Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 06-11-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

No unemployment for union strikers? Could be, that, and lots of killing in the local headlines, yikes. Eric Peters at EP Autos dot com and the cheap japanese trucks permitted in Oregon, Insurance, latest review on the 2025 Explorer and more.

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Clauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clauserdrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. So glad to have you here this morning. It's 12 minutes after 6 wheels up Wednesday. Eric Peters will be joining me in about 20 minutes. A lot to talk about in the transportation world.

It's digging a lot into the insurance cost and various other things, afflicting the ability to have a vehicle. And we'll also get the latest in the politics of the cars and all the rest of it, including the ability that the Oregon State Legislature, you know, granting the ability to buy these little foreign trucks, these little tiny foreign trucks, kind of like Toyota's, what do they call, KEI, K-E-E, something like that. We'll get the latest on that also. It's like, oh, thank you, thank you, state legislature. You let us, you actually permit us to be able to purchase something that we need, that we want, that we want, rather than what you want to give us, which is something good and hard,

really. Speaking of something that was going to be given to us good and hard, we get a lot of that out of the state legislature lately, I wanted to revisit a story that I ended up talking about last week. And this had to do with the vote to pass it out of committee, that bill which would give union representatives, people on strike, unions going on strike and other the vote to pass it out of committee, that bill which would give union representatives, people on strike, unions going on strike and other people would have the right to, including taxpayer, taxpayer paid people, you know, public employees. Public employees could strike, rather, yeah, this is

the way it was going to work. Public employees and unionized employees could go on strike and then force the unemployment situation, the unemployment fund, to pay them. So in other words, we will pay workers to argue with bosses, including the taxpayers, when the taxpayers are the bosses. I mean, it is so corrupt. And that's why I had termed it last week, And that's why I had termed it last week, Look for the union label when you are buying an Oregon Democrat politician. I thought they should rewrite that old 1970s era commercial

to do that. Look for the union label when you're buying an Oregon Democrat. Well, apparently, the unions haven't brought enough money to buy the Oregon Democrats because that bill to grant the striking workers unemployment pay has failed the final vote in the Oregon Senate. It's 1514. So it was passed out of committee. And what happened is that state Senator Mark Meek, a Democrat from Gladstone, had voted in favor of the bill when it first came before them in March, but there were some changes made in the House. The bill needed another approval from the Senate in order to go

to Governor Kotech's desk. It failed at 1514, and along with Meek going against it, three other Democrats voted alongside Republicans against the bill. OPB reporting, Senator Jeff Goldin of Ashland. Senator Goldin actually voted against providing the unemployment for striking union workers. Yeah. Amazing. So we had Jeff Goldin, Janine Solomon of Hillsboro, and Courtney Narren Mislin of Wilsonville. Only Meek though, who was a sponsor of that bill, changed his position. Here is the deal though. There is talk that the lawmakers will consider slashing total benefits workers could get in order to revive the bill. So it might get revived and it would have

maybe fewer unemployment benefits. So you get paid less money to argue with your boss and fight with your boss. But I thought that was interesting. So look for the union label when you're buying an Oregon Democrat. Maybe what happened is SIU didn't provide enough cash. They didn't bring enough cash to the kitty and then maybe Jeff Goldin would change his mind. Although to be fair, Jeff just said he didn't think it was going to help employers down here.

In fact, he actually was concerned that it would hurt government employees too, or the actual governments down here, having to pay the people to go on strike and then you would have some more of that. So I thought that was an interesting update. So the unions need to bring more money next time if you're going to buy the Democrats properly. I'm only half kidding. You know how that goes.

Now then, President Trump talking about what's going on in Los Angeles yesterday. And by the way, Los Angeles does have a curfew, nighttime curfew, in certain sections, the worst of it. And the president was over, I think it was at Fort Bragg, speaking about this. And I think he said it quite well. And attempting to infiltrate and occupy federal buildings wearing armor and face shields,

the best money can buy somebody's financing it. We're going to find out through Pam Bondi and Department of Justice who it is. They're already on it. Who's financing all this equipment? Very professional. Under the Trump administration, this anarchy will not stand. We will not allow federal agents to be attacked and we will not allow an American city to

be invaded and conquered by a foreign enemy. That's what they are. A lot of those people were let in here by the Biden administration. They just poured right in. Yeah. Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom saying that he had it under control. He really said that. He said he had it under control. Okay. Yeah. Are you going to believe Gavin or your own lying eyes? I guess that would be the case.

