Stupid question: what’s up with trucks in urban areas? I understand the utility of a truck in rural/farm setting but never figured why folks want to lug around that pointless empty half while living in cities. Two of the folks I know who owns trucks have used empty halfs probably twice in a year when bringing home some furniture but that too could have delivered free by the store. Again, as I said, stupid question.
In some cases it seems like pure conspicuous consumption. The sheer impracticality of it is a badge of honor. This is not atypical for American consumerism.
In fact, I wonder about the Tesla truck's appeal. I feel like the oversized truck's negative ecological impact is one part of its appeal, do does an electric truck actually end up selling? Here in the South, some pickup drivers modify their exhausts to spew toxic smoke ("rolling coal") which is clearly not an option with the Tesla...
That’s so true, trucks and SUVs like the Mercedes G Wagon, the Ford Raptor (the F150’s rowdy cousin) and maybe even the Range Rover HSE are typical Veblen Goods. They do really well in urban areas specifically because they are over-engineered and are overkill for the purpose they are used for and are not afraid to show it off. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Cybertruck does well for the exact same reason.
The overall height, especially of the hood is also really important for the pedestrian's chances. if a sedan hits you, ideally you can roll over the top. if a truck or suv with enough size hits you, you go under it.
Not that it's a guarantee but at least tesla's emergency breaking detects pedestrians already. We're still a couple years from release. I'd like to think the long-term solution is to just stop hitting pedestrians with cars.
> Veblen goods are types of luxury goods for which the quantity demanded increases as the price increases, an apparent contradiction of the law of demand, resulting in an upward-sloping demand curve.
I agree with you on many pickup purchases being conspicuous consumption, but I think you're underestimating how many people would happily display conspicuous green consumption. This has all the "look at my big powerful toy" but acceptable for someone wanting to display how environmentally aware they are.
Conspicuous consumption is an enormous part of consumerism absolutely everywhere. Wearing a $20,000 suit is conspicuous consumption to those who can tell that’s what you’re wearing but we don’t generally call it that because it’s only conspicuous if you’re in the know.
I hope someone invents a "coal"-roller add-on that emits high pressurized steam (builds it up for 5 minutes, then releases it when the engine is pressed hard). But it's got to be white vapor not black, as it will need to represent the green nature of what Tesla owners are buying into.
Having learnt the term 'rolling coal' just now, I would sincerely hope the morons doing this are in a minority amongst truck drivers. I find it far more likely that conspicuous consumption is to blame for the truck/SUV trend than anti-environmentalism.
I live in a city and have used my pick-up truck for 15yrs constantly to move furniture, haul trash to the dump, and bulk material (mulch, dirt, sand, pavers, etc) for myself and friends. It's a major time and money saver. Yes, parking is a PITA and the gas is horrendous. However, with the population density, the utility need to haul materials is compounded - especially now that you have increasing #'s of DIY renovations and things like urban farms.
The thing I find interesting about this truck design is the angled body. It looks like it's designed for minimised radar cross section (RCS) signature, which is a military application benefit.
Indeed. It looks to be inspired by the RAH-66 Comanche stealth helicopter [1]. Currently operators are known to use (through Mil-COTS) the Toyota Hilux. Maybe Elon is after an influx of SOCOM/DARPA money for Tesla (increasing his association with Tony Stark in the process).
I live in a northern Midwest suburb, in a region that receives a lot of snow in the winter. I have driven older trucks my whole life, in part because of of the 4x4 capability for winter driving. I also enjoy being the guy who keeps a tow strap in the toolbox and hauls people out of ditches. Hard to do that without a heavy 4x4 vehicle.
When you have the bed, you realize there are a lot more uses for it than you might otherwise think. Other than just hauling stuff, the tailgate acts as a bench to sit on- I used to have lunch with my wife every day in the summer like this. At an outdoor event (like fireworks, outdoor concert in a park, etc.) I've lined the bed with blankets and lounged at comfortable height with 3 friends and great view of whatever is going on.
For me, the real key is to own an older truck that you don't mind dinging or using to its potential. I buy used, with cash, and I don't spend more than $15K or so. I don't understand spending $65-75K on a brand new mall-crawling status symbol that will only start being used like a truck in 15 years by a guy like me.
Although admittedly, I really like the look and presumed potential of the new Tesla truck. It's the first vehicle that I'd actually consider buying new. I wonder how well the stainless steel will hold up the salty roads- the bane of vehicles around here.
I live in Northern Europe and drive a Prius and have no issues in the winter. Last year we went to visit my wife's grandma, who lives in a 'village' (nearest neighbour 1km away) ~5km down a uneven dirt track which is bad enough in the summer. When we went, there was 30cm of snow on the road, but I had absolutely no issues. I was surprised by how well it handled it.
Sure if I had ended up in a ditch I would have had troubles, but you'd also have issues with a truck. (There aren't many big trees you can use to tow yourself out in this area)
I get that maybe you like trucks, but I don't think there is as much need as you make out (in the winter department - your other points are fair arguments). Modern cars (esp. 4x4) can handle pretty much any road surface, the only case you would need something bigger is for off-road where you need higher clearance.
It's not just amount of snow but terrain. A fair bit of snow on a flat surface might be fine, but even a little bit on a slope can quickly become problematic if you don't have 4x4.
I wonder how this sounds to people who live in, say, Switzerland, where it is very mountainous, snows frequently, and literally nobody drives a truck, and even the cars are not AWD.
I mean, I _know_ how it sounds because I am one of those people. But I wonder how Americans think this sounds.
European countries are much more compact, which makes public transportation much easier to justify. By contrast, the US is extremely spread out and public transportation yields much less ROI even in many urban areas.
Vehicle ownership in the US is practically a requirement because you have to drive to get anywhere. Therefor, having a versitile vehicle like a truck is more apealing.
Trucks also tend to be more durable than cars so they're more common in the used market, especially in the midwest.
...but for many, a truck is just an aesthetic/lifestyle symbol. The "country" lifestyle is generally associated with independence and work ethic - traits which are highly valued in the US. Trucks are a classic symbol of that lifestyle. That's why country songs stereotypically mention trucks.
The OP wasn't arguing for public transport, so I don't get where your comments on that came from from. I totally get what you mean about "symbols" though.
> Trucks also tend to be more durable than cars
Surely the engine, drivetrain, clutch etc are the same parts you'd find in cars? Curious about what you mean here?
I drive a normal FWD car during winter weather almost nobody will go out in. I drove it cross-country through the worst snowstorm the midwest experienced in the last 10 years where I couldn't see more than 10ft in front of me.
All that said, I would have been much safer in a truck.
