There’s a lot of stereotyping of truck owners going on in this thread which is kind of funny given how pro-EV HN normally is. It’s like the aesthetics of a pickup truck is offensive to some people. Kind of bizarre and not something I’m used to seeing but I guess I live in Ohio so that probably has something to do with it.
A lot of people just want to move stuff, they don’t want to like…burn your house down while wearing a MAGA hat or something. There’s no reason to have an irrational hatred of a vehicle that is pretty practical in non-urban settings.
Edit: since this ended up as the top comment I’ll add some thoughts on the truck itself in the spirit of not being overly-negative. I’m interested to see what exactly is included in the base model and when that will become available since they’ve only given us information on higher trims so far. $40K for this vehicle is very affordable, that’s about as cheap as you can get a new Model 3 right now but at least for awhile it could be eligible for electric vehicle tax credits. Especially if the government extended these credits they could get A LOT of people to buy these trucks (and more Teslas which would help with EV adoption since demand for the Bolt and Leaf seem pretty low)
We buy a freezer at Costco. Checking out, we ask for details on delivery. Costco employee says "Oh, we don't deliver". We had been used to Costco in CA which at the time would deliver large items.
I ask "Well, how do people get big things like freezers home".
Costco person says "Easy, just put it in your pickup, we'll help you load".
"Hmm...we don't own a pickup".
Costco employee looks somewhat confused.
Then says "Easy, just get your neighbor's pickup".
Yeah, I moved out to the country(ish) recently after living in SF and swore off ever getting a truck. Within a year of being out here, finally caved and got one and haven't looked back. I still have the smaller honda for longer trips, but the truck has opened up an entire world (getting plywood sheets/siding/lumber, dump runs, towing, etc). So much of the stuff I used to think "I can't do that myself" now just takes a weekend or two. Re-siding? Sure. Retaining wall? Done. The list keeps going, and I couldn't do it without the truck.
Having a truck in a big city if you're a in tech or some other desk job is probably kind of pointless. But if you're not in the city and plan on saving thousands and thousands of dollars doing some of the work on your property yourself, you can't really live without it. Seriously, the thing has paid for itself already (bought it used) and haven't even had it a year.
I drive a 1999 F-150 for all the reasons you describe. The sheer amount of _stuff_ that needs to be moved around the countryside was so surprising to me when I first moved out here. I remember thinking how insanely huge a 2 cubic foot back of potting soil used to feel. Now I routinely buy two yards (54 cubic feet) at a time.
It all still feels a little weird to me. There was a time not long ago where I never thought I'd own a car, much less a big pickup! I'll admit that this lifestyle feels very inefficient.
Though, I wonder if my carbon footprint is actually smaller, since I spend most of my vacation time working on stuff at home (rather than flying places).
Why not use a small trailer instead? I have a small hybrid, have driven 2200km since last time I filled the 40 liter tank, when I want some plywood, lumber or dump run I connect my trailer which I can load 1000 kg on. I do live in a country where petrol isn't almost free so am not only saving the environment but also lots of money from not driving a lorry
My honda can't really haul anything but a few people and some surfboards. If I attached a trailer with 2000lb of base rock in it, it would probably kill the engine but more importantly would be super dangerous to drive since there's no real hitch or brake controller.
So another vehicle was warranted: why not get one with the trailer "built in" (truck bed) so I don't have to have an SUV and a trailer that I have to hook up every time? There's other reasons I needed a tow-capable vehicle, but the utility of a truck just made the most sense.
I agree that there's an entire class if stuff (lumber/plywood) you can strap to your roof or get a little trailer for that doesn't warrant a truck, but having one makes a lot of the stuff I do weekly so much easier.
I have a little trailer and an older small SUV. I also have a house built in 1920. I would _really_ love a pickup. The trailer is a pain when you do as many runs for supplies as I do.
I had the SUV/trailer combo for years, and it was handy but there are lots of things it's just not worth the hassle for. Now I have a pickup and making a daily trip to the town compost pile (to eventually get rid of the large pile of stuff that accrued over the trailer years) is super easy. I still have the trailer but haven't touched it once, I'd rather just make two trips with the truck.
P.S. Trucks are just more fun!
P.P.S. They're also cheaper to lease than SUVS thanks to crazy resale values.
And then there was the time I discovered that you cannot get 10' rebar into a Corvette. 6'? 8'? Sure. 10'? Not without shattering that fancy curved rear window.
Your list of items "(getting plywood sheets/siding/lumber, dump runs, towing, etc)." all seems perfectly doable with a trailer. I never had any trouble hauling trailers with my Subaru WRX sedan.
Weekly? No. But it has happened enough times (20+) in the last eight months to justify a vehicle that can do it, among all the other things the truck can do that my honda cannot. Also, depending on the weight of the loads you're hauling in your trailer (lumber is obviously fine), you could be putting a lot of people on or around the road in danger. The brakes on a WRX are not designed for towing.
I don't understand the weird fascination with people trying to convince others that they don't need a truck. Does it occur to you that I was aware that trailers existed before getting the truck and that their existence factored into the decision?
Pure interest: would you mind listing the things you transported in more detail? Maybe not so much the raw materials but the end purpose.
I don’t live in rural US (neither rural nor US). Here in UK you see more 4x4s in the countryside, part fashion, part poorer roads - but there is definitely plenty of countryside perfectly well served by regular cars, and you do see a lot of them about. Few trucks meanwhile.
So my imagination can’t quite figure out the difference.
Sure. A 3000LB (dry weight) travel trailer, a few larger deliveries where the driver didn't want to come to the house but instead wanted meet on a main artery, I mentioned the base rock (several days, multiple loads) to fill in a retaining wall, a decent number of loads of firewood (1 cord per load, generally) since we are primarily wood-stove heat in the winter, a lot of construction debris from renovations (not sure on the weight, but certainly more than a honda could pull on a tailer) and green debris from clearing the property (fire season, yay) sent to the dumps, etc. When building the retaining wall, I could have tamped the base rock down by renting a tamper and spending an afternoon...OR...drive the 4000lb truck back and forth over it for 15 minutes until it's completely packed in (the honda would have gotten stuck likely).
There have also been a number of mudslides in the neighborhood that block the only exit road in the past, and having a 4x4 vehicle would be the only manner of escape. Similarly, it's in the forest, so a when a tree falls across the road (and they do), freedom is only a truck, some straps, and a chainsaw away.
So how much of this could have been done with an SUV? Maybe 60%. And SUV and a trailer? 90%, and a lot more of a pain in the ass to deal with. So why get an SUV and a trailer when the workload specifically calls for regularly hauling oddly-shaped or bulk items? That's exactly what a truck is designed for. If I already had a vehicle capable of towing a heavy trailer, the truck would have made much less sense. But given the needs, another vehicle was warranted, and mid-size 90s 4x4 truck checked all the boxes.
I think it's easy to underestimate just how large and undeveloped the majority of the USA is.
England has a population density of 275 people per square kilometer, 281 if you consider the entire UK. UK also has an agricultural area of about 23 million acres, at 70% of available land. That means that a huge majority of UK land is developed and actively used, and over an area of 23 million acres.
The US population density is 36 per square kilometer. That is about 1/8th the population density, which is already a huge difference. In addition, the total USA land used in agriculture is about 900 million acres, which is nearly 40x greater an area. So we are currently at 40x the agricultural land, at 1/8th the population density.
The kicker to this is that the US agricultural land use is only 44%. So not only do we have 1/8 population density, 40x the agriculture land mass, we also don't even break 50% of land use for agriculture purposes. This all combines to mean a few things.
1. People that have land in the USA tend to have a lot more land.
2. There tends to be large amounts of unused land all over the place with no development.
3. A lot of land is being developed for the first time, instead of redeveloped.
This doesn't directly answer your question as far as needing a trailer vs a truck, but it should give you an idea that the USA is much less developed and a lot more rugged than the countryside of a much older and more established and smaller land mass like the UK. Trucks make it a lot easier to handle all the unexpected situations that occur from having the land situation we have.
One other point I'll add at the end of this. The USA also has extremely different and varied climates compared to the mild oceanic climate of the UK. This means more of every type of weather and bigger extremes. This takes huge tolls on both the roads and how tame undeveloped land is. For instance, in the midwest, it is not uncommon for large semi trucks and pickup trucks with huge tires to be the only cars capable of driving on the highway as the highway is covered in a foot of snow and they're the only vehicles capable of driving in it.