By the way, federal judge ended up smacking down Gavin Newsom's push yesterday to have Trump's nationalizing of the National Guard or federalizing of the National Guard and deploying those troops there. It had that thrown out. And the judge said, nope, not going to do that. And there is going to be a hearing, a court hearing on that sometime. I think it's Thursday of this week that they're going to be getting together and hashing that out. But as George, the email of the day, said yesterday, there are many, many laws out there, many, many situations that the president can use to mobilize these troops. Insurrection Act among many. And Congress Critters are starting to talk more openly about getting some bills passed about

that too. All right, okay. Let's see what else we have going. Man, I'll tell you the local crime scene just bizarre. You know he's been arrested in that 26 year old guy who was found in the parking line over at Wilson Elementary in Medford. 15 year old girl, 17 year old boy. Can you believe that? Yeah. Happened on Sunday morning. Actually, late Saturday night is apparently when the shooting happened. Medford police ended up putting out a release yesterday giving some details.

You can't give everybody's... Nobody's name is released though because reasons you know how that goes but apparently The way they're thinking they're alleging that the 15 year old girl called the 26 year old victim or reached out to them and Lured the 26 year old man to the parking lot 17 year old

boy then allegedly confronts the guy in the parking lot and shoots him to death, dead right there. They ended up piecing this together from surveillance video in the neighborhood around Wilson Elementary. So we have a 15 year old and a 17 year old in jail on this one and I don't know what is up. A lot of people are speculating it. You know, what is a 26 year old doing to, you know, come meet a 15 year old? There's no evidence yet at this point that there was anything sexual involved or whatever. Was it drugs? Was it robbery? Was it something else? We don't know. And hopefully a little more information

coming out there. yeah they a 15 17 year old by the way that's the second homicide in the city of Medford since the start of the year what happened at Wilson Elementary School boy I will be hearing more about that Josephine County Sheriff's also put out some more information on a motorcycle chase this was a wild chase happened and the guy died. The Golis area on Sunday started late Sunday night when this guy on a motorcycle fled a traffic stop on Golis Road out near Merlin and headed out away. So sheriff's deputies, they chased this guy for a lot of miles. He lost control near milepost 17,

crashed into a cliff or over a cliff and then into the river. Into the river. So he ended up dying. They had searched and rescued a lot of other people looking for his body and they finally pulled him out. 46-year-old Brock Ewers. We don't know much more than this at the time than what I just mentioned right now and I don't know what was going on there, were there outstanding warrants or something else going on there, but you know normally you hear about someone on the motorcycle going off on a high speed chase, you're thinking it's the 20 year old hopped up on testosterone and just going out. A 46 year old, I don't know. But yours is dead and I guess more details

as they become available. 20 minutes after six, this is the Bill Meyer show. You're on KMED at KBXG. Elevate your outdoor projects with Benjamin Moore's Woodlux Stains, now 20% off at Drake's Paint and Supply. These premium oil or water-based stains offer durable all-weather protection in a stunning range of colors and finishes

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School on a Saturday night in Medford. I wonder about that. The part that also has me curious is why only second-degree murder, especially when police are saying, hey, they lured the person there. Obviously there was something going on. Maybe there's some other extenuating circumstance. I don't know. But still, I would have thought it looks like you're bringing first off you have the 17-year-old illegally armed with a firearm. It looked like there was planned mayhem. There was planned mayhem of some sort. I don't know why it was only second degree murder. We will see. We will see.

Francine, a member of the Early Rising Caller Club. How are you doing this morning, Francine? Good to hear from you. I'm doing good, Bill. I have until 8 o'clock before they shut off the power to do repairs until 1 o'clock today. Oh, they're shutting it off in the talent area today? Really? Well, just certain houses, my next door neighbor didn't get the notice. We got it over here where I'm at. But yeah, so I'm going to have to go somewhere so I can sit in front of a fan. I'm not going to be able to handle this. By the way, I wanted to let you know, though, that an interesting news story came out of the Oregon Public Utility Commission yesterday. Ended up approving consumer protections that

when there is an extreme heat warning in effect, extreme heat, you know, when they always get declared that the utility companies would not be allowed to disconnect people for non-payment of bill during those times. Well, that's good. I mean, they shouldn't disconnect people from non-payment of bills in the middle of winter and not let people freeze to death either. And they shouldn't disconnect people from non-payment of bills in the middle of winter and not let people freeze to death either. And they shouldn't disconnect people from non-payment of bills when they're living on life support stuff.

Well, maybe they just shouldn't disconnect, maybe they shouldn't disconnect people forever and we'll just have the government pay the utility bill. Well, you know the point though, Bill. I know. You can't risk people's lives like that just because, oh you didn't pay us well, they'd go out and die. Yeah, well actually there there are protections like that in the winter. I am aware of that right now. But now they've done it with extreme heat warnings, so you know they can disconnect you once the heat goes away, but you know during the middle of the of the big big blast you're you're not necessarily on your own.

