Its a very basic 3-wheel. One at the front, 2 at the back, tippy on the corners so go really really slowly around those corners and brake on the straight lines. Notoriously tippy, and often caused injuries, flinging the driver into the street, possibly with the vehicle on top of him. No A/C, No heater, and the engine under the seat. The original ones were powered by a 2-stroke 200cc scooter engine. These are still made.
To improve the design, competitors later added a wheel and a seat to turn it into a truck, but kept the format ultralight, ultraslow, and offered an insulated box on the back for food delivery. They only go 30 mph and creep up hills about as fast as you can walk with such a tiny engine. However, they are practical for around-town delivery and repairmen with their tools and minimal materials in the back. If they need more, order a truck to deliver it.
Many Japanese truck companies make these simple utility vehicles, and they are imported and sold in the USA as farm vehicles, illegal for use on proper paved road since they don't meet DOT safety standards and hold up traffic too. Still, as the population ages and converts their retirement savings into ever-higher medical bills, fewer people have money to pay for services, and what they have isn't much. If you want to sell a service, you have to operate cheaply. So far, the answer has been to cut staffs and overwork what's left, insisting on ever-longer laundry lists of skills, many of them certified at employee cost, but eventually you end up with underskilled staff lying about certifications they can't afford and still work at the low wages offered. Quality takes a hit when you can't pay your employees for it.
If you do have a viable market for a business, avoid loans, build your business as cheaply as you possibly can, and watch out for overinvestment caused by optimism or materialism. Telling yourself a fancy tool will make your job more efficient is only sometimes true. If you notice local gardening crews you'll see its very basic stuff, most of it well worn, and done as cheaply as possible.
Garden services from the back of a pickup or a towed trailer with a crew of two or three working different houses, swapping equipment between them for best efficiency and lowest cost. The poorer the customer base gets, the less they can pay for.
Maid services running from station wagons or hatchbacks with the best possible fuel economy and the mops and brooms and vacuum cleaners on their sides, with a magnet stuck on the sides to identify the company and advertise their business. Cuts down on the police calls about burglars too.
IT making housecalls or doing installations should be using hatchbacks or even scooters. Real IT often use tablet PCs to read the Wifi signal, the rest is either online or in a thumbdrive, since those hold libraries of software and upload faster than a CDROM.
I see a potential market in grocery delivery, since the elderly eventually give up their licenses. Buying their groceries and delivering them to their doors is a viable job, provided the distance doesn't wreck your profits. Charging per mile is important. Maintaining your vehicle and paying your insurance is important too. Remember that if you operate your vehicle in a commercial capacity, your insurance rates go way up. It may bankrupt your business, even if you have no accidents.
A dumb little truck that costs little money to buy, and goes really slowly on those secondary roads is the answer to Japan's poverty, or at least allows it to continue. It lets tiny businesses move repairmen around, make deliveries, carry small amounts of stuff from place to place very short distances in narrow streets, cheap. Big trucks cost a lot more to do the same thing faster and using more fuel.
Have you heard of the Keystone Pipeline? Recently, the PM of Canada complained that the USA has to make a decision about allowing it or not. Its not a simple problem, oddly enough. For once I understand the current administration's ambivalence to it. The basic idea is a pipeline from the Canadian oil sands in Alberta, down through the USA to Galveston's refineries. The catch is, American Oil Companies plan to export the gasoline for higher profit, mainly to Europe, who can pay through the nose for it. The initial claim about selling those products to Americans to drop the price of commuter gas? NOPE. Its about overseas profits. And it gets better. In irritation, the Canadians are building their own pipeline out to Vancouver to sell to Chinese oil tankers so they can bargain on the price rather than suffer the NAFTA deal hurting their profits. So really expect your gasoline price to rise. It is coming. With that in mind, high fuel efficiency vehicles make excellent sense. If you must go further and faster than "around town delivery" you're back to dealing with conventional cars, and their costs, but there are some efficient options which can keep up with traffic.
One of the nice things about the hot hatchback is their fuel consumption varies by how hard you put your foot in it. The little Ford Fiesta ST is rated for 35 mpg Hwy, 50% better than the Subaru WRX, but both have a turbo charger and both are known to be fast. If you were a courier kind of person, carrying stuff on paved roads, the Ford Fiesta would be fine and its a fun drive with its stick shift and 196 BHP engine. If you get into gravel and ice, the Subaru would be better, provided you mount studded snow tires when using those roads. Some police ticket for studded tires, because the studs damage pavement, but it depends where you are and how obvious you are about it. I wonder if you can get a permit for it?
The mini trucks of my youth mostly got lowered and given stupid wheels and huge stereos when I was a teenager. Eventually the fools doing this wrecked their trucks and the breed vanished, along with people who drove them. The downside is all those trucks were pretty much bought up for the fad and died with the fad. I wonder if they've been melted down and made into refrigerators? It would sort of figure.
Someday, we'll get creative about our vehicles again, and stop worshiping at the altar of traffic safety, learning to accept risk like normal people should. Life isn't safe. It can be SLOW, however, and a tiny Japanese delivery truck might be in your future. I wonder if the current car companies can imagine selling small cheap slow trucks again? There's less profit in it than the monster trucks they sell now, but still, CHEAP and SLOW get the job done. A gardener doesn't need a fast truck. Meet the market, Big 3. I suppose they'll argue that 4 door hatchbacks are close enough, and maybe they are. The Ford Focus RS is big enough with the back seat folded down, to hold a fair bit of stuff. Be reasonable about this, and remember that if you can't see around the corner you might get a surprise. Be safe, but not stupid about it. Life has to be worth living, and cars are best that are fun to drive, not just economical.
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