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.
Have you ever been in a high roof van in high wind? I like the idea of vans as I can load motorcycles and keep them hidden but almost coming off the road was terrifying.
Not really. You can haul things upright in a pickup, which you can’t do in an SUV or van. If you’re going to be hauling lots of sheet goods a van interior will get trashed immediately, and most will have to have the back doors open for full sized sheets. A truck bed will hold up quite well and you won’t have to deal with tying back doors closed.
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.
What if I never transport people? WTF do I need all these extra seats for? A giant grocery cart in the back is much more useful.
Truck driver has no friends.
A cart that’s exposed to the weather and leafs and dust. Totally worth it…
Someone smart should invent a cover!
Or you know… A car with a roof to begin with…
Can I take the roof off to haul a fridge? Or my taxidermied camel?
And even for construction purposes, most trucks nowadays are kinda pointless. A 4ft bed is good for hauling like 1 bike placed diagonally, much less a typical sized piece of lumber or plywood.
Can’t beg a place to sell you a 6ft bed unless you want to wait for it to come off the manufacturing line.
Funny thing, you can put that bike into a BMW 3 Series no problems.
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.
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 had an Isuzu mini-truck that had nearly the same wheel base as my old mustang. That thing was sweet. I miss mini trucks.
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 mean… therapy can be expensive, yeah:-P
I hate the lack of field of view in modern trucks
So does everyone else in the road.
I really don’t get the appeal of fancy new cars… If I see someone in a new car then I usually assume they’re in debt tbh.
I always find it funny driving through posh areas and you usually see a Corsa on the driveway of a 1 mil+ house.
I don’t understand why people buy pickup trucks. Unless you are a handyman or something.
There are certainly practical reasons for them, like if you do a lot of ATVing, you can negate the need for hauling it in a trailer and just drive it up into the bed. It can definitely be nice to have a truck bed for certain things, but many people buy trucks for stuff they do once a month (if that), and not something they do every day, like commuting.
As a homeowner there are shit ton of times that it is really nice to have a truck. There are a lot of things that I would prefer to throw in the back of a truck rather than the back of a van, SUV, or car. Dangerous chemicals, gas cans, gas equipment, anything that might be bug infested, anything that is significantly cheaper by the truck load (mulch, dirt, stone, ect.), anything loaded by heavy machinery, anything that won’t fit in a van (furniture, appliances, ect), things that stink, things that are muddy, ect, ect, ect.
And if I had the money to have a spare vehicle, I would probably get another truck. But right now a minivan hauls a lot more people and I can do most of what I need with it and a small utility trailer. But don’t think that the utility trailer isn’t a huge pain in the ass all by itself.
When I was much younger, it was fairly typical that when a family needed a 3rd vehicle for their kids, they would buy a cheap beater of a truck for the kids. The trucks were slow, could take abuse, limited the number of other idiots you could pack inside, and had all the utility of being a truck when you needed it.
The problem is that those kids got used to having a truck. It became a personal image thing. Trucks got faster, the ride improved, they got not just more comfortable but fucking luxurious inside. They went from utility vehicles to overpriced status symbols.
Even worse is that the same shit is happening with minivans. I went to buy another minivan this year and they are not only all luxury lined on wheels, but there was a shortage and they wanted more than MSRP for the stupid thing. They had plenty of every other vehicle on the lot, but they can’t make minivans fast enough to meet demand.Why would you drive dangerous shit or truckload of mulch yourself? Don’t you people have delivery services over there?
So, your solution is to just be rich? That is so helpful, thanks, I hadn’t thought of that. Hell, now that I am just going to be rich, why even save money by doing it myself? I’ll just pay my new yard guys that I can suddenly afford, to do it for me.
Wut? Delivery is much cheaper than hauling yourself. Are you bloody nuts?
