(FORTUNE Magazine) – My wife drives a truck. My teenage son drives a truck. Several of my best friends drive trucks. Ron Henkoff, our man in Chicago, doesn't drive a truck. He's a station wagon guy. Nevertheless, Ron has uncovered a truly fascinating story involving Americans who drive trucks--and why we do it. Lest you think you've read this before and resist turning to page 54, beware: This isn't the old story about trucks as a fashion statement.

We truckers, it turns out, are part of a major consumer trend that Henkoff calls do-it-yourselfing. But he's not talking about the traditional "let's sheetrock the basement" practice. This trend is much larger: The new do-it-yourselfers are people who swim upstream on all fronts of the consumer economy, eliminating middlemen, shopping for value (often in quantity and sometimes online), and becoming their own distributors and warehousers.

"We started out with some interesting trends that I wasn't sure were connected," says Henkoff. "But with a remarkable degree of consistency, it turns out that people who fix up their homes also tend to drive a van or a truck, own a home computer, belong to an online service, employ a discount broker, use personal finance software, and shop at warehouse clubs and Home Depots."

They also are very suburban, very middle class and well educated, and they mostly live in the south and the west, though the trend is moving rapidly to the midwest and northeast. So far, most of the participants don't even realize they're part of a trend. And marketers are trying hard to glean all its implications.

Has Henkoff been seduced by it all? Well, so far he refuses to buy a truck. But he did join a Sam's club, and his family is still trying to brush its way through the case of toothpaste he bought. "Right now," he says, "the Henkoff family has very clean teeth."

John W. Huey Jr. MANAGING EDITOR