Alabama is the size of England. Using individual US states as points of reference for entire European countries is one form of the incomensorability. Columbus, Ohio is as far from San Diego, California as Barcelona is from Moscow. Except there's pretty much nothing but empty plain, mountains, and desert in between. Ohio has 10,000 km^2 of fresh water...about a quarter of Switizerland.
Recognizing the difference of scale is not a claim to exceptionalism. The US's scale makes it more like Russia than any western European country.
Inyo County, California is 1/3 the area of Switzerland. At population 18,000, it has fewer people than any Canton save Appenzell Interhoden (~16,000). Inyo County is surrounded by more Mojave. The Mojave Desert is the size of Portugal...nearly thrice that of Switzerland.
The long-term utility of this Tesla truck will be interesting to see. Even though new trucks are insanely priced right now, they do have very good longer-term value compared to cars.
I like having a truck but would never drop $75k for one. I currently own a 1999 Chevy 2500. It has 150,000 miles on it, which is essentially nothing for a truck that old. A lot of people who buy trucks expect them to last 15+ years and most of them do. Hell, as long as the frame is in good shape, you won't have any trouble finding someone who would buy the truck and drop a new engine in it, considering a crate 350 will set you back less than $3,000.
That’s exactly what gets me about Tesla. This is a truck you will probably never be able to repair yourself or at local shops (for software reasons alone) and is totally dependent on Tesla’s attention span and staying in business to hold its value.
Farmers are fed up with John Deere and their software shenanigans. I hope people like you who are actually thinking about value, don’t fall for this...
I own two Chevy 2500's, a '99 and a '00. They both have the 6 liter engine, very hot roddy. Bought them both for less than $3k used. One is 4WD and the other is 2WD. I used them to haul sheds that I manufacture and they are the first pickup that hasn't disintegrated under this abuse. My shed trailer and heaviest building weigh 7500 lbs together, and there is significant wind resistance towing buildings.
While I've never considered purchasing a new pickup, I'd sure like to have one of the cybertrucks to haul with.
> there are a lot more uses for it than you might otherwise think
This looks like a solution in search of a problem. People are buying stuff they don't need then finding a good justification for it (from their perspective). But almost anything can be justified this way. Even driving an 18-wheeler will have advantages you never thought about but this doesn't negate the downsides. Mainly that you carry around 4000-5000lbs (over 2000Kg) of metal mainly just to move 1 or 2 people and nothing more. This is a lot of wasted fuel and a lot of space taken in the street.
Coal also has advantages but few people would dare defend it with this argument.
That doesn't make it better. Moving around by yourself (like most drivers out there) in a 2300Km vehicle is not efficient. It's just better by comparison because at least it's an EV. But you still use a lot of (not so clean in the majority of cases) electricity to move a lot of weight just so one person gets from point A to point B.
People want one car to be the jack of all trades. Big enough for 7 people and carry a house's worth of furniture in one go while towing a boat, and travel 800Km on a charge. So it ends up being truck sized, 2500+Kg, to carry 1 person on their 5Km commute to work 99% of the time.
It's all relative. You could build something that weighed 100kg, so anything heavier is a waste of energy if we only look at ability to go from point A to point B.
But it would be a death trap to drive around other 2000kg vehicles, and it wouldn't be comfortable.
99% of the people could do with a sub-compact 99% of the time as seen everywhere else in the world. Are the only 2 options you see a 100Kg dingy or a 2500Kg fat-mobile? It's like saying you can't have electric cars because how far can they go on 2 AA batteries.
If that's a death trap around the "real" vehicles, should cyclists and pedestrians expect 90% mortality rate should they ever decide to go out on the streets? Is that normal?
> Almost no one in the US has a commute that short.
It's all relative. You just multiply that (avoidable) waste.
I'm sure more people could live with a subcompact car than currently do, but it's nowhere near 99%. I can drive a subcompact but they aren't made for tall drivers and anything more than 20 minutes or so hurts my knee.
People with families who regularly take them out aren't going to fit in a subcompact particularly if anyone is tall or there are car seats.
You could design a very lightweight car that could hold 4-5 people comfortably with 1 or 2 carseats and fit tall drivers. But no one does--it's not really an option.
You could buy and maintain multiple vehicles for different purposes, but it's expensive especially when you consider the additional insurance.
>100Kg dingy or a 2500Kg fat-mobile?
No obviously not, I'm saying that 2600kg vs 2300kg is basically irrelevant. And that when you say 2300kg is a waste of energy that statement only makes sense in the context of specific design goals.
>If that's a death trap around the "real" vehicles, should cyclists and pedestrians expect 90% mortality rate
No but motorcycles have an almost 30x higher fatality rate per mile driven than cars do, so I'd call that a death trap.
It's a prisoners dilemma. Everyone else is driving 2000kg+ cars. To make very lightweight vehicles that are safe around those huge vehicles it's very expensive. The solution is regulation, not begging individuals to drive smaller cars.
I find there's only a tenuous relationship between overall car size and space for tall drivers. e.g. a Nissan Leaf has about the same leg and head room as a Subaru Ascent.
Like me, you probably live in the vast majority of the Midwest that is as flat as a pancake. I would argue in that scenario 4x4 is not very important: if there's no incline, two wheel drive will work in almost any weather situation.
(sure, on strictly theoretical grounds, having 4 wheel drive, or 10 wheel drive or 1000 wheel drive, if there are no downsides, would always be preferable)
I once pulled a rather Jeep out of a ditch in my old Volvo 240 station wagon. At low speeds basically every 100+ HP vehicle is traction limited. It also did surprisingly well in the snow with a little practice and good tires.
How do you justify having much dirtier and far more carbon emissions than people who have appropriately sized vehicles? Granted, you could use it a few times for the bed, but why not just rent a truck and save the environment the other 95% of trips?
Trucks in urban settings are an exclusively American thing. Because of the chicken tax [1], a 20% import duty on trucks, foreign trucks are unprofitable in the US. This lack of competition incentivizes American auto makers to create as much domestic demand for trucks as possible.
Urban pickup trucks in particular are very American, but the ever increasing number of SUVs in places like central London is just as absurd, not to mention problematic[0]. I'm guessing one reason Europe favours SUVs over trucks is because the roads are generally much narrower here.
As someone with two kids, massive storage space appeals to me very much.
Flying somewhere for vacation now costs $$$, so driving say to France, Spain or Portugal is a lot more appealing. A baby stroller already takes up half the 500L boot/trunk space of my BMW X1 and even with an annoying & noisy 400L roof box we still can't fit everything we want (I used to go backpacking for months with a 35L pack, so I'm not someone who takes the kitchen sink on vacation).
A Skoda Superb has a boot space of around 600L, one of the largest among "normal" cars. If you want more space, I guess you have to go for something that may look out of place in the city center but does have practical appeal even outside of farms.