Around here (semi-rural WI, US) it's not so much the terrain where you're going as what you need to haul. 4'x8' sheets of building materials are one that get me a lot; I recently had to cut a sheet of styrofoam in half in the parking lot of the home improvement store to get it to fit into my car. There's also pieces of equipment that won't fit in the trunk (boot), like lawn aerators, rototillers, sod cutters, and stump grinders. (They might fit in a van or CUV, but then you have to deal with gas fumes and dirtying/damaging the interior.) Dirt and compost could fit but would be a pain even with a tarp.
I see a lot of fashion trucks but most of them also get used for towing or hauling on the weekend, and a lot of that stuff wouldn't fit in a car and would be unsafe on a trailer. A lot of people around here also have motorboats that would be too big to safely pull with a car.
You don't need a truck to tow a larger trailer. My Audi A3 is rated to tow 1600kg. I did tow my 1000kg race car many times using a normal car without any problems and it was both safe and legal when I was racing. Trucks, and SUVs, are bad for the environment and are more unsafe for both the driver and for others.
You don't need a vehicle to do anything. You can just walk or bike. If you need to move a large load, lift some weights or ask your friends to help you. People in egypt built the pyramids without vehicles. Vehicles in general are bad for the environment and are just plain unsafe for the driver and for others.
Snark aside, why would I buy an Audi A3 when I already have a Honda? My truck is much more capable than your A3 and was probably much cheaper. Regarding safety, it's actually really safe because I only drive it when I need its hauling or towing capability.
Most pickup trucks are not going to be cheaper than the A3. A3's are not especially expensive if you factor out maintenance costs, and pickup trucks are inordinately expensive due to high demand in the US, plus dealers refusing to carry very many of the cheapest trim models for sales (unless doing a bulk deal for work fleet sales). Yes, in theory, an F-150 starts at 28K MSRP vs 32k for an A3...but good luck finding a new F-150 for 28k out the door.
That said, as a former A4 owner, towing 1000+kg with an A3 seems like a death wish to me.
I got my truck for <$7000. If towing/hauling are the goal, I'd trust a 90s pickup over any sedan regardless of manufacturer claims. And I do tow more than the A3's limits, so either way it's out the window.
Agree with you on the tow ratings though. It's a really good idea to have some healthy margin between the stated limit and the actual load, unless you're just going down the street.
> healthy margin between the stated limit and the actual load
Not only that, but in some applications the stated limit is irrelevant. Utility trailers aren't usually a big problem, but a lot of people mistakenly think they can tow a 7500lb RV with a half-ton truck just because the manufacturer says the tow rating is some ridiculous number like 11,300 lb.
Interesting, up until now I would have trusted most tow ratings. How can you tell if a manufacturer is fudging the numbers or not? It it mostly a matter of engine/truck size?
It's not that they are lying, per se. The pull rating is idealized. A trailer needs 10-15% total weight on the tongue to pull safely, and a travel trailer in particular is sensitive to being balanced correctly. So if you have only the driver in the truck and no cargo, you might get to the pull rating.
But realistically, payload is what you hit first, especially a family towing a travel trailer. A very typical half-ton pickup will have around 1500 lbs of payload capacity [0]. This includes driver, passengers, cargo, everything but fuel. The authoritative number is particular to the truck and is given on a sticker on the door jamb. So if you have a trailer with a 7500 GVWR, you need to plan on around 1050 lbs on the tongue, which leaves you ~450 for everything else. Two adults could easily put you over. Add kids, dog, coolers, firewood for the campsite, etc, and suddenly a half-ton isn't looking like a good choice for a trailer this size (7500 GVWR is what a typical ~30 ft travel trailer is spec'd at).
There are other factors that also come into play, like wheelbase vs trailer length, but in general I think most people don't have much to worry about if they respect the payload rating on the truck. Many people ignore it (on purpose, or not) however. I've seen more than one F150 towing a 35 foot trailer. On anything other than flat, level highway with no crosswind and little traffic I think that would be dangerous.
[0] Technically Ford will sell you a particular F150 configuration with a 3270 payload, higher than many F250s, but IMO it's still not as comfortable towing as a bog standard F250. But if you don't tow very often the compromise may be worth it since the F150 is significantly more comfortable for daily driving.
Ok, that makes sense. My T100 is rated to tow 5000 (including the load in the truck itself) and I definitely try try to respect that limit (poor little feller). That said, those things are known to be unbreakable. We'll see I guess.
> 7500 GVWR is what a typical ~30 ft travel trailer is spec'd at [...] I've seen more than one F150 towing a 35 foot trailer.
I see what you mean now. I cannot imagine towing a 30+ft trailer with a half ton. I feel iffy pulling our 16ft TT with the T100. It's well within capacity, but I definitely feel the truck working. And yeah, flat ground is smooth sailing, but the first hill you hit and the pedal is down all the way and if I don't hit it just right I've got to tell the auto to shift to 2nd.
Probably could have gone one size up, but I'm honestly really happy with the T100.
Ah, yeah the used market is a completely different beast. Hard to compare across vehicle classes and models. I was thinking in terms of 'new' truck sales, which is currently bonkers for pickups and have been for some time in North America.
In America at least, its rare for a non-SUV or truck to be officially rated for towing. So when you put a trailer on your little sedan and your brakes fail going down a long hill, insurance will have your head.
Towing with a car is normal, you need to let your insurance know if you fit a towbar to a car that didn’t have one. You are limited to a max trailer weight of 750kg without an upgraded driving license. Also many normal sized cars have a max towing capacity which is about 750kgs anyway.
Yes. Don't remember if it is 1500 or 1600kg. If a trailer is heavier than 750kg it does also have brakes, so that isn't a problem. It is an American thing thinking that you need a car 2x the weight of the trailer to tow it
1600kg is not a lot of tow capacity - only 3500 lbs. A base model Mustang for instance comes in at 3600 lbs. Most campers are going to exceed it as well especially when you add in supplies, etc. And that is not using a trailer.
Most people also do not realize - you need to count the weight of the trailer, hitch, cargo and passengers against the rated tow capacity of the vehicle.
As someone that owns a truck, I actually recommend this to a lot of people. It's really quite affordable and easy to rent one as needed too. However, there are definitely situations where a truck is vastly superior.
I own a consulting company and I am a civl / environmental engineer that ends up driving a lot of forest service roads. ...so I have a 4wd truck. There are definitely weirdos out there that make a lot of judgments about me because I drive a truck.
A lot of cars (rather than trucks) sold in the US either aren't rated to tow at all, or are rated to tow much less than the same car sold in other countries. For instance, a 2005 Subaru Forester is rated to tow 2400 lbs (1088 kg) in the US, but 1800 kg in Europe.
The reason for this is different countries have different ideas of trailer safety- the US prioritizes allowing larger total weights to be towed at higher speeds, but Europe prioritizes allowing people to tow larger trailers with smaller cars.
The European approach is to have less weight on the tongue of the trailer, which allows a smaller car to tow more without being overloaded, but results in a less dynamically stable configuration. They compensate for this by having lower speed limits for trailers and additional licensing requirements for drivers towing heavy trailers.
Also worth mentioning that U-haul trailers are very handy for this. There's at least 3 U-haul dealers that I can think of within a 5-minute drive of me. The one I prefer is probably 2 minutes away, I can rent a trailer for a day for like $15, they're never out of stock, and the owner of the U-haul dealership is the most chill person on the planet. I get all the benefits of a pickup truck, but don't have to pay for one. Win-win.
You're of course welcome to own a pickup truck if you want, nothing wrong with that. And I'm sure plenty of people don't live in suburbia with U-haul dealers everywhere. But if you do, it's stupid simple and you can save a ton of money.
I agree with you and the U-Haul idea makes loads of sense, but dear heavens are those unpleasant places. I wish there was a business that was like.... U-Haul, except nice although I'm sure it would cost 3x as much.
I'm sure the experience varies somewhat by location but it usually involves some combination of:
- very long lines, particularly on weekends. understandable, but adds hours and stress
- the vehicle you "reserved" online last week so you could do that job today? yeah, it's not really reserved. it may or may not be available; they "overbook" because they expect a certain number of cancellations. again this is understandable and something you see in a lot of industries, but yuck.
- lots of bogus-ish fees like "cleaning fees".
That all said, I own a home and have never felt the need for a pickup truck. I do fine with a hatchback and a roof rack.
A friend of mine just owns a trailer that he occasionally hooks to his minivan.
The main disadvantage is that you're driving something larger and more unwieldy, like backing up.
