The Chicken Tax - The Real Reason You've Never Seen A Truck Like Ours August 18 2015

Customers are always wondering about our Volkswagen Vanagon Truck. Not only do they wonder how we had the crazy idea to morph it into our "rolling shoppe" for our store, but they wonder why they've never seen that specific model before.  

Usually we ask customers if they can think of one foreign truck on the market. No? You can thank the "Chicken Tax".

In the early sixties, the U.S was exporting a huge amount of chicken to Europe which was driving down the price of locally grown birds in the French and German markets and putting farmers out of business. To protect their poultry industry, a tariff was placed on the importation of U.S. chicken to France and West Germany. As a response, in 1963 there was a 25% tariff placed on potato starch, dextrin, brandy, and light trucks to the U.S. under Lyndon B. Johnson. 

Recently we found this awesome NPR episode on "Planet Money" that explains more about how chicken forever changed the auto industry in the U.S.