’s first work for the TDR appeared in issue 2. He has written on cars, trucks, RVs, the occasional boat and airplane, and won awards for it. In and out of the automotive press he’s been breaking parts for 33 years and writing about it for 20; he’s been a pessimist way longer than that. He admits to being expert at nothing more than filling in circles with a #2 pencil.
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The Double Standard: Does Everybody Do It?
We all know everybody does bad things to and with their truck…it’s the All-American nature of pickups. What helps the TDR far more than you might imagine is the lack of a double standard. You know it better by this statement: “I am my own warranty station.”
One of the first magazines I worked for had standards and laid it out plain: When we accidentally overloaded something, as when I put a GM dually 64 pounds over GVWR with a camper (intending to break something, and we did), we printed it. And if a smooth-idling, normally-aspirated small-block made 600+ hp on straight gasoline on the dyno, I was happy to add “once” and acknowledge what else happened on the dyno. And some readers called and continued asking questions until they heard the answer they wanted to hear…wonder if they’re still on hold.
A few trailers later in life I worked for a magazine that had double standards. We didn’t test anything overweight, but if the boss liked you he’d put your 1,100-pounds-over-GVWR camper/truck combo on their TV show. If your full-time 35-foot fifth-wheel carried only 600 pounds of payload, and you were friends of Mr. Editor, you and you alone were allowed to add a comment that it would carry 400 pounds more if the water tank contained only 20 gallons. The double standard kept me from adding, “so would every other trailer.” Ask about overloading and the reply was “everybody does it”—indeed, Mr. Editor claimed the weight of his own Dodge/camper rig at 1,000-1,500 pounds over GVWR.
When I asked about getting a proper driver’s license, the reply was “You’re not going to get stopped, everybody does it.” So we’ll continue to test truck/trailer rigs we’re not legally licensed to drive, as will two of the contributors who are both ex-law enforcement and didn’t know the rules until we told them. But their double standard maintains you should have the appropriate license and/or endorsements.
Other powerful advertisers had their own double standard, as we would use their numbers for performance part(s) evaluations. Although Mr. Editor. would steadfastly maintain that we weren’t just gonna use their numbers, I more than once had to point out “You just did.”
So far I’ve avoided that with the TDR. I hope it stays that way.