So I just wanted to make sure people knew that okay yeah okay and I just had one one question regarding before I get into why I called when you talked about the 15 year old girl and the 17 year old boy that murdered the man well allegedly allegedly there is charge why was this older man showing up to go meet with a underage girl to begin with? Well, that's what we don't know. But you see, people automatically go to sex, but there's no talk about that. And it could have been, there's all sorts of things that go on in the underbelly of

society around here. There's drugs, there's perhaps a robbery attempt. We don't know at this point in time. Right, right. And the fact that they lured him there, that to me is second degree doesn't cut it, but whatever. I'm not a prosecutor. Yeah, I'm not either.

I guess, of course, I don't know. Will we find out more about this? Because remember, we're not supposed to know anything about 15 and 17 year olds because 15 and 17 year olds are angels. And gosh, to put their names out there, even if they have if they have, you know, killed somebody, and remember it's just an accusation, you know, at this point. Right, and it's okay because when they're young they make mistakes and they'll grow out. And their brain isn't developed in all sorts of reasons. Reasons. That's why I get so irritated by

this. It's like, okay, why can't we know anything about it? Reasons. All right, liberal intelligentsia. Reasons. There are reasons. Okay. You see, I would think that if there were, if kids knew that their names are also going to be blasted out there, to me, I think there is more public pressure brought against something like this because you're shaming not only yourself, but you're shaming your family, if care about their family I guess I don't know that's just me who knows anymore all right now what did you want to talk about after all this now all right okay so Lou Rockwell had an article by somebody named Matt Lamb who writes for something called life site news yeah

I know this side sure okay okay so you know it's the whole the whole another article talking about the leftists, you know, they're, they devastate LA and blaming Trump. Okay. But here's, this couple, couple of paragraphs caught my attention. You know, the, the New Jersey Democrat Senator Cory Booker, who is, you know, claiming, insisting it was also peaceful, blah, blah, blah, blah, and blaming it on Trump. There's one of the accusations he made, which I hadn't heard before, which is really, it takes a little step further.

It says that they were arresting people who were showing up for their immigration hearings. Now, I don't know, do you know anything about that? Because that's a little different than just going up and gathering people. Well, if they were showing up for their immigration hearings and they were wanted for other things, they are subject to arrest. But not, well, maybe, well, I don't understand your goal. I mean, there's no magic shield that protects you from any kind of law enforcement action when you're showing up, you know?

Well, yes, but by showing up, you're following the law, aren't you? Well, no, the hearing is, well, the hearing is supposedly for your benefit, you know, that kind of thing. But there may be other things going on, like maybe you've committed some crimes in the meantime and all these various other things. OK, all right. You know, we're talking about five million people that are estimated to have been let in by the dirtbag past president. I know.

Trust me, I'm not I'm not fighting with them I just thought that you know with that comment itself is going to be a very inflammatory You know they're showing it for their hearings, and they're still getting arrested Yeah, well my whole thing is that oh my goodness it is inflammatory to enforce the law That's kind of what we're being asked to believe though by the Democrats right now how in flat how? Inflammatory that we dare to enforce the law, that the president dare enforce the laws of the land. Well, I know, I get that.

But what I was saying is that putting that spin on the comment is really extra inflammatory. You know, and even if it was inflammatory, you know what, Francine, I don't care. No, I'm saying by Cory Booker. I know. Even if it is inflammatory to the people here, I'm past caring. Aren't you?

I know. Well, yeah, I mean, it's like, you know, the whole thing, you know, they're calling this an insurrection, but I'm saying it's not an insurrection, but January 6th was. Well, I'll tell you what, burning down the Waymo cars and graffiti over the courthouse, stopping the ICE people from going in there and waving the Mexican flags looks like an insurrection to me. How about that? All right?

I know, but you're not a leftist, Bill, and you can't really see what's going on. Great. Exactly. Because what I want to do is eat leftists for lunch. That's where I am at this point. Got to go. Yeah. All right. Thank you. It's inflammatory. I don't care. What was that movie, The Fugitive, years ago? Remember Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones and I'm innocent. I'm innocent. I don't care. I didn't kill her.

I don't care. I'm here to arrest you! It's kind of where I am at the moment. This is the Bill Meyers show. Joel here from Butler Ford and Truck Center. Give Bill a call at 541-770-5633. That's 770-KMED. And you'll get a chance to join the Wheels Up Wednesday conversation with Eric Peters, automotive genius over at epautos.com. Eric, welcome back. Well, the tanks aren't rolling yet, but there's just all sorts of excitement in our Summer of Love version 2.0 playing out right now.

Well, actually, from what I gather, they actually are rolling. I was watching some clips of it into DC, now ostensibly there for this orgiastic worshiping of all things military that Trump has planned for the weekend. Oh that's on his birthday, right? His birthday parade? Yeah. You know, I can't help it and you know I like President Trump, I really do, but there's a part of me that I can't help but think about. You ever watch Monty Python back in the day? Of course. All right, Monty Python, there's a story that I can't help but think about. Do you ever watch Monty Python back in the day? Of course. Alright, Monty Python. There's a Monty Python movie, The Meaning of Life.

