I don’t know whether it was seeing all the trucks on the road in Texas or the fact that I missed the little old Ford Ranger we left behind in Wisconsin, but we’re no longer truckless. We bought a 2015 Toyota Tacoma this weekend.

Husband and I have never bought a new vehicle before, so this is quite the treat for us. And I’d like to think it will turn out to be somewhat of a practical treat, too. Since daughter got her license a couple weeks ago, she and I have been sharing my car, a 1999 Infiniti. And that pretty much has meant that once I get home from work, most days she finds something to do and ends up taking it somewhere.

I also had been missing not being able to haul things like dirt or furniture or anything that didn’t fit in one of our two cars. Plus, I want to start riding my bicycle again and a truck will be helpful to take it in to get it fixed before I ride it. Of course, hauling furniture, dirt and other garden needs is a much better reason to have a truck, so I’ll go with that.

Initially I had my mind set on buying a used truck, but when I decided I wanted a Tacoma (a Chevy Colorado or Nissan Frontier were my other choices), we found out that they have really high resale value, so we could be paying only a couple thousand dollars less for a vehicle with 30,000, or even 50,000 miles on it. It seemed to make sense to go new.

It was hard to find the style of Tacoma I wanted on lots though. I wanted an extended cab, but I didn’t want a double cab or a really small truck bed. That would defeat the purpose of hauling stuff. But I didn’t want a really big truck either – in length or height. I didn’t want to have to jump up to get in a truck or use a running board. None of the trucks on the lot met my preferences, so we thought we were going to have to order one. “If you can wait a couple minutes, let me go across the street and check another place,” Matt the salesman told us. Lo and behold, he came back with a Barcelona red Tacoma that was exactly what I was looking for. Even the color – and I hadn’t even told him I was thinking red.

“This one was still on the truck that just came in from San Antonio,” Matt said. When I asked if they had any other colors on the truck (just to see what else there might be), he said no. “This is the only one in this style Tacoma.”

We took a test drive and I was in love. About two hours later, I was parking the truck in my driveway.

Now, I know by Texas standards, my little Tacoma probably isn’t even a “real” truck. Its tires aren’t taller than I am. It doesn’t look like a tank in your rearview mirror (there seem to be a lot of those monster trucks down here). But it was built in Texas, so that should count for something, right? It does in my book, anyway, the only book that matters in this instance. Yep, this Barcelona-red pickup is perfect for this Midwestern-turned-Texan girl.