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?
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.
Well what if I need to prove my dick is tiny tho?
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.
Camping, hunting, dirt bike riding, moving, general utility and many other things done by most adults that don't like to rely on other people. I don't want to pay a moving company if I move, I don't want to ask someone else if I want to tow my trailer out to camp. I don't want to call some construction company everytime I need so much as a 2x4 to repair my home. Anyone who doesn't own a truck will at some point rely on someone who does. It is not dumb as shit to own a truck for everyone. Not everyone lives the same life you do. I live in a rural area, I spent 6 months at one point in my life without a truck, I will never do it again. Probably 95% of the time I don't need a truck, but when I need it, I need it. My daily driver is a beater car, most of the time, depending on logistics and weather. But if I had to only have one vehicle it would be a truck. A truck will haul 5 people, so will most cars but a truck can drive through weather and haul things when you need it. Although I am a middle aged dad in a rural area. 🤷♂️ I must be dumb.
"Probably 95% of the time I don't need a truck, but when I need it, I need it."
This was the exact rationale I used to justify not getting a truck. I liked the idea of having a truck and being able to use it to move etc. but the fact that a smaller more economical vehicle would suit my needs 95 percent (more like 98-99.5 for me realistically) of the time swayed me in the other direction. I paid a good 30 percent less for the vehicle I have now and it gets 40mpg so I'll save thousands in gas over the life of the vehicle.
You can rent a utility trailer for a day or weekend and tow quite a bit of weight with most vehicles. There's rental trucks for the rest. I have an F350 and it costs a fortune to keep up. $150 fills, 15L oil capacity, tires are 400 bucks a pop. It adds up quick. Gonna be replacing it with a micro car and some rentals here and there.
I ride a bicycle in a rural area and built a new office this spring. With a trailer, store delivery or a $20 rental I don't think I ever ran into any of the problems you describe. The bicycle has gone hunt camping rain or shine, I dirt bike, street bike and work a rugged job.
If I really needed it I have the wife's sedan which handles -40 winters and 50cm snow drifts just fine. Equipped with a roof rack and small trailer I can move myself just fine if the need is there.
Aside from hauling large trailers or campers I fail to see the utility of a pickup as described. Even when hauling plywood or construction supplies I've opted for the home depot van before even considering a pickup. If I wanted a 2*4 sticking out of the end I would have taken the Sedan anyway.
I think a lot of the truck owner mentality comes down to mental gymnastics or "What if?". Aside from rare use cases it just doesn't seem like the play. Even for yourself you mentioned the pickup is an edge case.
These are all things people consider when talking about truck owners. The rest of the world can see life without pickups, can justify life without pickups and even prefers life without pickups but for some reason... Pickup drivers can't stop talking about them as if they need to justify it to themselves more than to the world.
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.
A cart that's exposed to the weather and leafs and dust. Totally worth it.....
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 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.
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.
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.
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 hate the lack of field of view in modern trucks
So does everyone else in the road.
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)
I mean... therapy can be expensive, yeah:-P
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.
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