Who's going to join me as we walk up and down the square? I don't know if you remember that scene or not. Of course. Everybody. The British used to have a sense of humor. Yeah, yeah. Well, they really did. It's pretty dry.

So we're going to be marching up and down the square on the president's birthday. I couldn't that's oh well You know, I guess symbolism is important right now in a Trump 2.0 to for that matter All right, Eric, let us talk about what's coming out of Oregon you ended up picking up on the story We mentioned that briefly last week and has it has to do with these little itty-bitty teeny trucks how do you pronounce the name is it key trucks or kite trucks I think I'm not sure because you know I have difficulty with tomato or tomato I'm not sure it's kei and it's it's just a reference to these little micro trucks that they have in Japan and other parts of the world that of course we're not allowed to buy here and they look kind kind of like little scooter type things, kind of like the scooter trucks

that we have the city of Medford using on some of their maintenance crews. They're really useful little things. Some of them come with beds that have fold down walls and you can use them to carry stuff around. A lot of them are four wheel drives. Some of them have diesels. They're just super little things. If you have some property for example and you want to drive your thing out into the

field, it's in many ways a whole lot preferable to, you know, one of the little Polaris things that you're allowed to buy here because this is a real vehicle. It has heat, some of them have AC, you know, they're very serviceable. But, you know, we're generally speaking not allowed to have them. But your wonderful state has decreed that we'll let you have, we'll let you buy them, but only if they're 25 years old or older. Yeah, so the gray market kind of gets legalized in the state of Oregon, and normally Oregon is very big on not allowing us to have nice things. Usually is what they're all about. So I'm kind of surprised about this, but I think

it was David Brock Smith, a Republican out on the coast, and a few other people that got involved with this one, because they're looking at this to, I think it was David Brock Smith, a Republican out on the coast and a few other people that got involved with this one because they're looking at this to, I think it's to help out the agriculture community, farmers, things like that, because they find so much use out of these. Well, how about helping out the rest of us for a change? Well, the rest of us don't matter. The rest of us don't matter. Yeah.

No. It's this aggravating phenomenon of the government, our overlords, deciding what will be allowed, picking winners and losers. You can have this, but you can't have that. It's they who get to decide, not us. Well, don't worry. Next time David Rocksmith has a bill that's probably going to be to legalize us to allow us to keep our old cars, because the day will come that the state of Oregon will say, no

old cars for you any longer, any longer. And then we'll be going, oh, thank you, Massa. Thank you, Massa. Oh, yeah. One of the great ironies of this to me is that they say that we're not allowed to buy the new ones, which are still being produced right now, because they aren't safe and because they're not clean.

Yeah, but the old ones, you're trying to tell me the old ones are safer and cleaner than the new ones? Exactly. So OK, you're allowed to get a 25-year-old one. Even if it is in perfect operating condition, it's still 25 years old. So was a vehicle made 25 years ago more clean or more safe than a brand new vehicle being made right now?

Of course not. Okay. In other words, it's nonsense is what we're talking about, but the nonsense is what passes for government in the state of Oregon The limited supply of these 25 year old vehicles. They know that so what they're doing is throwing people to bones saying Oh, yeah, you can buy one but there's only so many of them, you know, and they're old and for the most part, you know They're therefore Limited to people who have some mechanical know-how and who are willing to deal with servicing these things themselves

What they don't want is to open up the market to anybody who just wants to buy a brand new warranty vehicle. I can't help but wonder though, this is the other part that kind of touches my head here, if the real push is to not upset the big automotive groups. Like Lithia Automotive Group is based here in Medford and there are various other groups here and they don't want a whole lot of competition coming from low margin sales like this. Oh absolutely, I agree with you completely because it would fundamentally alter the current market in this country by giving people an alternative. People could vote by choosing to not buy you know these 30, 35, 40 thousand dollar low-end on the low

end trucks when they could go out and buy something that costs maybe you know nine thousand dollars brand new. I remember as a teenager in Southern California living there and for the first time I saw the the Datsun trucks the little dot the little itty bitty Datsun trucks and it was Japanese gardeners that were usually buying something like that and then they just exploded in popularity and I'm wondering if what's going on is that all the dealerships look at something like this and going oh boy you know we really don't sell these and if we were to sell them they don't cost a lot of money and

we couldn't make any money and you know if we're not selling somebody a $50,000 new car then it doesn't pencil these days maybe that's what you know I think they're shooting themselves in the foot you know look at what Henry Ford did the Model T was not expensive and there weren't you know it was not a high doesn't pencil these days. Maybe that's what they're looking at. No, I think they're shooting themselves in the foot. Look at what Henry Ford did. The Model T was not expensive and there weren't, it was not a high profit margin on the sale of an individual Model T. But Ford sold a lot of Model Ts, a lot of them. And so you can make up on volume, which you might not make up on the individual sales. So if you're a dealer, let's say, does it make more sense to sell five really expensive vehicles a month