As your example numbers here show though estates are often better for storage than crossovers. So there must be other factors behind crossover popularity.
Their being higher is a big factor I bet (less stooping and more road visibility, although the latter is less of a factor as they get more popular).
The fucking problem is now that everyone has an SUV, driving something of a normal size makes you feel like you're going to get crushed to death in an accident.
You usually can but than there are the moments where you can't. Like that 1.3 parking spots the SUV took (https://i.imgur.com/RGxHHkF.jpg) because...well nobody knows because it should actually fit but the driver couldn't park it in despite the x amount of cameras and assistants or maybe just didn't want to because he/she needed more space to get out of it in the end (actual reason presented to me once). Parking with one wheel on the street/bike lane is quite common too. However probably not because of the same reasons as the street should be wide enough to get out so maybe there are just not enough parking sensors in there. Or that SUV in a narrow city road-fun: driving with too much distance to the right side so everybody coming from the front has to wait for the city tank to pass them because somehow SUV drivers don't have a good feeling about how wide it really is.
Well yeah...they might be a thing that fits well in the US but they as sure as hell don't belong in Europe.
Not as small, but my car is a Prius C. I feel dwarfed by most cars on the roads these days. I'm always needing to inch out juuuust a little further for a turn just so I can see if the road is clear for me to proceed.
I used to, until my MR2 was run off a road by a careless truck driver. I was fine but the trauma persists - the sickening sound of running into hard items at 70+ mph is hard to forget.
The fact you sit higher and the extra visibility that gives on the road is indeed a huge plus. Car salesman told me "everyone's ditching estates for crossovers nowadays" and almost every brand makes one.
My wife used to own a Mercury Sable. I literally dodged a deer with it one day without rolling the vehicle. Ended up in the next lane over in less than half a second still going down the highway.
With my big pickups, I just try to center the deer on my massive grill guard so they don't dent the quarter panels.
I'm with you on this. I recently drove an BMW X5, a 350D M-Sport, and the high level of body roll was a real surprise - straight out of the showroom I turned at a set of lights and thought I was going to roll the bloody thing!
Also, realistically I don't think sitting slightly higher up gives much better visibility.
> Flying somewhere for vacation now costs $$$, so driving say to ...
What about the rest of the time though?
Would you save money by using a "normal" car for most of the year, and then renting something bigger (SUV, (mini)van) when you need the large volume? Or purchase a hitch for your car and rent a trailer when you need to haul things?
A co-worker of mine drives a Ford F-150 year-round because he owns a fishing boat that he used 5-6 weekends per year. Seems... sub-optimal.
I was recently shopping for a car with loads of space - it's actually surprising how little storage space there is in most SUVs, especially compared to larger saloons, estates and hatchbacks!
An Audi Q5, for example, is big vehicle, yet I've more space in my 3 Series GT. Very similar story with the BMW X3 and the Merc equivalent.
At some the very biggest SUVs, such as the Q7 and X5, yes, you have a decent amount of space - but it's absolutely less than you'd think for what are basically tanks.
does the math really work out?
You will also have to spend quite some money on fuel and should factor in the depreciation and maitenance costs of your car to make it comparable. And flights on popular routes in Europe are pretty cheap nowadays.
Estimated cost both ways is about 600EUR, that includes fuel, tolls, a cheap hotel half way. Brussels - Bilbao is always an expensive flight for some reason. There's Ryanair airports nearby but it's a huge hassle and we'd still have to rent a car upon arrival.
Brussels - Bilbao at the end of Dec is 1500EUR for 3x tickets. Driving there & back is around 5-600EUR, including diesel, tolls and a cheap hotel half way.
There's cheaper tickets with budget airlines but getting to some rural Ryanair airport by 6AM with a toddler and a baby, no thanks.
just checked some prizes out of curiosity for that route and found tickets starting from 400 EUR for 2 adults and two kids (unless you have to travel on the most expensive dates). Make it 600 EUR but it still does not sound like a big difference and you are not factoring in the depreciation and maintenance a car costs for a long trip like that. Financially i don't think it makes a big difference, it's probably about convenience in the end.
Four hundred EUR total, were did you find such tickets? I use Kayak, only direct flights and no Ryanair (all too much hassle with kids)
A car like this should be able to do 80K Km before needing any serious maintenance / repairs so a 2500Km round trip doesn't worry me too much. It is indeed also about convenience.
We have 2 sets of twins, age 3 and 5. Currently drive a Multipla, which has the same controversial looks and the same 3+3 seating plan. I'd like a tesla truck, but I'd really like one as an estate/station wagon. More internal space, the merrier. Bigger is better. Shorter wheelbase is better for parking in London, but I can live with it. The number of big SUVs around here is utter nonsense. Stupid cars. Big on the outside, small on the inside. Diesel guzzlers. Nothing to do with function, whatsoever. Transport for London is banning a load of them in 2021.
Interesting. I’ve never heard that before, but I have heard them called Einkaufspanzer (shopping tanks) several times. The implication being it’s the tank you use to do your grocery shopping in.
but now we're putting people in the position where if you're not driving SUV and you're in a collision with an SUV you come off worse. so your option to remain safe is to buy an SUV so that if you hit/get hit another SUV or you hit/gethit another vehicle you end up in a better position
I don’t think that’s true and it’s possible to design small cars to fare well. I had an old Saab 9-3 that was t-boned by a Chevy Avalanche at about 40 mph.
Both vehicles were totaled. My passengers had some lacerations from shattered glass. The avalanche people were taken away in an ambulance. I was fine.
Small cars can be designed quite robustly to withstand these huge trucks hitting them. Not all though.
I think the current tesla sedans do quite well with large vehicle impact testing.
It’s not so much about the design than the impression. Lots of people don’t like driving and would rather a bigger car because they feel unsafe next to those other giant cars. Nothing to do with actual danger, just perception.
I think people like excuses to drive SUVs. I had a friend who drove an SUV and talked about the safety and space needs. But the SUV had worse safety and space than many sedans, wagons, and hatchbacks. I always thought it curious about why they would cover up whatever the reason was for driving an SUV but was never able to talk about it because they got deflective and defensive.
Modern safety features certainly help, but ultimately physics is still physics.
There can also be serious problems when modern vehicles have collisions with older vehicles that don't have those safety features, for similar reasons.
The downside is that an SUV flips over without any effort. Especially with the high greenhouses and unavoidable sunroofs nowadays. I've seen SUVs flip over just from being rear-ended.
Notice how one of the first marketing points of this new monstrosity is "passenger safety". Because the safety of the passengers in a vehicle the size of a truck with the performance of a sports car is really important. Given the poor standard of driver training it's going to be suicide to drive smaller car soon, let alone be on a bicycle or walking.
