The energy sector is struggling to cope with oil prices that have dropped 60 percent since the summer. Producers and refiners are pulling back spending, slashing dividends, and cutting jobs, blah, blah, blah. We know all this. Thousands of Albertans are on edge as employment in the oil patch grows more precarious by the day. Yah, that’s fine.

But the real question is, how are you going to “pull babes” if your jacked Ford F-350 gets "repo’d" by the bank?

Tough times call for practical choices, and what’s more practical than a 25-year-old pickup truck with nearly a quarter-million kilometres in the rearview mirror?

The owner - or perhaps now former owner - of this 1990 GMC C/K 2500 pickup truck offered salvation to laid off fellow Albertans for the low price of $1,800 in a poignantly rebellious Kijiji ad that attracted 116,086 hits since Jan. 21, before disappearing from the site Friday.

While the “King Ranch” package on your old F-350 may have had rich leather upholstery, chrome accents, and heated seats and mirrors. Those were the trappings of $100 dollar plus oil. This seller suggest you settle into a ride with more budget conscious “old school patina” and a “sagging headliner” to take you back to more humble days before you made “big oil money.”

The crisp sound of SiriusXM (SIRI.O) radio wafting through a nine speaker sound system will fade from memory once you get used to the sound of a few cans of “Pil” knocking around the pickup bed. The ad boasts about the GMC’s sliding rear window that makes it “easy to throw your empties in the back without even slowing down.”

Is it fast you might ask? The owner says the GMC’s turbocharged 350 small block turning the rear wheels at a 4:11 gear ratio will “get from 0-60 in the time it takes you to chug that second beer.” That could be enough to out run the cops on your tail for the cocaine and hookers the seller suggests you buy with your remaining EI money.

You know, because “Not everything has to change my friend.”