or 20 inexpensive ones and you wind up making more money and you wind up developing a better relationship with your customers by the way in the process? Well I would agree with you there. I'm also looking at the realities of my gosh these dealerships from what I understand are tens of millions of dollars to build. All of the specialized equipment that you have to fix all the safety systems. I know they've got us totally boxed in. It's outrageous. Like you can't just have a store, you know, a physical building, which by itself doesn't necessarily cost a lot. And you know, if you didn't have all these obnoxious compliance costs, it could be done at a very affordable way,

at a very affordable rate. Think about when you and I grew up. There were all kinds of dealers and it was just a square building with glass windows and a few cars in the front. That was the whole thing. And Will, think about the way cars were designed even in the 1980s and 90s and such. You could get a 50-mile-per-gallon gasoline-powered car back then like a Volkswagen Rabbit, pretty easy, Honda CRX. The difference was, is that they didn't have huge behinds mandated by federal crash standards. They didn't have the rollover protection,

which makes it heavier. The vehicles were light and they had small engines in them and they still performed just well. There's all sorts of things that have just, and it's all because of the state control and interference in all of this, all of this area. And it's insufferable state control and interference in all of this. And it's insufferable parenting of us, in that we're not allowed as adults to weigh risk and reward and cost and benefit.

This premise that if the government weren't involved there wouldn't be any safe cars, which is nonsense. Before the government started mandating safe cars, there were Volvo's. Oh yeah, and everybody knew that the Volvo, yeah, it looked like an avocado colored refrigerator on wheels, you know, we know that, right? You know, that's the way it was. So people who valued that, who thought that was their priority,

above all else, they wanted a car that offered superior impact protection if they crashed. Well, that's great. You should be free to buy a car like that if you want to. And they bought it. The flip side of that is you should be free to buy something like a little Volkswagen Beetle that weighs 1,600 pounds if you want to. Yeah, that would

get very high mileage. Okay. 642. Talking with Eric Peters this morning, epautos.com. And of course, Wheels Up Wednesday means that we're happy to take your calls. 7705633. We'll take a call here right now before we move on to reviews and various other things. Good morning. Who's this? Bill, it's your friend Brad. Good morning to you. Brad, fire away. You're with Eric. What's up? Love your sessions with Eric. So Bill, you know that Washington State just recently passed a new law, governor signed it, and it's going to require electronic speed limitations for drivers that have had certain infractions and this is modeled on another law very similar that was

passed in Virginia. How soon before this horribly bad idea comes to Oregon and is there any possibility it can be stopped at a federal level? Isn't it being imposed in the federal level too, Eric? No, not yet. This is state level, but I see the danger in that this is a precedent that's being set. You know, initially this is supposedly only going to affect the people who've been convicted of egregious examples of speeding i think it's a hundred miles an hour or more or who have multiple tickets and so on but you know that inevitably once they do this the next step is going to be well after we could use the same technology to save so many lives and prevent speeding and so effectively they're

going to make it so that your car does not ever exceed the speed limit and as we've talked about many times in the past most cars that have been made over the course of roughly the last five years already have this tech embedded in them. They do. They market it as speed limit assistance technology. Oh so we already have it Brad according to Eric in a lot of these cars. It's not it's fully enabled yet. What happens is you drive your car, you know, and the car knows what road you're on through the GPS, and it knows what the speed limit is,

because all this is mapped out. So you get a little icon that flashes on your dashboard. So if the speed limit is, say, 35 miles an hour, you get a little icon that looks like a 35 mile an hour speed limit sign. And if you're going 40, the sign goes red and starts flashing at you. I guess Brad, the news is not particularly helpful.

Does that help? Well, I know we can't do it in any of the state level that this legislature has never seen a bad idea that they don't like, but I'm just wondering if there's something that could be done at the federal level. As citizens, we do have something that's called the right to travel or the right to transport yourself. I don't know, but to me this just looks like horrible news.

It's no longer a right to travel. It's a conditional privilege. It's a state-sanctioned privilege. That's how they have changed things in this country. And frankly, once you went to the driver's license, that pretty much codified that, didn't it, Eric? Just the driver's license in general. Unless you challenge it fundamentally and unless you had somebody in office who was willing to do that, I don't see anything happening in that way. However, we do still have a way to deal with this. Don't buy a new car.

Drive a car that doesn't have this technology and they won't be able to force you to drive whatever the speed limit is. All right. But then there is the interference of the insurance mafia. Maybe we talk a little bit about that here after the break here, Eric. All right. And if you have a question, you want to comment on something, maybe looking at a vehicle. You had a question about it.

