this whole subthread started with some cornell guy saying that you can run a horse business off a back of a gator, because your neighbors can haul for you, which is pretty much as cloud people as it goes. i'll venture that there's not a single horse farm in u.s. no matter how poor that is not subsidized with tech money that outsources its hauling. we're talking about running a business here, not hauling daisy to county fairgrounds three times a season.

In my experience, most people who live in rural areas already have access to a suitable vehicle - because a 30-year-old pickup is the cheapest vehicle to own in those circumstances, long-term.

We don't even have a gator. My wife does the material handling herself. Our bill for horse moving is probably less than $400 a year in a bad year, a payment on a big-ass truck is upwards of $800 a month. For that matter, in bad years my wife's business subsidized my tech activities and not the other way around.