Extensive coverage is given to truck beauty pageants, where contestants strive for the honor of having the most unconventional conventional. Readers could not but be envious of the prestige that attends the keeping of such deluxe equipment. Lenders offered creative financing and longer terms to ease the burden of purchase. And many such trucks were purchased, and they all ran in the left lane. What one sees, watching such trucks go by, is the ascendancy of style over substance.
Many fleets do likewise with company drivers, trading off a lesser paycheck for a big hood.
But now we have a crisis, and the chicken lights are coming home to rust. In Wall Street vernacular, this would be called a market correction. Despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, it is a good thing. Good managers, of one truck or 100, will survive the crisis. Whatever attrition occurs will be consistent with the law of natural selection the strong will survive.