What Eric thinks about that and more. 7705633, Wheels Up Wednesday on KMED. Elevate your outdoor projects with Benjamin Moore's Woodlux Stains. Now to the dish. The Bill Meyers Show on 1063 KMED. 647 Eric Peters back EP Autos and it is 7705633 to call in and ask a question. Good time to check in on Wheels Up Wednesday. Eric, one of the big challenges I think that we're looking forward here is that you wrote on the site the other day that the challenge we're looking at here in the insurance world is that the more expensive new cars have become,

the more expensive, even inexpensive liability insurance only has become. Because you have to, in essence, insure against everybody driving a 50, 60, 70, 80, you know, here it is, you know, your big truck goes by and a lot of those trucks are $80,000 in some cases these days. It's amazing. And if you end up damaging it then, even if you're in just a little beater, you have insanely expensive insurance. And what is the story there and how much has it been going up over the last few years because of this? Yeah, well, even if you don't, you know, all of this is based on the possibility, the hypothetical, that you might cause damage. You know, of course, I object to the idea of forcing people to buy insurance at all. You know. What has become especially objectionable is that, you know, until recently, if you were somebody who wanted to live within or below your means,

you didn't want to spend a lot of money on vehicles or insurance, you could own and drive an older vehicle, get a liability-only policy, and it would be relatively affordable because the vehicle wasn't worth much and you weren't covering your own, you were just covering whatever potential harm you might impose on somebody else if you hit them. And a lot of times those values of the vehicles in those days, you know, four or five thousand dollars even for new cars or even in the 1980s, you know, ten, twelve thousand dollars. Yeah, but now we've got a bunch of these vehicles driving around. Well, let me rephrase that. Now

it's common for vehicles that, you know, 15 years ago would have been considered exotic in terms of their cost. Vehicles that are 70, 80, 90, 100 thousand dollars that have headlights that cost five, eight hundred dollars a piece. And are very fragile design, you know, you do just a little tap on it and there goes the eight hundred dollar bumper, that kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. A little impact that in the past would have been a few hundred bucks maybe you know on the low end, you know, two thousand, three thousand dollars to fix is now fifteen, twenty thousand dollars worth of damage. And what's happening is that the cost of everybody's

insurance is going up. And so what that's doing is affecting the people who are just trying to live modestly. They're being made to pay for all of this. And I think that that's kind of a secondary wrong. It's wrong in the first place to force people to buy this stuff. What would you think then about... I'm wondering if maybe the cure, if there is a way to cure the insurance situation in that respect in which if you're going to insure the car, the actual car itself for damage, that that needs to be on you rather than in another way because stuff is just going to happen. Now I know people will say well it's so and so's fault that they hit me

or whatever it is, but there are a lot of things in which are just accidents, but in which if you're going to have the expensive vehicle, you're going to take on the insurable expense of protecting it. Kind of like even how you insure your own home, as an example, even though... That was my point in the article.

I said that, you know, okay, most of us have no choice about having to buy a vehicle, having to own a vehicle, it's just a necessity of life. But people who choose to go out and spend 50, 70, 80, $100,000 on a vehicle, that's fine. I'd be great. But I think that perhaps the thing to do here would be to, as you say and as I wrote in my article, limit the liability coverage for damage to somebody else's vehicle to say 30,000, which would encompass reasonably priced vehicles. And if you choose to buy a vehicle that is more expensive than that, well get a rider and pay extra to cover the choice that you made to drive a vehicle that

has $800 a piece headlights. Yeah, I think that is something which would be reasonable because you know the idea that idea that you have someone, okay, the cyber truck, you're in your little geo prism, let's say, of course, geo prism, that's a really tiny thing, and you smack the cyber truck, the $120,000 cyber truck in front of you and maybe you end up causing $10,000 worth of damage or $20,000 or $30,000. It's amazing what can happen even with just minor accidents these days. It's like, come on. You just get to the point where it is unrealistic to expect the people of modest means

to insure against the most expensive vehicle on the road damage. I think there is something to that. What they're effectively doing, it's a roundabout way to force people of modest working class and middle class means out of cars by making it unaffordable to continue to insure the car. It's a really subtle and devious mechanism, I think, and it may very well be deliberate. I think that something's got to be done about it because these costs are going to continue to increase. Just over the last, what, 22 22 years I think the stat is the typical person's liability only policy has gone up by 25%. I know mine's doubled. And it's not going to be a, it's

not a sustainable increase, you know, those sort of things. And a lot of it is due to especially the massive increase in the cost of electric vehicles. You know, you had, you know, a 15, $20,000 car and now they are 50, $60,000 cars, in some cases even more for that. And also relatively fragile because of safety standards. Crumple zones, that's what we're talking about. The crumple zones, everything's designed, you touch it, it dents in, but it protected you. It is safer.