But the advantages are numerous. Still lots of seating in the minivan. Much lower deck to roll/drive/ride things on (I can't recall if the trailer tilts).
It's basically a portable pickup truck bed, maybe it's even bigger.
IMO for people who don't want to own a pickup, the Home Depot rentals may be a more convenient option. Especially since you're as likely as not buying whatever it is you need to haul from there.
It's a pretty painless process, but I save that option for the "big" hauls. If I didn't have the minivan and renting the Home Depot trucks was my only option, I'd probably organize my life around hauling less stuff.
I just scuba dive and a truck is a lot better for hundreds of pounds of wet smelly gear than anything else. Plus you can go to the dump, or pick stuff up from Lowe's, etc.
But its only an old Ford Ranger and not a F950 that is raised enough to crawl over boulders on Mars.
Yeah, honestly, I couldn't justify the utility of a truck buying new. The price tags are nuts. I got an old T100. They run forever, cost less than $10K (even in CA where the truck market is crazy), and are very capable for all the stuff I throw at it. I love the thing.
Here in Seattle, I have one close friend with a pickup, everyone else drives Subarus (no exception).
But in all seriousness, he gets asked about 1.5x a week if someone can borrow his truck, it's insane how far this "ask" stretches itself. It drives him a little bonkers, but he's also a pretty nice guy so he says yes more than he should.
Anyways, I'd probably buy a smaller pickup because of how often my partner buys and sells used furniture as a hobby, but I don't want to be the friend with the truck in the city.
Many Tacoma owners in Seattle (fun fact, Tacoma is the native name for Mt. Rainier). I'm one of them. I've owned it for 7 years, 3 in Seattle, and I've never once been asked by someone to borrow it. Guess I must be a loner. You can rent a cargo van from UHaul without much trouble.
Also, I have to laugh at all these anecdotes about owning a pickup as a personality trait. I wasn't inducted into some pickups dudes club when I got mine. People haven't treated me any differently - still a nerdy, introverted guy who does a lot of outdoors sports. I drive to the grocery store or trailhead or city park in my truck, do my thing, and go home.
"You can rent a cargo van from UHaul without much trouble."
Maybe we have different definitions of what "much trouble" is. It takes like an hour to do anything with UHaul where I'm at. It's insane how bad that company is at doing the most basic thing that they've been doing for like 4 decades.
UHaul rentals are painful, but Home Depot has a truck rental program that is relatively painless if you can deal with the no reservations policy. I've done some fairly substantial remodel projects without owning a truck.
I live 5 minutes from a HD and it is still a giant PITA to rent their truck. Usually there is a line and the transactions are relatively slow. Then you have to gas it up. Then you have to make an extra trip, even more if you're not using it to bring home a Home Depot purchase. Then you only have it for 75 minutes.
I have a Harbor Freight trailer I tow with a Honda fit. It's 8 feet long, and I built sides on it about 4 feet tall. It's got a 1500lb capacity, and my hitch on my car is rated to 2000lbs. The trailer was $300, the hitch for my car was $150. Spent a few bucks on wood for the floor and sides of the trailer. Been using this thing for about 20 years. Never needed a truck. Most truck beds anymore are less than 6 feet long, because everybody needs a 4 door. A trailer is $35,000 cheaper than a truck, and when you unhook it from your car, you can still use the car to take a trip and get 35-40mpg. I tow motorcycles, dirt, trash to the dump. I tore off my old roof and hauled it all to the dump in my trailer. I have used it to bring home 16 foot boards, plywood, sheetrock. It's light enough that I can move it around when it's unhooked. It takes about 30 seconds to hook up.
My neighbor did the same thing, and built his entire deck, brought in all his concrete, boards, materials, etc in with his Mazda 3 on a small utility trailer.
These small trailers are so useful and cheap, I don't know why you'd spend any money renting one. And they're actually more useful than these pickups with short stubby beds that are only good for a half ton anyways.
I just check online and see which store has the truck I want. I haven't had any issues with lines and there is no limit on how long I can keep it where I live. I'm in a major metro area though so ymmv.
I rented one last fall, and they have a mostly electronic pick up and return process now. The biggest delay was getting the keys when I went to the gas station to get the van. I waited ~5 minutes in line for the cashier, and then she had to call somebody from the back.
The return was easy.. just take a few pics on my phone as part of their return process, and then drop the keys in a drop box.
Zipcar used to have cargo vans. Not sure if they still do (don't use them anymore).
But I haven't had a terrible experience at UHaul, as long as you go to one of their big locations. (I always go to this location in Chicago: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8543365,-87.6406812,3a,75y,1... , even if it's not the closest, it's easy enough to get to and they don't run out of stuff...)
So bad--it boggles my mind. We joke that their company moto is: "U-Haul: It's Always Somthing".
So many instances of showing up after reserving online, and the staff says, "Uh, we don't have that truck."
Most recently, my friends couldn't get their reserved truck (on their moving day) because their site (and backend) was down nationwide. They had the truck, but _because_ everything's digital now, they had no fallback ability to rent out the reserved truck.
Not only that, but their arbitrary safety rules get really annoying. "No you can't hook that onto the bumper hitch, even though its rated for 4500lbs. The rules say you need a receiver." The receiver is still rated for 4500lbs but that's okay.
But then they are happy to slap a receiver onto any passenger car that is not rated to tow at all and let you load up as much as you want into one of their box trailers.
Fair, it's been a few years since I rented one. It still works better than a truck in most cases since it protects your stuff from rain, car exhaust, mud splashes etc.
I needed to pick up a bunk bed I bought on Facebook Marketplace, so I rented a small U-Haul in my neighborhood last year to make the whole process simpler. I downloaded the U-Haul app to schedule the rental, used the truck for about an hour and was pleased that the return process took about five minutes. There may be lots of horror stories about renting a U-Haul in a big city, but the process of renting a U-Haul in the suburbs — the place where the truck got lots of its stigma over MAGA owners rolling coal down Main Street — has only been incredibly easy for me, so much so that owning a truck seems rather pointless. I've also rented a U-Haul for most of the times I've moved, either across-city or interstate, and each of those processes have been simple and not time-consuming.
I used to own a pickup. I resolved to never own another one because it resulted in requests to help haul stuff or help someone move at least twice per month.
Some people count on that to take advantage of you. One of the easiest strategies is to start asking for small favors, and then move on to bigger ones. Because the person has already granted you a small favor, it’s harder for many to say no to the bigger ones even if they want to.
But if it makes you happy, I guess that’s all that matters!
That sounds like the natural progression of a relationship/friendship to me. I'd ask my better-known friends larger tasks than people I don't know as well, too.
Yes, of course, if it’s a two way relationship. But I’ve seen plenty where the “mark” is unaware or cognitively dissonant that they are being taken advantage of.
Initially, they take pride in being able to help someone, but eventually they’re giving much more than taking, and they cannot bring themselves to say no, whether it be to keep themselves happy because “if I’ve helped them before, why should I not help them now…even though I don’t really want to”, or to avoid confrontation.
Pride is always a liability, so I like to try to keep away from it as much as possible.
It is more of a general principle of keeping one’s emotions at bay to prevent your biases from clouding the data and your judgment.
I am sure there are evolutionary reasons for pride (i.e. ego) such as helping you fight with intensity for scarce resources or for maintaining tribal bonds. But in the modern world, it those circumstances are rarer and someone can use it against you pretty easily.
I agree that pride _can_ be a liability. The idiom “pride comes before the fall” itself doesn’t imply that pride is _always_ bad, but rather that it has the potential to be bad.
I think pride has all kinds of positive and negative features in the modern world. When I take pride in my work, I think about it more carefully and try and deliver a higher quality work. “Pride” and “Craftsmanship” seem very linked to me. That pride helps me deliver high quality work, which keeps clients around and earns referrals, which keeps me paid and food on the table.
When I don’t take pride in the work I do, the standards and quality can slip. I’m much happier if I can deliver work to a client that I can stand behind and be proud of. I think that’s in many ways an asset.
I certainly don’t disagree with you, though, that there are many scenarios where pride , hubris, and ego end up being problematic.
My too. This is literally why I bought a pick-up truck 20 years ago. (Which I still drive today. The Tacoma will outlive me.)
I love it myself. I've moved with it, carried music equipment to gigs with it, brought home countless DIY projects from the hardware store with it, and even camped in the back of it. But I also have done many many favors for friends.
If you want the utility of a pickup truck without the stigma, go for a minivan and a trailer.