If I'm forking out 40K+ on a car I'm going to make sure it's at least useful for 2-3 vacations per year with the kids. That currently requires about 900L of boot space (stroller, 3 big duffels, a few boxes with supplies, toys, etc)
>people driving it have no idea what they are doing + have no need for that capacity.
Presumptuous to assume the operators of these vehicles don’t have the need for the capacity. My next door neighbor has 3 kids that fit in 3 car seats she carts them around all day not to mention their accessories and shopping and I always thought she needed a bigger vehicle.
SUVs fare better in a collision with a smaller car, when it comes to protecting your kids you are better off riding in a tank.
Get a MiniVan (called a people carrier in the UK) if you need the capacity, not an SUV. Better MPG, less likely to flip over, similar or greater capacity.
Car seats are massive and I’m pretty sure they’re deliberately designed so that few models will fit three to a row. They certainly don’t fit in my compact or my crossover. Putting them in my compact also requires me to drive with my chest on the steering wheel.
Here's a long list, along with a list of carseats that have been tested "3 across" in those cars. A minivan or SUV would undoubtedly be easier to load kids in and out of, of course.
Agreed, there are very few cars on the market that fit the bill. There's the Ford S-Max, Peugeot 5008, and the Audi Q7 (which is ludicrously big) - I think that's it.
It really does feel like a massive gap in the market, and I wonder why that is?
BTW, if you're still looking, and depending on the age of your kids, it might be worth looking at the MultiMac - it's basically a new back bench for your car, with 3x car seats built-in.
Maybe because not many people have triplets? My parents had five children and never had more than one baby seat in the car at a time (they only ever bought one baby seat).
I don't know if its a legal requirement, but every car with passenger airbags I've ridden in over the last five years at least has had the ability to disable the passenger airbag, and clear warnings that you should do so if a child is in the front seat.
The ISOFIX requirement is the big constraining factor. Ditch that and you can find combinations of compact car and child seats which will fit three across, though you’ll have less choice in terms of child seats.
Even if you ditch the ISOFIX requirement, it's still difficult to find a combination of 3 car seats that will fit across the back bench, even with large cars.
And the space. I doubt any normal family car I've ever driven could fit a rear-facing baby seat behind a tall person in the driver's seat, for example.
Toyota trucks are everywhere and our family 1995 Toyota t-100 regularly had people stopping us making offers on it from about 2005ish until I gave it to my half-brother in 2013 with almost 140k miles on it (which is nothing for a Toyota), I even had people knock on the door of our house offering to buy it when it wasn't for sale. The Indiana State Police (I live in Indiana) even had some of their fleet as Toyota pickups for years (they still might). Actually, I'm quite confident I received more offers for my t-100 than I did for my '67 c-10 and I'd regularly get stopped and asked if I was willing to sell it too (which I finally did when someone offered me twice what I'd paid for it, which I'm still sore about I really miss that truck).
To be fair though, Toyota does manufacture a lot of vehicles in Canada and the United States which gets around the 'chicken tax'.
The reason you don't see a lot of imported pickups is because most of them are absolutely tiny, when you see an Isuzu truck for example it looks about as practical as an El Camino.
They are also popular in Austria because you pay lower yearly/monthly taxes on small utility trucks even if you don't run a business. Plenty of large US trucks parking in the center of Vienna...
Same for the Netherlands, but here it's only for business owners. But nowadays even the mailman in a business owner, thanks to contracting changing the job market.
A small Peugeot diesel crossover, weighing 1392kg, will cost you €1484 per year in road tax. Meanwhile a Toyota Hilux at 2030kg will cost you €496 in road tax. Even a Ford F250 with the 7.3L V8 and 2850kg will cost you only €692 per year. Less than half of a family crossover.
The worst thing is that some pickup trucks don't have a bed big enough to qualify as a work vehicle, so they cut the bed and make it longer (VW Amarok) or they take out the rear seats and put a divider in between to create a cargo area. Or people just buy a bigger truck so it's big enough to qualify. It's also exempt from CO2 tax giving you between €5000 and €72,000 (not a typo) off your initial purchase. So the €256,000 Range Rover SVA suddenly becomes a whole lot more affordable at €184,000, just by tossing the rear seats, calling it a utility vehicle and registering it on your business.
Mind boggling that we do this while construction of new homes is shut down all over the country because of the nitrogen crisis.
Here in Belgium you have the rear seats taken out of any car and register it as "lichte vracht" (light cargo), massively reducing the taxes you pay on it. Anyone can do this.
I've actually considered removing the rear seats from my Ford Fiesta simply for the increased practicality, was mostly just deterred by the hassle/expense of installing some kind of cargo floor to replace the seats.
My wife and I both own businesses here and neither of us have heard of this.
That's absolutely nuts.
The only thing I heard of is that older cars can be registered under a company and the market value used for tax purposes. That's why you see a lot of these massive Mercedes on the road..
The Netherlands outputs too much nitrogen. Mainly because we are the number two exporter of food. So we are drastically cutting sources of nitrogen. Construction of new homes is done by heavy machinery that output a lot of nitrogen into the atmosphere.
I should add that only 1 percent of nitrogen is caused by construction, compared to 40 percent being caused by agriculture.
There is actually a fair amount of competition from Japan. The Toyota Tundra/Tacoma, Nissan Titan/Frontier, and Honda Ridgeline are all popular and in some ways better trucks than their American counterparts. I think many "truck people" are also people who tend to prefer domestically-made goods; in the same way that people shopping at Home Depot are more likely to buy products with the "Made in the USA" sticker on them.
There's a bit of irony in that the Japanese car companies make all their cars (destined for the US market) in the US, whereas the American car companies tend to prefer Mexico.
Add to that the hardcore brand loyalty a lot of truck owners seem to have, it really is surprising.
What else is really surprising to me is their resale value, especially when they are optioned with desirables such as 4x4 or a diesel powertrain; 10-15 year old Dodge Rams with the Cummins are still selling in the $10k+ range, with some of the nicer 10-year-old examples fetching closer to $20k, roughly half the original MSRP
How is the chicken tax related to practicality of trucks in urban settings? It makes American trucks cheaper. But OP's question was about the practicality of a large truck in an urban setting.
It seems like you wanted to show off your knowledge of the chicken tax and just threw it in an answer to whatever thread came up first.
I believe their point is thaat if the automotive industry has any control at all, then they'll lean toward the segment that has a moat to protect them from competition. So buying advertising to make it seem normal or desirable to have a truck for example.
It doesn't make them more practical, just more common.
It's definitely relevant to a general discussion about trucks. I just couldn't tell if I was missing something and it was somehow directly related to trucks in urban environments.