Everything. Even, I think we were talking last week about windshields. What used to be 200 bucks maybe to replace a cracked windshield, now it's a thousand bucks. In some cases it's $3,000 because the windshield now has embedded safety technology in it and you have to pay the cost of that too. You can't just have a windshield, right? Oh a windshield that is also 2005 I guess, right? Just a windshield. It was just a rear- mirror remember that you know like it was a basically $25 part you could pick up at Autozone. Yeah now

It's a proprietary piece of technology that has all this stuff in it You know and it's part of the safety system So you know you replace the windshield you got to replace that high-tech rear view mirror and all of the safety It's in that black box. That's at the top of your windshield. I did not realize that well I replaced the the windshield in my PT Cruiser a number of years ago after a rock chip, and it was cheaper to do that than to actually get it repaired. It was only $130. It was cheap.

Sure. It was very inexpensive. Well, it's not anymore. This awareness is percolating. The insurance actuaries, they know all about this. They know what it costs. You may not realize that you have your new car and you get a cracked windshield and you think, ah, no big deal. You take it in and find out that it's going to cost you $1,500 or rather it's going to cost the insurance mafia and then it's going to cost

everybody else because of the cost of that. I think that would be reasonable, a $30,000 liability on replacing the vehicle that you may strike in some form or another, right? And if you want to drive a hundred thousand dollar vehicle around, hey fine, good for you, you need to get a rider to take care of that aspect. Maybe fold it in as part of your... I'll draw a parallel example. Some people want to have a house that's on the beach, you know, where the house tends to get washed out to sea when there's a hurricane. Minor details. Minor details, I know. If you want to do that, be my guest, but when the house gets washed out to sea when there's a hurricane. Minor details. Minor details, I know. If you want to do that, be my guest.

But when the house gets washed out to sea, don't expect me to help you pay for it. My concern about all of this is that the rise in insurance costs, just like the rise in insurance costs on homes, even, that we're experiencing out on the West Coast, is making life on the West Coast and the United States proper uninsurable in many cases, especially when you are required to have it,

to either have the house loan or the car loan, as the case might be. Well, they're backing people into a corner. I think if we're not there, we're really close to the point where a lot of people are going to face the choice either to become outlaws, meaning I'm just not going to have insurance anymore. I can't do it. I can't afford it. Or they're going to be essentially forced to go live in a van that they don't drive under the river by the river someplace. Okay, alright finally we're going to wrap it up this morning here on Wheels Up Wednesday with the 2025 Ford Explorer. Now that was like really the kickoff of the SUV world back in the day. I remember when it first came out that was a revolutionary design at

the time wasn't it? Oh it sure, and it was hugely popular. Of course, the problem was that being a mass-market vehicle, a lot of people who in the past would never have driven a vehicle like that were driving vehicles like that now, and they had no idea that SUVs, 4x4s, that's what we used to call them, they tended not to handle so well, particularly if you drove them very fast in the corner. They were very sensitive to things like driving on under inflated tires at high speeds. Those who remember the 90s will remember the big fiasco that happened when a number of these explorers barrel rolled and people got killed because of that sort of thing.

They had to redesign it to be more car-like. In fact, Ford ended up turning the Explorer into a crossover that looked like an SUV in 2011, meaning it was based on a more car type layout with a front-wheel drive. Also it's no longer than a like a car body on truck kind of chassis then like it was before. Exactly, but then they went around and brought it back to being a real SUV. So the current model is once again based on a rear-drive layout and is more actually an SUV than something that looks like it. And ironically, the interesting thing to me is that all these crossovers out there that are

trying so hard to look like SUVs and here's an SUV that actually is what it looks like. All right. And what is your overall impression of it? And I have to ask, are we down to a two cylinder motor yet or what? Not a two cylinder but 2.3 liters. Ah, okay. 2.3. The good news is it makes 300 horsepower which is quite something for a 2.3 liter engine. Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute.

2.3 liter, that's tiny, it's a tiny four cylinder, 300 horsepower, I mean that sounds great. You're going to get 300,000 miles out of that though? Well, that's another question. If you're a little bit leery about that little engine being heavily breezed on by the turbo and long-term longevity, you can upgrade to a V6 in the thing that makes 400 horsepower. With that, you can comfortably pull, I think it's 5,700 pounds, which is, that's a decent tow rating. And you have a vehicle that's very comfortable, very nice. The Explorer has become essentially kind of like what the big luxury sedans that we grew up with