Of course a minivan has other associated stigma, but you can haul things around without being asked to haul other things.
I once read an article by a crane operator that mentioned something like 40% of his jobs were for people who saw him craning something and asked if they could hire him to crane something else nearby.
A lot of acquaintances have asked me for help fixing their computers, or advice on buying a computer, or help setting up their smart TV, or email on their smart phone. Some have asked me to build apps or websites for them. All expecting help for free.
Some people have asked to use my truck, or asked for help loading a moving van.
I have asked for free legal advice, tax advice, help installing flooring, help loading a moving van. I have borrowed a neighbor's truck.
I have asked for tons of help debugging code or learning some new concept.
Sometimes I have turned people down who asked for help. I am grateful to the hundreds of people who have helped me in ways big and small. I understand when people can't. For the most part, I am happy to lend out my truck on occasion. While it is getting used, I'm probably using a browser for free on an operating system for free.
A while back I was using a park "for free" when I noticed a family I know working together to pick up all the trash. I know they weren't being paid. They're just super cool like that.
Sometimes it just feels great to be super cool in some small way. Some people go out of their way to feel like that at least twice per month.
Just need to learn how to politely say no. If they're friends, they won't take advantage of you, and if they're not friends, it's really easy to say no.
Hasn't been a problem for me, but I recognize that this is probably because all my friends have some kind of pickup of their own.
Yeah, and it’s a pain in the ass because you realize the renting overhead equates to about 4 hours of wasted time to and fro. Then you’re rushing your project because you hear the clock tick and then need it again on Sunday. Will never do a truck rental again.
In the 90s we lived in SF SOMA and I had a 4WD pickup. It was excellent for hauling antique furniture and oddball arty type things (store couldn't possibly deliver). And it was perfect for exploring the Lost Coast, Trinity Alps, Owens & Saline Valley etc. Manual steering, so || parking was a nice upper body workout. The apartment garage space was $100/month, well worth it.
But... the idea that you would have to plug it in on a multiday trip... yeah, I'm laughing. I just drove central AZ->Sacramento->Ft. Bragg->SF->San Jose->Sacramento->AZ in a Prius. Nope, I'm not digging the charging idea.
I don't recall having that many problems with the borrowers. I helped some people move, maybe once a year. The way it works is they reciprocate with something else, or else, you discover they are not your friend. That's useful to know.
I still can't believe a diesel-electric, "train-locomotive-on-tires" hybrid concept has never been attempted stateside.
Electrical motor torque (from rest) screams to be marketed to American truck buyers. It's the one EV market that probably didn't ever need environmentalism as a boost to be successful.
A 2016 Prius gets ~40++ mpg on a 10 gal tank all day at 90mph. That is, >> 400 mile range per fueling stop. I heard this on the internets, of course, I wouldn't know, personally ;-). Fueling stops imply human fuel as well.
I gazed with amazement at all the fanboyz in the threads above about what a gamechanger this E-truck is. Oh. 230 mile range OPTIMAL. Some hope of a range extending $$$ option.
wrt to your comment, of course that would be a game changer, if a hybrid E-truck could get 40+ mpg with a 400+ mile range. (No comment on the aerodynamics and efficiency at speed) And the imagination goes... yeah, you could now financialize on-site construction generators... emergency power generators... whoa baby let me in where do I invest. Because you could market this to sportsball enthusiasts and then scale. In the US, maybe?
Well, I in fact own a 2001 Tundra V8 4WD which I recently refurbed $3K into because it just works. But I sure wish it got 40 mpg instead of an optimistic 13 mpg. Extra gas tanks are a well known technology for extended off road excursions, for a century now.
I had an employee once who told me his pickup provided him job security. Every company he worked for wanted him to use the truck for errands. He was able to get $2-3/hr more than everyone else.
There were a few times I wanted to let him go but we needed his truck.
Lots of reasons that I didn't at that time. I didn't want to deal with the hassle of purchasing and maintaining a truck and didn't have a place to park it. I wasn't going to park it at my house and didn't want to use one of my two parking spots at my warehouse.
We weren't doing things the buttoned up proper way at the time but most small businesses cut corners to make things work. You can go broke being excessively compliant.
If the company owns the truck, they then have to get insurance for it, and to get reasonably priced insurance, they will likely need to run background checks on everyone allowed to drive it.
It is much less hassle and money to throw a few bucks an hour at the guy who is willing to use his own to run the errands if thr company doesn't need the truck for anything else.
I mean, the employee presumably isn't adding zero value. Maybe he's not as great as someone else, but his truck tips the scales just over the line in his favor?
I moved to Idaho a several years ago and went through the same experience. I showed up in my Toyota Corolla and everyone kept saying it was a "cute car". This was just a normal car in Seattle. But here everyone was like, "oh how cute... a little Corolla". I also got comments from co-workers that were like "oh does your wife drive your truck?"
Here every family basically owns a pickup. Idaho has a lot of BLM land, (second in size only to Alaska). So sports like boating, RVing, and ATVing are very popular here. As we got more ingrained into the culture here, that is very outdoor activity oriented, we decided that with a truck we could own an RV. We have always been huge mountain bike riders and the convenience that a truck offers for mountain biking is incredible. We also drove in friend's trucks and realized that with the Platinum trim from F-150 for example, you get a very luxurious experience inside. Trucks offer HUGE cabs (larger than a lot of SUVs), with the convenience of a huge bed for throwing toys or moving things, a hitch to tow incredible amounts 10,000lbs+ and 4wheel drive that can take you anywhere. There is a lot to love about modern trucks. Even the gas mileage isn't much different than SUVs (mid-20s mpg).
Yeah, we ended up buying a truck within 6 months of moving out here. Our family was shocked because "they never saw me as a pickup truck driver". Every time I told someone back home that I bought a truck it was always pure shock as they reconciled the stereotype of a pickup owner with what they knew about me.
When my parents visited they were absolutely fascinated by the endless sea of pickups. When you parked at a restaurant for dinner, the parking lots are almost entirely pickups, with only a handful of cars scattered throughout.
When my mom first drove in my pickup, she was shocked at how nice it was. It offered great views of the road. It has heated, cooled, and massaging seats. Panoramic sunroof. A huge interior. A huge mulimedia touchscreen. And they drive like any modern SUV in comfort. She eventually said "Yeah I see the appeal to pickup trucks now".
Eventually I convinced them to move out here during COVID. They have been really happy with life out here. But now my dad is getting the itch and now he too is shopping for a new pickup. He never considered owning a truck before in his life.
I don't fit that stereotype for a pickup driver. And whenever I meet people through work or whatever that find out I drive a pickup, they are always taken back. Everyone has a certain type of person in mind for a pickup, especially people in the city. But pickup trucks are the best selling vehicles in America. Much of middle America lives and dies by their truck and they are standard purchases for a lot of families.
Edit: Ok so I'm seeing from a lot of the comments now that everyone is quick to say "You don't NEED a pickup", "You can rent one when you need one", or "I go mountain biking all the time with my Prius/Tesla". So just to be clear. I am not saying that you can't go mountain biking unless you have a truck. I mountain biked for 10 years in a VW Passatt and Toyota Corolla. But the truck offers a lot of convenience and is nice to have. I love having it and thats why I bought it. I'm sure I could jigsaw stuff I am hauling into the back seat. I did exactly that for several decades. But I love tossing stuff in the truck bed and not worrying about it scratching the leather, making a mess, or making it fit. Just toss it in the bed and drive off. Wash the bed out with a hose when you are done. Go anywhere in the truck. Tow anything. It's Comfortable and safe. Try fitting a kayak and/or paddleboard in your car. Yes, again you can buy racks to put it on the roof, and I used to own those. They are a royal pain. Now rent a pickup and throw it in the bed and drive off. You'll be at the lake before the Prius has finished safely attaching their kayak to their roof. I enjoy it and that's why I bought it.
> Trucks offer HUGE cabs (larger than a lot of SUVs), with the convenience of a huge bed for throwing toys or moving things
Generally, the huger the cab, the smaller the bed. It actually annoys me how popular 6 ft (or less!) beds have gotten in recent years. Especially when so much lumber comes in 8 ft length.
>It actually annoys me how popular 6 ft (or less!) beds have gotten in recent years. Especially when so much lumber comes in 8 ft length.