I found that once I owned a home, the utility for a truck doing "weekend warrior" tasks was great. Runs to the dump, transporting furniture, soil/mulch, firewood. Standard towing package for a boat or a rental trailer. Can also fit bikes, kayaks, skis, and camping equipment, no need for expensive roof rack accessories.
We use my wife's crossover for all of the family trips, so it's usually just me in the truck. Before I owned a home I enjoyed driving a nicer sedan but now I would now I prefer the utility of a mid-size truck.
I once managed to fit an entire king size bed inside a fiat punto, but it doesn't make punto a good choice for transporting things. Once you have kids, a dog, these modern mars-rover like baby trolleys, occasional need to transport furniture, etc. it's never enough space. And in Europe minivans cost the same as urban SUVs, so why not have some off-road capabilities too. At least it was my reasoning...
I actually rent a car for transporting stuff (mostly big stuff to the dump/disposal). The savings on fuel alone during the year make op for that easily.
Maybe 15 years ago I bought an old Mazda Protege, having downsized from a Dodge Dakota. I still needed to haul stuff occasionally, so I outfitted the Protege with a trailer hitch and bought a cheap 4x8 trailer. Best of both worlds.
I've been toying with the idea of getting a hitch installed on my Prius.
I can rent a van by the hour at most of the large furniture stores around here. Standard license applies as well (<3.5t). You can rent bikes, scooters, cars by the hour as well, quite convenient if you live in the city center.
Cars are cheap and tax is non-existent here, 50 GBP (which is actually the rental cost here as well, but of course the wages are lower) represents 1/15 of the price of the median vehicle.
Here in Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, etc is renting a car worth it if you do it maybe once a year, otherwise owning a universal large car is much cheaper. I rented a van for 2 weeks and realized I could have bought a used one for just 1.5x the rental+insurance price.
Here are much smaller (10x and smaller) taxes on vehicles, that is probably the reason.
Any risk analyst could tell you all the factors you don't take into account when you do a simple comparison of renting a new, cared-for, insured vehicle for which someone else is responsible vs. the crapshoot of buying something second-hand, which you now have to take on, whatever goes wrong.
I also doubt you are taking fuel into account with this comparison, which was the primary source of savings mentioned when you own a small car and rent a truck as needed.
Most people here drive Skoda Octavia which is one of the most fuel conservative vehicles on the market, worldwide. Having a smaller car brings no measurable gains.
Same for the UK. You can often rent a small van in the UK for less than GBP50/day and a large van for less than GBP75/day if you shop around. Sometimes Saturday and Sunday count as one day too.
Large trailers (if they’re big enough to be worth hiring instead of a van) will for most people likely need additional qualifications on their licence to be allowed to drive with so they’re less popular.
I would not want to make a trip to the dump in a Panda; for that I would want a trailer.
Front-wheel driver cars in the United States are generally not rated for towing, and can void your warranty. (It's silly, because as I understand it, the exact same car in Europe usually is rated for towing).
Minivans are the exception; they are rated for towing more than some compact pickups. Unfortunately, seat design means that many minivans no longer meet one of the original design criteria of the first minivan: the ability to carry a 4x8 sheet of plywood.
>> Front-wheel driver cars in the United States are generally not rated for towing, and can void your warranty.
That is crazy, no wonder many Americans think you need a monster-truck to tow a trailer. My small Audi A3 is rated with a trailer weight of 1400kg in Europe
Eh, my VW GTI has a section on towing in the manual that says, paraphrased: "Don't do this, also, this is how you do it" and any U-Haul rental place will (poorly) install a tow hitch for their small box trailers, even on compact cars
I only did a quick search and didn't find the latest model. But for the previous model you can tow 1600kg with a Golf GTI in Norway. The tow hitch can be ordered factory installed
You can use the Panda to tow a trailer, obviously you need to mind certain weight limits.
I wasn't aware those laws were so strict in the US, perhaps that is why trucks are so much more common. Owning or renting a trailer isn't uncommon here.
Just like trucks, some of which are almost exactly 4' between the wheel humps. The Toyota Previa (late-80s to mid-90s) and early Dodge Caravan vans can easily carry full sheets of plywood.
That it is possible to put a full sheet of plywood in a minivan has nothing to do with the design criteria for the first minivans. The design criteria for Dodge could have been fit a family of six and have space for luggage and a pet carrier. It is surprising that fitting 4×8 sheets were an explicit design criteria.
A lot of it is possible for sure. I used to do a lot these things in a Subaru WRX (minus the towing of course). Even drove home from Lowe's with an assembled grill on my roof rack once.
Always hated filling a sedan with trash, yard garbage, or landscaping materials though.
It’s the first three items in OPs list that separate the truck from the crossover. It would not be feasible to carry a volume of garden soil, lumber, or furniture in your
Panda.
I believe the Fiat Panda is pretty roomy if you put the seats down. I think sometimes it helps to have a truck if you're transporting more rough and dirty stuff. You'll not just mess up your seats in the Panda, but also potentially the exterior and door seals/trims etc.
I used to own a Honda Jazz (Fit) and it could fit an amazing amount of things because of the flat floor, seats that folded flat and squarish rear hatch.
I used it to move a queen size bed, refrigerator, washing machine: stuff you'd normally need a ute or van to transport.
In Europe instead of owning big trucks or trailers for occasional use, we just rent them when needed or hire someone (usually businesses) who also owns one of those to do it. Plus, almost every store will offer delivery for reasonable prices. It generally cheaper and easier this way.
But I guess in US this usually wouldn't be viable because of the big land and less population density.
In Germany at least we home owners have station wagons. They will do the job for transporting stuff 90% of the time and are still good for the Autobahn.
As one living in the US, I think renting a truck is quite viable, as is renting a trailer for your sedan/ minivan/ SUV. Oddly, we don't seem to do it much.
I recently bought a pickup knowing that the number of days in the year I need to transport bulky stuff can't really justify owning a truck. But since it (a Honda Ridgeline) is about as livable as an SUV, I didn't feel too foolish. Given that few luxury SUVs can be had for the $US 40k I paid, and given this truck's many upgrades that help it to rival a luxury car, I was sold.
We were originally talking about urban trucks, so these are not the people who totally need the vehicle. It is generally cheaper and easier to do that your way here, and most people do. But there is a very large subset of people who want a truck regardless of the cost. People in the country often have a legitimate need.
How many weekends did you assume he would need a truck? And what value did you place on his time and hassle, renting and returning a vehicle each of those weekends?
I live in Houston, where there are LOTS of very very clean very very expensive pickups. Most are status symbols that rarely see any true use.
However, in my immediate social group, there are LOTS of smaller trucks or smaller SUVs, mostly because of the practicality for bicycling trips. Sure, you can do a roof rack or a hitch rack, but if you want to go out to the hill country with you and your wife and both MTB and road bikes, you find yourself wishing for a truck bed pretty fast.
