The world wasn't designed for vehicles with trailers. It's kind of a crock if you ask me.
But we're not about to unhitch the trailer every time we need to squeeze our truck into a tight spot just because the civil engineer was a narcissistic tool who drove a compact car.
Think about it. Where was the last place you've seen parking lots with designated trailer parking? Rest stops. Do you realize how long of a walk it is from a rest stop to the nearest cell phone store? Not cool.
And what about the fast-food drive thru? I'm no stranger to dragging a trailer though the line at McDonald's. My motto is "If I can make the corner without paint coming off the building or trailer, go for it." You'd be surprised at how visibly distraught the guy squeezed into an '84 Corolla behind me looks as he does the math on how much quicker his quarter-pounder with cheese would hit his face were my 24-foot trailer not in front of him.
Hey, don't blame me. I could just park way out back and walk in, but don't I have every right to pull up next to a tiny window and have lunch handed to me in a paper sack?
My real beef is with those places that have drive-thru lanes that look like slot car tracks and are impossible to drag a trailer through. If my town's rock-climbing gym is required to have a wheelchair ramp out front, then dammit, Taco Bell should be required to have a straight drive-thru lane.
On that note, is it really that wrong to have pulled straight into a bank teller window with a trailer in tow, do my business and then back it out the way I came in because it's too wide to fit through the concrete pillars? That's what happens when your lobby doesn't open for another half hour. However, I do owe an apology to the six cars behind me when I pulled a dually into the automatic carwash entrance and had to back out a few weeks ago. You'd think the guy who took my money five cars back would have mentioned something about it not fitting at the time. But that was totally my bad. I'm just glad I wasn't pulling a trailer then, too. Because I know he wouldn't have caught onto that one either.
Here's another case of blatant anti-trailerism: Say you're rolling up a two-lane on ramp that merges into a single lane, and the guy in the blue Scion who's been tailgating you through the last four stop lights swings around you to "blow your doors off" now that we've both hit the open interstate. What this genius fails to realize is the difference between torque and horsepower, and that despite how frickin fast the Scion looked in the TV commercial, you could put his car on your trailer and still cover the full length of the ramp quicker than the thing would ever do on its own. But, failing to realize that, he is now neck and neck with the trailer's tandem axles and is about to get another lesson in physics: mass wins.
And we all know that some people are waaay smarter than us because they bought a hybrid, and if we were decent people who really cared, we should destroy these loud, stinky fuel-guzzling behemoths and go green. But do you really think that I could drag this 12,000-pound load around with a hatchback golf cart? Really? If that holier-than-everyone logic held true, than we could start trucking in vegan TV dinners and brown kaki cargo shorts on fleets of Chevy Volts, right? Yes sir, your freight will be here on Tuesday of 2017.
Oh, and the contractor who installed your energy-saving windmill could tow his backhoe over behind his Nissan Leaf. Or maybe instead carry the car in the backhoe's bucket. That counts, doesn't it?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go get a haircut. And it's a seven-mile walk from the nearest rest stop.