Most people buying pickups don't use the beds for anything other than groceries. Buying a pickup is just a form of social signalling that you belong to a certain in-group. Those people buying trucks with 6-foot beds don't care that lumber doesn't fit in them because they use their trucks exactly like I use my Volkswagen. On the rare occasion they need to put lumber in the bed they'll let it hang out the back, just like I put it on my roof bars.
I don't think people realize how expensive pickup trucks are. The 2021 F-150 Platinum Trim you mentioned starts at $59,110 - these are luxury vehicles.
That's just cap cost. Pickups do very well on depreciation, much better than a similarly prized luxury car. The TCO is pretty respectable by comparison.
But I'm a bit of a cheapskate and I only ever get the XLT, not the Platinum. Only luxury I really care to pay for is CarPlay. But to each their own!
It's okay to advocate for things you , especially when people are confused about why you would like it! I like my Tacoma as well, no, I do not work for Toyota.
Robert starts his new remote office job and buys a new truck for its utility as a non-commuter vehicle. Hank desperately tries to hide the fact that his son would buy a foreign-made truck. The Gribble boys unravel it all.
For those in a similar situation, note that most home-improvement stores rent a pickup for something like $20 for 75 minutes, usually enough to get a load home.
And one step up from that, full truckload delivery is often $75-150, and sometimes even comes with a forklift. Often you can get it thrown in free if the order is large enough.
The rental is fine for one offs, but if you're constantly doing home improvement projects or have a hobby that requires this sort of trip, then you're doubling the trips you make to the supply store.
Also, HD is not the only place I buy supplies. Sometimes I drive an hour one way to get supplies at a rate _far_ better than HD.
Depends. If you're using it a handful of times a year, sure, rent it. If you're using it every weekend or two, coordinating picking up and returning a rental adds a lot of work to an already (generally) busy day.
Also, don't get a fancy-boy pickup. You can get a capable truck under $10K if you look around for a bit, and it will pay for itself in no time if you do a lot of your own work around the house.
Oh, the hill is starting to give way. Cool, build a retaining wall (including getting the base rock to fill it). Oh, we ran out of firewood this winter. Cool, build a bigger wood shed (BTW, firewood is a lot cheaper if you pick it up yourself). Oh, the siding on the house is rotting. Cool, grab some plywood, tar paper, and siding and fix it myself. Oh, the weeds on the property have overgrown again? Rip them all out and haul them to the dumps.
I've saved probably tens of thousands of dollars including the price of my truck by doing these things in-house instead of hiring. All thanks to my truck.
When you don't have one, you don't do these things (because hiring people is expensive). But once you get one, it opens a completely different world of "wow I can do this myself." I found rentals don't cover that gap. I resisted getting a truck for so long, but once I got one I kicked myself for not doing it sooner.
I do. I'm a software engineer, living in a city, but slowly renovating a house on the weekends. I routinely need a few sheets of plywood and dozen 2x4s, or drywall, or bags of concrete, or something to that effect.
Why do you need a truck for that? What's wrong with trailers? Even my 2-door coupe can tow a 1800 kg trailer with brakes (750 kg for trailers without brakes).
I used that, once, during the early stages of the pandemic to avoid going into the store.
They showed up outside of the expected delivery window, left a stack of drywall in my front yard in the rain, and didn't ring the bell or notify me in any way. I found it several hours later.
While I understand they were likely overworked due to Covid in this instance, this kind of thing happens often enough I can only use it when I have space to securely store materials delivered several days before I need them.
To their credit, Home Depot did refund me; but I still had no dry wall when I needed it.
Also, you can't get immediate delivery when you're in the middle of a project and mess up a cut on your last sheet of plywood. There's no ctrl+z with a saw.
This is a thing, but there are a million edge cases that you can’t rely on this for. Sometimes you underestimate the amount of material you need, sometimes you need to make sure that the sheets of drywall you’re getting aren’t damaged, sometimes you need to pick individual pieces of lumber from the pile because there is a ton of variation in the grain etc etc
If you’re doing a project you very much need to be able to run to Home Depot that same day and pick up additional bulky items.
Not the same. Deliveries are often late, incorrect, or don't show up at all. It can wreck an entire day of work. Read that page...you have to pay extra to get even a 4-hour delivery window. This is great if you want to sit around with your thumb up your ass instead of building. "Just deliver the day before." Oh yeah, I'll take every Friday off of work to wait around to receive a delivery that I could have picked up in an hour with a capable vehicle.
I don't drive that much. Why would I buy a sedan and give myself the hurdle of arranging to rent a pickup any time I need one? If I must own a vehicle, why not make it one that provides utility?
Millions of people own RV's. Most people that tow them with their SUV are way, way over the limits for the vehicles they use. (the salesperson will ALWAYS say your vehicle can pull it)
I know a guy who for several years towed a 30' travel trailer (7500 GVWR) with a Jeep Grand Cherokee. That's one of those "well, technically, it could work in a narrow set of circumstances" situations. He swore it only had a tongue weight of 500# because that's what he got told by the salesman.
Not someone you want to share the road with. He was a big guy, married with two teenage boys and a dog. He was so far over the payload limit on that Jeep...
Or anything like suburbia. I live in Gainesville, Florida, very near the center of town. It's a 130K city limits burg, and our property still has a yard, and good use for trucklike patterns. I solve that with a Cheep Jeep at the moment.
Good luck when you get into an accident with your teardrop trailer, rv camper or even motorcycle trailer and you find out your insurance company won't pay it because you were over your tow capacity (if you even had any) with or without e-breaks.
Short of doing something criminal, you will always get covered by your insurance policy in this situation. But they will drop you like a hot potato the moment they cut the check. Insurance covers stupidity at least once.
They will cover your liability to others but there is a good chance they won't cover your losses other than medical unless mandated by the State's Department of Insurance regs. I am only talking about the US based P&C here.
As a desk-bound software engineer, nearly every weekend I'll use my pickup to go get stuff I couldn't (or would be very inconvenient or dirty to) bring in a car. Lumber, concrete, rock, soil, large pots & plants, etc.
I don't drive the pickup during the week though (I mean pre-covid when I drove places), too inconveniently large for that.
If you are into home improvement it is very easy if you are getting materials, hauling garbage, bringing tools from one place to another. You could substitute a trailer for a lot of stuff, but then you need to park that. Parking the truck instead of an SUV/car is easier than parking the SUV/car + a trailer.
I tow my travel trailer once every two weeks on average for about 8 months of the year, and in between those trips I routinely haul stuff for my projects around the house and some hobbies.
2013 XLT Supercab (the suicide mini doors), $26k used in early 2015. But I wanted the 3.5l Ecoboost. (20-21mpg, i.e. in the same ballpark as the WRX upthread.)
Yep, here in the UK for very rare occasions we need to move something big (like, once every 1-2 years), we just hire a pickup or van for £50-70 depending on size. Even a small lorry with a tail lift is only £100 for 24h.
Seems like madness to buy something as big as a pickup and drag round that weight (with the poor MPG that comes with it) and deal with parking such a behemoth, all for something you do so rarely *
* obviously if you're a farmer or running a business or something, that's different - but that's not what this thread is about.
We've moved 5 times in the past 6 years and I spend a lot of time with outdoors hobbies (mountain biking, surfing -- pickups are hugely popular for both). But not owning a truck has never been an issue.
We use our minivan for a lot of these things, but I’d love to buy bulk mulch / topsoil instead of the bags. But loose mulch doesn’t play well with the van.
I’ve always considered myself a GM//Chevy guy, but I’m strongly considering this truck.
And I love that it doubles as a Powerwall...
Eliminates the need for a generator (I work from home so if the power is out I can just take the ICE for errands and have the truck power the house — you don’t have to be a truck person to find that pretty nifty!)
That is a really cool feature. I think for extended outages (which we do have) a propane generator fed by a big tank is great. But most outages are a day or less, so having that all ready to go in your truck is really cool.
Should be fine with a roof rack (or without if you don't care about the paint)
When I buy sheet steel I use a station wagon because it's easier to plop it down on a roof rack and get it off later then it is to stick it in a truck or van.
It's actually devilishly hard to strap plywood to a roof rack in a way that it won't take off in the wind (you're essentially turning your car into a giant kite) but also won't warp. It can be done.. but it's hard.
Once I needed a good amount of plywood for some cabinets. At 8 sheets and other assorted lumber I started feeling really uncomfortable mounting that much weight on my roofrack - I know the rack has a limited capacity like 100-200lbs. Would have had no issues with a proper pickup truck.
Same, I pack two bikes inside our regular Prius all of the time. I moved across country with it packed full, and regularly do furniture moves, skis, climbing gear with 4x people, etc.