There's lots of overlap in this group with other outdoor activities -- camping, hiking, some fishing, a very small amount of hunting -- that reward actual trucks. My friend J has a full-size (read: HUGE) Ford with back seats and a long bed, and uses the HELL out of it, since he travels back and forth to Colorado with bikes pretty frequently.
But he and his wife also have a VW they use for most urban driving. ;)
I only own a compact and I use it for camping, mountain biking, dog hauling, etc. very regularly. I have utterly destroyed the interior of this car. The carpets are coming off of the floor, the seats are a mess, the headliner is well past what I can clean with a vacuum. The tabs that the bumper mounts to no longer exist, the drip tray under my motor lost a couple of mount points, etc.
Absolutely will be buying a truck in the near future for these purposes- and selling this compact to a high school student or somebody else willing to drive a ragged out hybrid.
The annoying thing is that, at least in the US, trucks are just getting bigger and bigger.
Small / compact trucks like the Toyota Tacoma have become much bigger, and other models like the Ford Ranger disappeared and have been reintroduced in larger sizes.
This is annoying, because the previous gen size of the Ranger (e.g.) is a really great and useful size. Most people who could use a truck don't need the giant "full size" models, and yet the market ignores them.
The problem is, they're just bad vehicles. They don't handle well, they guzzle fuel and they kill more pedestrians. There is no point in them unless you're a farmer.
Yes true, but I was really referring more to SUVs. Worldwide there is a real problem with this trend, and it is nearly all marketing. Certainly the average school run in the UK does not benefit form the extensive use of SUVs.
Yes of course. But nobody would ever argue that a van is a better vehicle than a normal sized car for moving people around (unless you have a massive family). SUVs are a profitable marketing trend for car companies and nothing more. We are literally burning the planet and people's insecurities are being exploited to persuade them into oversized and (thus poorly performing) vehicles.
VW Jetta does 30MPG in the city, Jeep Wrangler does 22MPG, i.e. 36% more emission. In the winter conditions (e.g. Toronto where I live) Jeep wins hands down. I don't even have winter tires. If you drive kids, the higher and stronger vehicle provides much more safety. Is it worth an extra 36% of pollution? I don't know. But the view that SUVs are just a gas-guzzling marketing ploy is a stretch.
They may be slightly safer for the occupants of the car, but the height factor kills 30% more pedestrians and in actual fact accident fatalities are up as a result of SUVs as they incite risk-taking behaviour and roll over in accidents much more readliy. Additionally, they only have to accede to truck safety regulations with are less stringent than those for cars. I can point you to loads of papers and articles on this. They purely are a marketing ploy as they are more profitable vehicles for the manufacturers. BTW those MPG ratings are shit by today's standards; most cars do 45MPG+.
> physically dominate the average car in an accident
This is just such an American way of putting it. Sounds so much nicer than "kill everyone in the other vehicle to provide a marginally higher chance for its owner" but it's basically the same thing
At a certain point tho, if everyone else is driving a truck, you either drive a compact out of pure moral-high-ground spite or you get a truck/full-size SUV as well to even your chances of survival.
I'm not saying escalation is a Good Thing™, only that it's inevitable when people are culturally obsessed with driving absurd bullshit.
Or you do the math and realize that with a modern, safe automobile, your chance of dying in an accident with a pickup is so small that upgrading your own vehicle to a pickup is a rounding error.
To be clear, I agree that humans being humans, we do love to get into escalating arms races.
I've seen at least 3 reports in my area where a head-on collision with an impaired driver (in the truck) usually ended up killing or seriously injuring the passengers in this 'modern, safe automobile'. Some examples:
It is an arms race and it is the right time for the industry to use the growing fear and demand for security in the global population to make some extra $$$ (just seen from a purely economical point of view of course).
I agree that it is probably inevitable but there is also people who don't join the race and that is lifting my hopes.
Things like “danger,” “skill,” “knowledge,” and “safety” aren’t really part of license exams in the US. They’ll pretty much just give a license to anyone here, literally.
It’s actually one of our bigger problems (it has big implications on safety, infrastructure, urban planning, &c.), but not many people really care. Cars are too deeply associated with “freedom” and “success” and individuality; for a lot of people I’d say they might be the biggest icon of America after the flag.
People will come up with all sorts of justifications for what is really an emotional purchase.
If you don't believe this take a look at the marketing for cars, the further upmarket you go the more it is laden with emotional triggers. Buy this car and your wife will become slim and attractive, your kids will love you, roads will become empty and smooth before you, that new speed boat will suddenly be within reach and trailerable.
Never mind the reality of endless car payments, clogged up streets, increasing pedestrian deaths, kids not being able to play outside, particulate pollution and climate change.
In the US, for many folks, their vehicle is an identity statement. Generally minivans, sedans, and econoboxes are the exceptions, but the marketing here for most other car models tries hard to sell some demographic that they can claim somehow to be special. And interesting. I suspect the majority of pickup owners want to make such a statement. For them, driving an SUV would send the wrong message.
As someone who has a truck in an urban area I have one just for the reason you listed. I dont use the bed often but when I need it I do not have to make special arrangements. While it is true that sometimes its possible to get free delivery for some larger items thats no guarantee and you have are dependent on their schedule versus being able to do it on yours.
If you're going to have a vehicle the flexibility of a truck is second to none.
1.) Hitching a trailer is a hassle, especially if you're trying to hook it up by yourself.
2.) Storing a trailer can be annoying, depending on style, and some HOA's or apartments don't like the idea of one sitting around in plain site.
3.) The shape of many trailers is not as conducive to some tasks. An example: a lot small/medium trailers are square or enclosed. If I want to haul some 8 foot (or 16 foot if you have an extended-bed truck) 2x4's home from Home Depot, I can throw them in the bed of my truck with relatively little difficulty. There are many trailers that don't work for something like this. In fact, I can't think of any trailers that would work with 16 foot boards..
You don't buy a trailer, you rent it for €20 for a few hours (or a few more bucks for the entire day), move whatever stuff you needed to move and then bring it back. No storage or HOA issues.
He said "without further arrangements". You could rent a truck too but the extra hassle involved in renting anything is often not worth it, especially if you also have to coordinate a few other things or people.
Not worth the hassle? The last two moves I've done that involved renting have been supereasy, i pre-book the wagon online and then just flash my ID, then paying afterwards
Adding more cargo space is easy with a trailer. Adding more passenger space isn't. And some permanent cargo space for weekly shopping is easier to justify than cargo space you need twice a year.
Over here in (Western) Europe most people rent a trailer when they need it, unless you are living more rural. If you need it once in a blue moon then renting isn't really an issue. Many places that sell large things, like IKEA, also rent out large vans basically for free if you purchase from them.
