Pickups for non construction purposes are the dumbest shit ever. You literarily have half the car that is useless for transporting people.
What if you have to help a friend move a couch once every 5 years? What then?
lol right? Surely you couldn't just rent one by the hour from Home Depot or some crazy shit like that... Oh wait, you can and it's like $20. There really is no justification for the vast majority of personal truck ownership. It's just a status symbol for trashy jerks. Although I suppose that technically counts as hauling a lot of trash.
If you actually need to haul stuff a van is vastly superior in most scenarios. The only use case that a pickup truck really makes sense for is for towing, but even then something like a range rover seems like a better option?
The biggest use case for a pickup over a van is loose materials like sand, dirt, etc. Ya know, stuff that suburban pickups usually aren't carrying because the owner doesn't want to get it dirty
Hauling trash, debris, or brush works way better in a pickup. I want to be able to hose the shit off and not have it inside with me lol But i agree that a van is better than everything else
I have a 2015 Honda Pilot with a roof rack. Can seat 8 and tow 4400lbs (probably not both at the same time, lol). I can also throw full sheets of drywall or plywood on the top (within reason). I've hauled 1000lbs of stone in it. Has no problem with 10ft PVC pipe or lumber. Thing is a fucking swiss army knife of a vehicle.
I had an Isuzu pickup once. I bought it because it was the cheapest new car you could buy: $4995 MSRP if I recall. No power steering or power breaks. Manual transmission. I think it had AC and an FM radio. Its fine for transporting 2 people and I rarely ever had a need for more than that.
Dude real shit I work in construction and I can tell you that you don’t even really need a pickup for that either.
I mean it depends what you’re doing ofc but vans are what’s actually used as work vehicles for the most part. And those are generally company vehicles so for personal use you can drive whatever vehicle you want.
I have a crew cab pickup (half ton), and yeah it has come in handy numerous times over the years. But I do agree those larger, “more rugged”, trucks are not for the people who own them.
"The only thing better than owning a truck is having no fucking reason to own a truck"
It's a statement. You don't need to work; but you still could if you wanted to.
Pickups today are huge monstrosities but I swear their beds are about as long as the one I had in my 1987 Ranger. When I did get a full sized truck, it had a longer bed because if you can’t carry standard sized plywood, sheetrock, and lumber, I’m not sure I’d want it.
for real. had a friend with a big relatively-new truck with a stubby bed try to have me help him move. I show up with my 2003 ford ranger, made before trucks primarily became male fashion accessories. he'd teased me about it before because it's apparently a "small truck". yet somehow barely anything fit in his toy truck and my "small" truck handled his couches and mattresses fine. teased him about his truck in return, used the ol "not the size it's how you use it" line, and have never heard him talk shit about my little truck again.
Blame CAFE, the EPA (I like most of the EPA), and the Chicken Tax. Those three have basically made it to where the US can’t get the smaller trucks the rest of the world gets, has a fuel economy loop-hole for larger vehicles, and basically makes it incentivized for companies to make boxier, bigger vehicles in order to lower their average fuel economy standards. Most people I talk to want the ford Ranger from the 2000s brought back in size, but we literally cannot. The closest we got was the maverick (still too big comparatively) and that’s because they gave us a hybrid option and based it off the escape.
I’d probably blame regulatory capture as a whole than individual regs and agencies, but I agree. My feeling is that if you’re going to make a fuel efficiency regulation and then allow exceptions, they should be exceptions based on use, not based on class of vehicle. There should probably be additional fees/taxes, maybe applied annually.
Otherwise, yeah, the incentives point in the wrong direction.
I swear their beds are about as long as the one I had in my 1987 Ranger.
So I asked my aunt for help hauling things back and forth to a convention this past spring. She has an enormous Ram pickup, I have a tiny little xB. A lot of the stuff I was bringing was stored in 45 gallon totes, and I knew from past experience that I could fit three in my car with the back seats folded down, and have room for thinner containers on top.