Firewood in the boot will do this I’m sure. There are a lot of big trees near me that like to fall over. Putting large sections in the boot to process at home can easily overload the car so much that the wheels at the front start to lift. You turn and nothing happens.
I own multiple station wagons fully agree with you. But what you're missing is that it's not about the ability to do things, it's about the image projected when doing them.
Over-specing vehicles is one of the ways the well to do advertise their well-to-do-ness. It's like a marble countertop but for the roads.
Sure you can put three kids in the back row of a Sentra, it has three seatbelts there after all. Sure you can haul plywood on anything with a roof-rack, that's what it's there for. Sure you can shove a washer in a Prius. All those things work great. Bust for most of HN to do them regularly would be "behavior below one's pay-grade" so to speak.
>We buy a freezer at Costco. Checking out, we ask for details on delivery. Costco employee says "Oh, we don't deliver". We had been used to Costco in CA which at the time would deliver large items.
I every one owns a pickup, why don't you simply rent one (à la Airbnb, e.g with GetAround) for just a day?
I've never owned a vehicle (other than a bicycle, but I live in Paris) but can easily rent any kind of car/truck/van anywhere in Europe. It saves me a lot.
Generally it's the hassle of getting it because in car-centric American cities, the rent-for-a-day renting process isn't streamlined. Rental companies aren't convenient (or possible) to walk/bus to so you need to get there somehow. Which means you need a main car already, or you have to bug a neighbour/friend and do it on their schedule and not yours. The ability to be like "oh, I've got a spare hour here, I'm gonna go grab that lumber I need next weekend" isn't possible anymore.
So at the end of the day, you need a car, period. I live in a midsize American city after living in a major Canadian downtown and wish we didn't need the car (we both bike a lot), but I really do. And personally, an electric pick-up is gonna be mighty appealing for my next car in however-many years because it removes the main reason I've never gotten one before: gas. I can only imagine how big a win the lack of gas is gonna be outside of America where gas is hilariously cheap.
This works when you're the outlier. If we are ever successful in making cars the exception rather than the rule, it will be far more difficult to just go rent one on demand.
When we bought our couch at the Salvation Army, they also didn't deliver. We rented a pickup truck at Home Depot for an hour, which cost about forty bucks. Overall, I think that worked great and I'd do it again.
When I lived in Texas I didn't need a truck all the time. But when I did, it was critical.
I found that since I didn't need it most of the time the Home Depot Truck Rental for a couple of hours shifting freezers, flooring and other bulky items worked out well for me.
Saved on gas all the rest of the time.
But it really requires a Home Depot within 30 mins so not for everyone and if this had been an option, I probably would have just gone for the truck.
Rural home ownership. When you own 10 acres and want to make use of it, there's always a project to do. I've owned my current 10 acres for almost 3 years, and lived up here full time since last October. Prior to moving, I spent every other weekend up here (other family lives here full time).
There has hardly been a weekend since I bought the place in that time where I don't have some project that involved some amount of construction material. Even just a weekly shopping trip can fill up a full sized truck when you live 30 miles from town and do all of your shopping at once. Also, I have 4 horses on the property (not at all uncommon here), so that alone justifies the truck since I have to go get a few thousand pounds of hay every so often.
That's about right. So if you rent 3+ times a month, thats 150 euros ($180) a month. That's easily a car payment on a used truck. Not to mention the amount of time you spend dealing with the rental place, and doing the extra return journey. Considering the hourly rate of the average HN user, that's firmly in range of a truck payment.
Also consider that you get to eventually sell / trade in the truck. Vehicles depreciate, but you get some value out. Rental payments all disappear.
>It’s like the aesthetics of a pickup truck is offensive to some people.
I got a rental car recently and they gave me a bright red pickup because it was the fastest option. I was surprised by the good vibes I got from all the other pickup drivers, lol. It's like I got inducted into a secret club for a day with a lot of waves and thumbs up. A woman went up to my group in a parking lot and said something like "Hell yeah, you guys look like you're having fun."
And I thought, yeah -- I fucking love this. Kinda subverted my perspective on the aesthetics of these trucks and the people who drive them. Led to some self-awareness about how silly the city stereotypes are of such people.
It's just the age-old bias of disliking what you don't know because you haven't spent time around it. It's not categorically any different from something like racism.
What if someone dislikes pickups (and other vehicles with those size/height characteristics, purchased for vanity) that objectively make life more dangerous for kids playing in the street, pedestrians, bicyclists, and others in smaller vehicles?
If it's done without any attempt to comprehend why someone would make the choice, to interrogate your assumption that "vanity" is the only possible reason for it, then yes. It's a prejudicial evaluation rooted in your caricature of someone's nature.
Of course, it's an elective choice, and in that way very different from prejudice founded on appearance. But the incomplete analysis, and the contemptuous reduction of the target's motivations, are in common with racist tropes.
Car accidents (including a car hitting a pedestrian) is certainly a problem but I just don’t see how someone could genuinely dislike pickup drivers for a reason like that. Seems like a conclusion in search of a reason.
The trend towards BIG is a major part of that. Compare, for example, the classic Toyota Hilux to a Ford F-150. The latter is substantially taller off the ground and, given how much of the driver's view is blocked, much less safe in a residential area than the former.
Story time: Back in 2001 I lived in San Francisco and my little Mazda was going to be in the shop for a while and I needed to rent a vehicle. Long story short the only vehicle I could get my hands on was in the east bay and was a (I shit you not) Dodge Ram 2500 Diesel. Absolutely obnoxious. Being from Texas I was used to driving pickups but a this thing is just shy of a two ton payload capacity. I have no idea what this was doing on the lot at Enterprise or whoever I rented it from.
Well, the dirty looks I got every time I belched black smoke on the streets of SF were a given. What I did not expect (or notice previously) was the other truck drivers (however few) there were in San Francisco. It seems I too was inducted into a little club. Whenever I saw another truck there was always a thumbs up, or a "nice truck". Kinda funny when all I got was dirty looks from everyone else.
"I got a rental car recently and they gave me a bright red pickup because it was the fastest option. I was surprised by the good vibes I got from all the other pickup drivers, lol. It's like I got inducted into a secret club for a day with a lot of waves and thumbs up."
That's interesting ...
Our ranch truck is a "work truck"[1] - basically a fleet vehicle, colored white, with an 8 foot bed.
I'm bought a Tundra mainly because I needed something tow my boat (my old 4-runner was just too small). But, once I got used to sitting up high, having all the space, and having a full sized truck bed for hauling whatever, it's pretty nice.
It works OK that way, they accept new members of their club when you conform. However, I've had my Prius damaged by rural folk (in lots mostly full of pickups) on multiple occasions. (Joys of having family who decide because of politics that they're rural farmers now).
I'm sure rural pickup drivers are lovely folk when you conform to their cultural, racial, and/or lifestyle choices -- that's the point!
But I've never met a Prius driver who felt the need to key or slash a pickup trucks tires, both of things which have sadly happened to my Prius in rural parking lots.
Pickups are convenient any many (probably most) owners have them for good reasons, but living in a Midwestern city I run into so many "bad" pickup drivers it's hard not to get frustrated with them generally.
A lot of people around here have big, tall pickups with tiny beds that they drive very aggressively. They rarely use them for anything I couldn't put in my Fit (I've known several people who would never haul dirt or the like because they don't want the truck to get dirty). Many modern pickups have a high front grill that is dangerous for pedestrians and designed to be intimidating. It sucks to constantly run into trucks like that being driving fast and aggressively when I'm just trying to walk to the store.
I know that's a minority of trucks, but the worst cars by me are invariably pickups and it's hard not to generalize it.
> Many modern pickups have a high front grill that is dangerous for pedestrians and designed to be intimidating
I get what you are trying to say, but had to mention that all front grills of vehicles are dangerous to pedestrians.
It's just a bit of a strawman argument to say "Well when I hit people with my car it will be worse if I own a truck, so I'm going to own a Prius so that the pedestrians roll right off".
Trucks have been getting taller, with higher hoods, steeper windshields and worse forward visibility for the same capability. Not to mention more common in the US in general.
As a cyclist and pedestrian in the city it's a nightmare - you can never tell if the driver can actually see you vs sedans and hatchbacks at your eye level.
Unsurprisingly pedestrian deaths from drivers have spiked in the past few years.