Right, but if you’re willing to rent, might as well just rent a truck on demand. At this point you’ve shifted the goal posts to, “why do people buy things and underutilize them instead of renting on demand”?
Why have a guest room when there are hotels you can send visitors to?
Why have a 4 door car that incurs most of its mileage in a commute with 1 or 2 people?
Well, here at least trailers are rented because you can pick up a trailer at the gas station at zero notice. Renting a truck is a little bit different.
I don't think most people have guest rooms on purpose. More often those are the rooms kids lived in before they left home and then the rooms get repurposed.
Mine is actually on the side of the house, behind the trash cans (also forbidden). The HOA hasn’t messed with me because I let the HOA guy borrow it. Utility trailers are very useful.
I guess it depends how often you need to use the bed. If you have to truck around that thing all the time just for those few occasions every year when you need to move large or heavy items you might be better off just renting a van for the day.
People should just do the math and decide for their own particular case if hauling around a huge vehicle with all the disadvantages that come with it (maneuverability, fuel consumption, parking, etc.) actually pays off when they need the capacity, or if they're better off always using the right tool for the job (regular car for most of the needs, rent big one for the rest). YMMV.
I’ve seen several comments in this thread that conclude that it’s wasteful to have the truck bed when you are not using it. Going one level deeper, to the owner it doesn’t feel wasteful on a day to day basis because you forget it’s back there when you’re not using it. But it’s so handy when you do need it.
Former truck owner myself, I downsized to a car after moving to a more urban setting. It’s often on the weekends that I loathe not having to pickup for various furniture moves, gardening, etc. since I now have to borrow and friend’s or rent one.
It’s wasteful in the sense that you use more fuel to carry around more car. You have a harder time parking and maneuvering in a city, and you generally take up more space than needed. Most people forget that what they do has an impact but this does not remove the impact.
How many times per year would you say you need to move furniture? If you do it 1 day per month but carry around a full truck and the above mentioned disadvantages the other 30 maybe it’s not that bad of a trade off.
Or just hire a van - I do this once a year or so when I need to move a lot of stuff. It's £30 for a day with a small van, £70 for a LWB transit (which is massive), or only £100 for a box van with a tail lift (basically a small lorry).
towing a trailer requires more skill than driving a pickup. there are some non-obvious but very dangerous mistakes you can make with a trailer that might not occur to you if you drive a small car most of the time. for example, if you load the trailer in a way where the center of gravity is behind the axle (or it shifts there while driving), you have just created an unstable system that will fishtail your car at speed.
I really wouldn't recommend that the average American driver use a trailer. renting a pickup from home depot is a good option though.
Where I live, you need separate insurance and in most cases a special license for a trailer. Also, in urban areas it's harder to find a place to park the trailer when you don't need it.
I live in Los Angeles. Four years ago, I bought a pick up truck.
In my case, I don't have a long commute. I can bike to work. So when I need a vehicle, it's to take my kids around, haul something I can't carry with my bike, or head out of the city for camping/adventuring/etc. The truck has been perfect. As it is, I use the bed of the truck at least once a week. I use it like all the other SUVs on the road, only I much prefer the flexibility of a proper truck, let alone the real offroad and towing capabilities.
Moreover, I know it's going to last pretty much forever and should I get a second, electric vehicle, there really won't ever be a time when having a truck on hand won't be useful.
I have a Toyota Matrix. It's a hatchback with a back seat that folds down into a flat bed. It's big enough for me to fit a bike without removing the wheels. Works for appliances and furniture as well.
YES! I had a 2003 Pontiac Vibe, same car - different cladding, and the best feature of the hatchback was that the glass also flipped up independent of the hatch. I once stuck a massive snowblower in it that was only possible because the glass was up and the handles were hanging out. I really like station wagons / hatchbacks, but their killer utility feature is a rear window that flips open or rolls down into the hatch. Sadly no cars are made with that feature anymore.
From my anecdotal experience, here are the main purposes:
* Hauling stuff from the home improvement and warehouse stores. Single family houses are a bit of work depending on age and when they are not, HGTV is the devil's workshop that invents the work.
* Safety: the feeling that regardless of who is at fault, you will live in a car crash. I have seen plenty of sad news reports where in a truck+car collision, the people in the car paid for it with their lives while the truck driver walked away.
* Status: possible - just don't have enough social understanding to know whether this is still a thing. I can imagine a jacked-up F350 or Silverado may be a status symbol.
I'm a married father of 3 with 1/4 acre of property. I did fine without a truck for years, but I bought an old pickup for $5k last year as our second family vehicle.
You can certainly make do with a smaller vehicle, but there are these occasional things that make having a truck suuuuper convenient. Some personal examples from the last year:
* Needed to top dress my lawn and it only takes 3 loads of soil from IFA to cover my 1/4 acre
* My father (who lives very close) bought a boat knowing he could use my truck to haul it when necessary. And yes, he talked to me about it first, and my family gets to use it whenever we want.
* I built a treehouse in this giant willow in my front yard and could not have hauled the lumber or fireman's pole without a truck
* With 5 people in the family we get huge Costco runs regularly, these are moderately easier to haul in the back of the truck.
* I get social capital when bringing my truck to any family or friend moving parties
* Used it to haul lumber, tools, and people when the extended family participated in our family cabin area's work day
* Hauled my father inlaw's motorcycle+ATV trailer on a family outing
IMO not everyone needs one, but in a community or geographically close family it is always nice to have that person you can call to borrow their truck, and if you're the one that has the truck then you get social capital when lending it and you also don't have to borrow one yourself.
For us since it's a second vehicle it does sit idle most of the time while we use the minivan for typical travel needs. But I have space to park it, and the truck obviously isn't wasting gas when we're not using it. And since we paid cash and it was cheap, there's just not much of a downside to keeping it around.
A thing like VW Touran or Renault Scenic will do that for you with much smaller fuel consumption, better ride, and also easier parking in tight places. (I'm 6'2" = 188 cm and >100 kg and VW Golf Sportsvan is very convenient, no need to step much up or down).
(And they will tow the things that most people tow, like a trailer that weighs a ton).
Renault does not exist in the US at all (or at least not in my part of the US)
VW Touran has a ground clearance of 156MM or 6.14 Inches and to total height of 1659mm or 65in , my Truck as a ground clearance of ~10in and a total height of 77in, that may seem like a small amount but is huge difference to me.
a VW Touran is exactly the type of vehicle I avoid
Further while available are not practical because there are very few mechanics that can work on them or have parts for them it has to go to the dealer which is $$$$$$
I tend to Stick to American Manufactured vehicles from Ford, Toyota, Honda, etc.