Imagine my surprise when we go to load up the truck and find that it fit the same number of totes in the bed, and they just barely cleared the bed cover. The cavernous back seat helped make up for it thankfully, but I was floored that the cargo areas were comparable.
My son has a Mazda 3 hatchback and is often bringing stuff to work sites because the guy with the big truck and the bed cover can't fit tall boxes in the bed
I've had trucks and now I have a mini cargo van.
90% of the time the van is better, but that last 10% can be a big deal.
Yeah but you can just rent a truck for that last 10% with the savings from not buying the truck, and still have cash left over.
Uhhh isn't the whole point of a bed that you can put things of whatever height you want in it because there isn't a roof or anything?
“If someone is on the fence I’ll just tell them some unfettered shit like Pete Buttigieg wants to ban halogen headlights or mud flaps and they’ll throw their credit card at me. It’s like taking candy from a baby.”
Lmfao, I know it's satire, but this is so dead on it almost stings as well. The 90% Medicare reimbursement thing was the same way.
I don't understand why people buy pickup trucks. Unless you are a handyman or something.
Handymen around here drive transporters like this:
You can get them slightly lifted and with AWD, I really don't get how a pickup with an open bed is better than that.
I'm in a slightly more....redneck(?) area and the benefit to open bed trucks tends to be things more akin to landscaping, logging, wood and stone moving, and for those with hobbies; moving smaller vehicles (if they don't own a trailer attachment).
Basically the ability to throw dirty things into a hauling vehicle with good suspension on non-paved areas with easy cleaning capabilities.
It comes down to what you're doing is and what is required for a vehicle. HVAC, House work, some masonry or such you could use an enclosed vehicle for sure.
To your point, handymen and tradesmen will usually use a van or similar. And way more people own a truck than actually utilize it for the proper use cases. But there are valid reasons for open bed trucks too
This is the way
I read somewhere that farmers have started to buy very tiny Japanese pickup-trucks, because for most of the work they have to do during their day these small ones are much more practical. But American car manufacturers only make these oversized mob atrocities anymore, so the only solution is these Japanese ones. In size they're basically these little busses where there's no space between the two front seats.
Most vans have a greater payload than a lot of 4 door duel cabs, they offer more storage, more security，a lower loading floor height, more accessibility with side access and greater resale.
But yeah gotta get my Chevy.
I used to be a tradie, most of them don't need them either, and unsurprisingly, there are always tradies around whining their tools got stolen from the back of their Ute.
The funny thing is that the biggest badasses I met don't drive these kinds of cars. In fact, I can't recall any guy here in Australia who has demonstrated an ounce of courage who does drive a larger ute, and its generally a reliable indicator imho that they need fashion accessories to impress people.
Also yeah, they always suck at parking. Not because they can't, but simply because they don't care
I saw a giant lifted truck the other day at Home Depot and I realized that these things only really impress pre-pubescent boys.
Ergo, the only reason to drive a giant truck like that is to attract and impress pre-pubescent boys. Can't think of any other good reason for them to exist.
No way, are they that much? Playing with vehicle customizers on car manufacturer websites is legit fun when they let you change and see every little thing. The prices do get outrageous fast! I had no idea trucks went over 100k.
Oh yeah, the base model F-350 starts at almost $50k and the top trim more than doubles that.
I understand that this article is satire, but people should stop using "liberal" as a pejorative. It really doesn't make sense within the contexts that it's most often used, and only creates linguistic confusion by messing with previously understood definitions.
In Australia the "Liberals" are the centre right capitalist centric party. We do have better terms like social progressives, socialists and social-democrats, but even with this, it's all relative terms. Everyone's different in their own ways.
I hate the lack of field of view in modern trucks
So does everyone else in the road.
I mean... therapy can be expensive, yeah:-P
waiting for the inevitable "liberal owns conservative by dailying an ex military truck just to spite republicans"
I genuinely have more respect for people dailying industrial trucks, rather than pickups. I don't care how silly it is, i can respect it to some degree. (i may be biased)
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