I went for a walk out in my suburb one night. If you can show me a single Honda Civic or Mazda sedan where the hood starts at 5' off the ground, I will bow down and say you have a point. Note that I mean the grill ended, and hood started, at the top of my shoulders. I'm six feet tall; how the hell has this happened, and why is it considered acceptable?
Until then, I (and presumably many others) will view trucks as objectively more dangerous, and contributing to a less walkable city. I recognize going under a vehicle is a bad time regardless of how tall it is, but my girlfriend can't hide right in front of a Toyota RAV-4 or Audi Q5.
It's arguably not a strawman argument in the slightest.
There have been changes made to these trucks that do a great job of looking aesthetically "tough and mean" and selling trucks, while also making them more dangerous to other road users: not just to pedestrians, but to other cars via the bumper overlap issue.
How is that a strawman? You will roll off a 2 foot prius grille and you will get your skull caved in and your body ejected twenty feet backwards onto asphalt with a 4-5 foot high pick up grille if you get hit.
I think the argument is less that the grill on a truck is especially bad in the case of a pedestrian collision, and more that the limited forward visibility provided by a high front grill results in a greater likelihood of not seeing pedestrians directly in your vehicle's path.
You are right that the front grill of any car is going to be bad news for a pedestrian. The issue I have with the higher front grills is the front blind spot they create.
> It’s like the aesthetics of a pickup truck is offensive to some people.
When a vehicle is driving in front of my house with a grill that's a foot higher than my oldest child... yeah, I don't much like those aesthetics. And it has nothing to do with "moving stuff". The UPS delivery vans that are actually built to, ya know, move stuff, have lower grills and way safer sight lines.
As someone who used to work at a nursery that sold a lot of mulch, sod, etc, there are a lot of things that a typical single family homeowner would want that you absolutely wouldn’t want to transport in an SUV or minivan (which is all that is really worth talking about because pretty much no individual owns the type of delivery vehicle you’re talking about, which are meant for transporting packages anyways).
People would have me load this stuff for them into SUVs of course, and we would do our best to line them with plastic first, but it still made an awful mess everywhere.
And that’s not even getting into towing, there are common things having a truck bed is just better for.
As for the tallness, you can partly blame EPA regulations for that as it’s more cost effective for manufacturers to make trucks taller and wider than more fuel efficient. That’s the #1 reason why the small truck market declined and why smaller trucks got bigger
> As someone who used to work at a nursery that sold a lot of mulch, sod, etc, there are a lot of things that a typical single family homeowner would want that you absolutely wouldn’t want to transport in an SUV or minivan
People should do what is generally done here in Northern Europe. Get a Stationwagon/Estate with a tow hitch and a trailer. With that you get a smaller, more practical, car in terms of day-to-day driving. And when you really need to move something bigger/something you don't want inside your car you still have options.
Renting a trailer locally is incredibly cheap too, costing just $26 at a nationwide gas station. IKEA, and similar local stores, will lend you a trailer for free.
Here's how two friends and I transport our gokarts. One in the trailer, another secured on top. The car on the day of the picture is a Mercedes CLA Coupé. Other times it's the other friend's Ford Fiesta. And yet other times it's one of our dads driving an Audi Q5 or a Peugeot 3008.
A hitch gives you the price and size advantages of e.g. a Ford Fiesta while still having the option of hauling several hundred kilos worth of stuff. The Q5 can haul a ton and a half. I'd wager that very few people regularly (weekly) need to haul several tons worth of stuff, and the few that do have a legitimate reason for owning a pickup.
In principle, the small trailer with a small car plan is great. It doesn't really work in the U.S. though. There is some combination of towing practices and regulations that make this not work here.
In the past few decades, we've seen many cars here go from having some decent tow rating to a very low tow rating or saying in the manual not to tow.
Just for example, the Mazda 3 in Australia has a tow rating of 1200kg. In the UK it's 1500kg. In the U.S., towing is not allowed at all per the owner's manual.
I'm not sure what all the reasons for this discrepancy is. I know when I lived in Germany where towing fairly big things with fairly small cars was more common, I noticed some differences in towing practices:
1. They use a different style of hitch that flips down under the bumper instead of the receiver style hitch in the U.S. The German style hitch kept the ball closer to the bumper, which improves stability.
2. The trailer is loaded with a fairly balanced weight distribution so that there is not much weight on the tongue of the trailer. This keeps the rear suspension of the car from being compressed and keeps weight on the front wheels of the car. It has the downside of making the trailer less stable at higher speeds.
3. Presumably because of this lower stability, many trailer/car/driver combinations are limited to 80kph. Car/trailer combinations tend to have a critical speed where they become unstable if the weight from the trailer is not loaded in the front, and 80kph is a typical speed where this can start to happen.
4. Germany requires extra licensing to tow a trailer. Someone who actually gets some training and has to pass a test is going to be a lot safer towing than someone who got 5 minutes of instruction at U-Haul.
"HN-class" Americans refuse to tow stuff with cars because social media tropes have convinced them that it's massively dangerous, easy to screw up and that they will be a danger to society.
I had a trailer for my Dodge Avenger. I have a truck now. Believe it or not, as a person who had periodic need for a trailer, it's easier to be a person with periodic need of a truck bed.
Having lived next to a boat launching area, I can tell you an average inexperienced driver is pretty likely to make an expensive mistake with a trailer.
I have seen a lot of trailers reversed into expensive cars, flooded cars, trailers falling off and hitting things at speed, cars driving into the sea because the driver got out to check the trailer, etc.
A lot could be fixed with better software and sensors. For example a car should be able to measure the angle of the trailer and apply the brakes when someone tries to reverse-jackknife. It should measure oscillation frequencies and damping factors at highway speeds and set a safe max speed. It should refuse to start the engine at all if a trailer isn't correctly hooked up including electricals and brake lines, etc. Finally, trailer brakes need an overheat/wearout sensor so the driver is aware if their trailer brakes have failed before they find out when going down a hill at 70 mph.
> Having lived next to a boat launching area, I can tell you an average inexperienced driver is pretty likely to make an expensive mistake with a trailer.
As a kid we would sit down at our neighborhood landing in the summer and watch boat launches for entertainment. I saw at least 2 cars get submerged, people run into each other, many many fist fights. Prior to allowing me to pull our trailer, my dad made me back up (with trailer attached) in circles and figure 8s in a parking lot and then in and out of the driveway many times. Showing up to busy landing on summer holiday is NOT the time to learn how to back down a trailer.
Well, yes. But in case of a Hilux or an L200 you often don't need to.
What I wanted to say is that a 'station wagon' is useless for half a year in some climates. And it doesn't make any sense to keep two cars, one for 'summer' and one for the 'rest of the seasons'.
I owned a 1970s vintage Camaro in Ithaca NY of all places. (For those who don't know, think hills and snow.) No snow tires--poorish student. I used to say it tended to skid with a forecast of snow.
I'm not at all saying that trucks aren't useful, or that they aren't the best vehicle for a lot of people and/or tasks. I'm saying that the trend right now is for trucks that are way taller than they need to be purely because the buyer prefers that look. I had zero issues with pickup trucks 10 years ago, before they turned into a political/biological/emotional statement piece, instead of a tool.
The trend for growing truck is mostly due to EPA fleet fuel efficiency regulations. If you make a small truck, it gets classified as a car, so it counts for car fleet efficiency. That’s also why you see decline in sedans and rise in relatively small crossovers SUVs: these also count as light trucks, not cars, for fuel efficiency purposes.
It's also the "footprint" model of fuel economy for CAFE. The required MPG for a truck is based on the area of the rectangle made by the wheels. This means that for 2021, a larger F-150 is expected to get 25mpg, but something like the old Chevy S-10 would be expected to get 41.8mpg. [1]
The automakers have determined that this is not practically achievable, and so you can't buy a truck like the old S-10 or a pre-Tacoma Toyota pickup anymore.
It's more that people prioritize incentives for objective "A" and are totally surprised when it comes at some cost to "lesser" objective "B." In this case, being "environmentally friendly" vs being "safe."
I think a lot of "environmentally conscious" people don't realize that more and more of these types of environmental regulations will come at some direct cost in terms human-safety.
And also that a surprising number of politicians/activists/people are so committed to the dogma that they don't have any problem with that.
Higher, larger pickup trucks did not come about as a result of safety requirements, they came about from fuel efficiency requirements (or needing to get around them).
So net result of indirect regulations to decrease fuel consumption is increased fuel consumption, and more dangerous vehicles for everyone to contend with who is not inside as large of a vehicle.