once were, but even nicer because you can get it with massaging seats, which I highly recommend. Did you have the massaging seats on the ones? I did, yes. I still have it until tomorrow when When I'm moving uptown a little bit, they're bringing me a Range Rover, which is you could buy two completely optioned out Explorers for the price of one Range Rover. I'll be curious to hear what you say about the Range Rover next week, because they have had just a miserable reliability problem, and it's been for a long time. I mean, Range Rover is not the Ford, not the Ford Explorer. Ford Explorer is fine. And I'm just curious because everybody I've talked to, every mechanic I've ever talked to about the Range Rover

says, oh dear God, you know the repair process of this is just just insane in the number of problems and have they gotten past that now? Do you know, have you read? That I don't know. I think they're afflicted by the same problem that is besetting and afflicting the entire industry. They've gotten really complicated. They've put so much technology into these things, particularly the luxury models. They have to because now any car, every car has climate control, air conditioning, power windows, locks, cruise. Well, yeah, the least expensive Kia out there has lots of luxury features that were luxury features just a few years ago. You know, charging somebody two, three, four times as much, well, you've got to put a super

big LCD screen in there, and you've got to put voice command, and you've got to put this and that, all this stuff, which is great, until it stops working. Okay. We'll see. I guess maybe the Range Rover has mind control. You know, the mind control, the Elon Musk Neural Link implant. That's probably coming you know and I think when that day arrives that's when I'm going to strap on my parachute and punch out because I can't deal with that.

All right overall though impression of the Ford Explorer before we take off. Oh great vehicle, you know there's a reason why you see so many of them. They're a great family hauler that can actually haul things you know that's one of the key take-home points. Crossovers are great. They have versatile interiors. You can put a lot of people and a lot of stuff in it, but they're kind of flimsy and kind of fragile. Most of them won't tow more than about 3,500 pounds, and a lot of them only tow 1,500. So if you want something that can actually pull a trailer or an RV and that has some strength to it, some heft, it explores a really nice

vehicle and worth a look. By the way, the article that you had up there about the Clovers, you put up to Clovers when you run into Clovers, and of course these are people that drive like idiots or we're going to slow you down and make everybody else get really frustrated behind them, and you always have these Clover videos. You were telling me that in your neighborhood, the truck bros, in other words, the guys that are driving the big jacked-up trucks Those are the clovers more often than many other drivers in your neighborhood because I don't see that here I don't see that here. Okay Let me start by prefacing because a lot of people who are listening may not know what the term means or what I'm talking

About and I'm not talking about people who just you know for one reason or another. Maybe they want to drive slowly There's nothing wrong with that. Some people are a little leery of driving fast. Maybe they don't have great vision. Maybe they're elderly. All of that is totally understandable. I'm talking about the people who deliberately obstruct you, who purposefully don't use their mirrors, sit there and let a whole conga line of cars accrete behind them and will not move over and will not pull off onto the shoulder to let people get by. That's what I'm talking about. Okay. But you're saying that the truck bros in your neighborhood do that. Yes, I was going to get to that. It used to be that there was a stereotype. It would be

a liberal in a Prius with lots of stickers on the back of it, right? Right. You know, something of all though. Now I find, and again, I don't, this is just anecdotal, maybe just in my area, but whenever I go out, it seems like I get stuck behind some guy in a big jacked up truck who's doing that same kind of thing. You know, this big manly truck with his big sewer sized pipe exhaust and his big VA going brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Down here, I kind of see the exact opposite in which the truck bros tend to be real fast and real aggressive. And I get it.

I think sometimes when you're up jacked up high, you don't realize how fast you're going sometimes too. I think that's also important. I don't know either that or maybe they're just off in their vaccinated dream world. I can't account for it. Well, that could be what's happening over in your neck of the woods. That's just curious. I just wouldn't have pictured that as being the truck bros being that way because we

normally see the opposite around here. I wouldn't have either except it's my reality now. I encounter this almost every day, literally. All right and then they give you a stink face when you try to pass them a bit, right? Oh yeah, we were out on the motorcycle a couple of days ago and there was one up ahead and all I did was pass this person, and mind you in a legal zone, and I didn't do it in an aggressive, obnoxious way, and like dart in front of them or anything, and they flashed their headlights multiple times. How dare I, best credit imitation, have the effrontery to try to pass them. Was he wearing a mask? Just curious. I couldn't tell. I was going to be

concentrating on the road ahead, but I, you know, I couldn't help notice the flashing lights. So, you know, I gave them the Nixon salute. I still occasionally see someone driving in their vehicle with a mask on. It just still floors me again. They're still out there. Oh, I've seen them too. COVID has broken many people even today. It's still there, that pathological side of things. Hopefully, hopefully we'll get out of this someday. I don't know. Eric, always a pleasure talking with you and we'll hear about... Hopefully the Range Rover doesn't fall apart during your test drive and you can tell us all about that next Wednesday, okay?

You can count on it, Bill. Thanks for having me. All right. Thanks a bunch. epautos.com KMED, KMED, HT1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG, Grants Pass.