I have one 1978 Chevy pickup and one Ford 1992 pickup and I still drive both of them for work and hunting trips.
I changed out the engines on both of them when they hit between 250k and 300k miles; The engine changeouts only cost me about 2500$ per truck, that’s a whole lot better than 12,000$ for a damned battery in a vehicle that isn’t big enough to carry my tools + hunting gear + any game I bring home.
I see a whole lot of 20 to 30 year old vehicles out here where they are used for both work and pleasure; you probably don’t see as many in the big city because people there are more concerned with the “newest toy” rather than utility and dependability!
They succumb to rust.
I had a 24 year old Nissan Frontier pickup and it’s got rust developing in the wheel wells.
That’s on top of the fact that a LOT of the parts for this truck are now discontinued.
I had to scrounge on Ebay just to come up with replacement switches for the cruise control.
And that ECU in your 1992 Ford Pickup is probably loaded with electrolytic capacitors that are spewing their juices all over the board, corroding it as we speak.
Guess you’ll convert it to a carburetor to get around that, if you haven’t already.