Ground clearance is good if you drive off-road or on very bad roads - you didn't mention that. If you drive on regular roads, 6 inch ground clearance is just fine, and you experience of the height at which you go to the car is not about ground clearance, it's about the height of the seat from the ground. For me, Touran class is very nice: I don't need to sit down or step up.
If you are 98 % of time driving on good roads, the generally lower center of mass makes things like a Touran or Toyota Verso safer and better to drive than a truck.
If you really need some more ground clearance, then there are things ranging from Honda CR-V (a very nice drive but a ground clearance closer to 8 inches) to Suzuki Jimny (a vehicle with actual off-road capability, but driveable on roads and small).
Of course there are people who actually do need a truck, but very often the cited reasons sound more like excuses.
Buying American, when you are yourself American, is of course a thing for many.
>and you experience of the height at which you go to the car is not about ground clearance
They are proportional, most Seats sit about the same height from the floor, so Ground Clearance it an accurate measurement to know how far the seat is from the ground.
I'm a small car kind of guy myself and generally consider trucks in the city to be silly. my last roommate had an f150 though and there are a couple of advantages. some of the roads in my area are simply awful, so jarring to drive on in my car that I have to go 10mph under the speed limit sometimes. there are also poorly designed intersections where you can easily hop the curb if you're not careful. driving a big truck means you don't have to care about this stuff. you don't feel the bumps at speed and you can just drive right over the curb with no problem. people don't cut you off or pull other aggressive moves on you nearly as often. my roommate has driven away (after exchanging info!) from two accidents where the other car was totaled.
I don't want one myself, but I can understand the appeal.
Practical answer: the people who actually need to move furniture, or other large items, in a city environment use vans.
Look at businesses and what their fleet vehicles are. No one uses an F150 in the city. Why? Because thieves very often steal stuff from the flatbed. If you actually want to transport large, bulky items in a city environment, you need to close off the back so that no one can look in and see the cargo.
2020 Ford Transit-350 Cargo is $35k.
------
F150 comes more in handy in rural areas, where there aren't thieves around. The flatbed is useful for hauling very large, oversized items, such as mountains of topsoil / compost, or rocks for your garden, or bundles of hay for stuff.
But when it comes to "city items" like furniture (often valuable furniture, so thieves want it), or large equipment like computer racks and servers... a van wins.
I think you're making a decent point, honestly. I live in a close-in suburb of a midwestern city and I think quite a few of the trucks in my neighborhood are probably 99% unnecessary from a utility standpoint. Having a reasonably sized pickup truck is a godsend for me right now, as I'm renovating our house and landscaping the yard. But frankly, since I work remotely, I really want this truck to be the last vehicle I ever purchase for myself (wife still commutes), and ideally we'll be a one-car household in the next 5 years.
For many, it is unneeded. For some, they only want the large vehicle, stability, and power for status or offroading. For some, they want to storage capacity for rare incidents. Some actually have use of it, just more rarely (say, a woodworking hobby). Then, certainly some professionals in construction have daily use of it.
Hard to judge which demographic you're looking at while driving around.
Back in the late 90's, for me anyway, buying a Ford Ranger strictly dominated just about any other choice. I didn't have a family/girlfriend so I didn't need the extra seats. 20mpg was pretty darn good compared to most trucks. The smaller cab meant I could heat/ac the interior pretty quickly. Easy to drive and maintain, and finally I had all that utility for when I needed it, which was rare but often enough to solve a lot of infrequent problems. It just seemed like the most practical choice. (I still have that truck, my family's other vehicle is a CRV.)
NYC is constantly choked for public parking and the rise of SUVs has made it so much worse. If every Ford Explorer owner bought a Mini Cooper we'd get 10,000 parking spaces back and less smog too.
Here in the southern US, it's mostly a status symbol that people delude themselves into thinking they have a utility need for. Typically people here will have at most 5-6 true needs for one each year, and deal with horrible gas economy (and blinding folks in sedans) since gas is cheap. Around here there's a lot of towing (boats, trailers, etc) but it's rare to see anyone make use of the bed.
Urban person here. Anything I go on a trip or go camping (many times a year), or have to move or help someone else move (unfortunately also many times a year), I wish I had a truck. I'm paying for a vehicle anyway, why not have one that does everything I need?
They are also useful if you own your own business that requires moving things around.
Note that I do not own a truck, I just wish I did.
I played in a band for years in Los Angeles and I loved being able to fit all of our gear into my truck on the weekends. Everyone was bummed when I finally sold the truck and bought a Prius. The Prius is surprisingly spacious and I could still fit my small drum kit and an amp or two but not our whole setup. Admittedly _much_ better for the weekday commute though.
People assume trucks are safer in accidents, even though that is by most measures a wrong assumption- Humans are irrational in that way.
(the other big reasons for their popularity is status signalling, and perverse incentives created by regulation of "passenger cars" as a category that have negatively impacted the quality of "regular cars" in the US.)
White people love boots and pickup trucks. That’s like asking my uncle why he has a $1k sound system in his $2k car (black folks love bass). I think it’s a cultural thing.
The US is a very wasteful society. It makes sense that they'd want to burn twice as much fuel as necessary to get themselves around. Watch Wall-E again to see where we're heading. Those "SUVs" are quite literally obese versions of the cars of the past. Obese vehicles to carry around obese, useless bodies.
How is that a "nationalistic slur"? It is well known that the per-capita consumption in the US is roughly twice that of the rest of the developed world. I'm sorry to inform you of this, since you are clearly American, but learn to face the facts instead of drawing one of your "-ist" cards.
A comment like "obese vehicles to carry around obese, useless bodies" is not neutrally discussing "per-capita consumption in the US" or any "facts". That was a slur. If you keep posting flamebait, we're going to have to ban you. Actually you did it again with this reply, but I'll consider that an offshoot of the GP.
Really though, why not follow the rules at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of this site to heart instead of getting serially banned? It's in your interests for at least three reasons. First, those rules are what keep HN interesting and prevent it from burning to a crisp. Scorched earth is no good for anyone, and there aren't that many places like HN on the internet, which for all its faults is worth preserving. Second, if you just blast the things you dislike with a flamethrower, it only discredits your positions. Keeping your cool, staying neutral, and explaining your point of view in a positive way would be more effective and have more dignity. Third, following HN's rules takes discipline and self-control, classical virtues which we all profit from cultivating.
Btw, I'm not an American. Normally I wouldn't say that because the rules don't depend on what I am, nor is "American" somehow a bad thing to be. I mention it because you said "clearly". A lot of things—maybe most—that people perceive "clearly" on the internet are actually untrue. This is what happens when users function in flamewar mode. If you switch to thoughtful mode you are more likely to get your facts right and to help other people do the same. Basically the idea is to learn from each other. Don't you think that's worth doing?