Simply making people pay more for fuel would have incentivized them to prioritize what kind of vehicle to buy, and make it possible for smaller pickups to still exist and/or a rental market for pickups to flourish.
Believe me, the market would prefer the older, smaller, steel framed trucks than the newer aluminum ones. But they're no longer an option, new.
EPA regulation and govt overreach/ unintended consequences are what led to these design changes, not market demand.
The blue-book price for my 12 year old steel-framed truck has gone up every year since I bought it used.
>before they turned into a political/biological/emotional statement piece
The anti-truck crowd, which supported all the regulations that led to the current state of vehicle design, are the ones that made this a political/emotional issue, whether they realize it or not.
I don’t think this is really the primary reason for this at all. There’s an element of that of course, but there’s other factors as well. This is a decent short article about it. But the tl;dr is popularity of crew cabs + a gap in recent regulations that encouraged trucks to become larger https://www.insidehook.com/article/vehicles/why-pickup-truck...
>In other words, the regulations put in place to get better mileage out of vehicles also led to an increase in truck size. “There was kind of an incentive to maybe stretch the wheelbase a couple of inches and set the tires maybe an inch [farther] apart, because you get a bigger platform and slightly smaller target,” said Edmunds. “Now, the bigger vehicle would be heavier and might use more fuel, so it’s not as easy as just doing that. But certainly there was a feeling that if they did need to make it bigger to accommodate more passengers, the fuel economy target wouldn’t be onerous. They could do it.”
That statement is not very convincing that the regulations lead to bigger trucks.
It's also super easy in these situations at a nursery, etc.. that the car or SUV owner has to make multiple trips and waste tons of gas because the vehicle can't hold much.
People who don't own homes too easily forget it's really really common to have jobs around your house/yard where you're dealing with thousands of pounds of supplies.
You can overload an SUV/Wagon/whatever incredibly quickly with sand, mulch, rock, etc.. and it will be nowhere near full.
I find it ironic that you bring up fuel spent for what is a one-time inconvenience when pickup trucks are some of the most inefficient vehicles out there. A regular pickup will do about 14 l / 100 km. A modest ford focus will easily do 5 l / 100 km on the highway.
Of course many home improvement stores will just rent you a truck for the afternoon. That’s the principle reason I see against owning a truck for a homeowner. Just rent the right tool for the odd job(s). It’s poor optimization otherwise.
To elaborate, since I've even had to explain this to some "eco-conscious" engineers:
This is also partially why trucks have gone from steel to aluminum, which is lighter (to gain a marginal increase in mpg), but also requires larger shapes (moment-arms) to achieve the same amount of strength and resilience (crumple zone rigidity & required crumple zone size, etc).
Of course the other side effect is that using aluminum frames/engines won't last as long, since they deform easier, so all that saved energy from increased mpg doesn't make up for the wasted embedded energy from decreased useful lifespan.
My mom was an avid gardener and regularly moved mulch and manure in her station wagon. We cleaned it out afterwards and it smelled musty for about a week afterwards. It was usually in the spring though, so we just drove with the windows down if it wasn't raining.
As much as I think a body-on-frame truck is way more practical, some of what you're describing is really a matter of attitude. As far as I'm concerned, dirt, scrape marks, etc. in my SUV is just a sign that I'm making good use of it.
It's pretty easy to cleanly haul stuff with a suv. You throw a nice, thick blue tarp in the back, load your stuff, boom. Job done. Bonus, it makes unloading easier too.
They're also optimized for having a driver hand-deliver packages from the back of it hundreds of times over an 8hr shift. That's moving entirely different things than you'd move in a truck. A pickup truck would make a shitty parcel delivery truck, and a UPS truck would be a shitty way to move construction materials.
Amusingly enough a "step van" - the technical name for the type of thing a UPS truck - is often a much better truck for the average construction worker (the type who brings a truckload of tools to a job site) - as you can get into the truck and find things without having to unload the entire pickup.
A friend started construction and bought a Tacoma new because he saw everyone else using one - and it had to go in for a repair and during that time the dealer lent him a van, and at that point he had serious regrets about buying the truck.
But then again visit most construction sites and you'll see one or two company trucks full of tools, a delivery semi or two, and acres of pickup trucks with nothing in the bed.
I'm in a neighborhood with a ton of construction and remodeling. Here step vans, sprinters, and the like are very clearly much more popular with construction workers. Much easier to keep tools organized and securely locked and even more capacity than a truck bed.
What I have see is construction workers where the step van is the "work vehicle" and a crew cab pickup is the "family car" - though as often it's an SUV or a minivan.
Oh totally, that's why sprinter vans or step vans work well for tools and small goods. But if you're moving sheet goods, pallets/slats of heavy goods, long materials, or things like dirt or gravel, then a truck bed is better.
It's all about using the most suitable vehicle for the job.
Maybe you have different UPS trucks where you live. But the UPS trucks where I live are far bigger than pickup trucks. The drivers sit much higher, and the grill comes up just as high, or higher.
There is also a huge variability in pickup sizes because many of them have been customized. But truthfully the standard stock pickup truck doesn't have a grill much different than many SUVs. In fact most SUVs are built on truck frames.
So I know there are trucks out there that have been lifted with 24" tires. But the standard truck that you buy from your dealership isn't much different than an SUV in size. They might be longer because of the bed... but your concern seems to be height, and they are often identical to SUVs.
Edit: Crossovers are a bit different. Those are designed to be more like cars (hence the name). But a standard SUV is usually built on a truck frame. So the body is different, but the main vehicle is similar in size.
Driving off road is a more common use case for pickups than for delivery vans. Some pickups get driven around on construction sites, and some are used as farm vehicles.
Obviously some people take this way further than practically necessary, but the basic form of a pickup does have a legit reason to be different than a delivery van.
Every city has a auto dealer who handles trucks like that. UPS has their own custom trucks so you can't get that model, but there are a lot of options.
You won't find them in the typical dealer though. They are a niche, and most customers are buying several at once for their business and so the way the whole process works is different. Though there are just enough small buisness buying exactly one that you won't confuse them by buying one - but they may have trouble figuring out what tax applies.
The level of "you don't need that!" judgement is weird. I guess it's just a matter of degree though. Here in the southeast US if somebody drives a pickup instead of a sedan or minivan or whatever, it doesn't register as unusual or excessive. I don't think twice about it, it's just another kind of vehicle.
But then again, I do notice (and sometimes make fun) if they've got a lift kit on it, tow mirrors when I've never seen them tow anything, big roof mounted light bar, etc. So maybe it's just a matter of degree as to where you draw the line and make stop-liking-what-I-don't-like judgements.
I think this is the key point in the whole thread. I have no idea how many people who live on my street have pickups -- I've never noticed.
The only pickups I notice are the ones which are "coal rolling", have multiple flagpoles flying political slogans in the bed, or are lifted so far I have clear sightlines beneath them.
I have never seen a "coal rolling" Honda Accord, in contrast.
Right the stereotyping here is ridiculous and full of out of control virtue signaling.
If you live in an apartment complex it's ridiculous to have a truck.
But Even if you own just a reasonable suburban house with a small amount of land you need to do a lot of dirty truck type jobs every year.
I only have half an acre of land, but due to tons of trees I have yard work every year that causes me to have to do many many trips to the compost center with my car (Outback) that could probably be accomplished in one trip if I had a truck.
And almost without fail every year I have times where I have to make multiple trips so that I don't overload the cargo capacity of the car. Even a gas F-150 would use less gas to make these trips and save CO2.
I couldn't see driving an F-150 to work solo commuting with gas as something I could ever stomach, I hate that my Subaru barely gets 20mpg doing that.
But with electric I could see it. The ultimate joke would be someone driving a CUV that burns gas or even a hybrid and trying to virtue signal over someone with an electric pickup truck.
Do I want to spend $50k on a Tesla Model Y and put yard waste inside it's luxury interior on a semi-regular basis? I'm not sure. Versus destroying a luxury EV an F-150 looks pretty cool.
Bottom line you live in an apartment you don't need one of these, because you're paying someone else with a truck to take care of you. When you have to maintain property yourself you either start paying a contractor with a truck to do things for you or you start doing it yourself. When you do it yourself you start going down the slippery slope to wanting a truck.
> If you live in an apartment complex it's ridiculous to have a truck.
Many tradesmen that don't get company vehicles like to own pickups because they can haul stuff for work and their jobsite. Some of those people might even live in apartments. Imagine that!
The amount of arrogance on this site is ridiculous. Just because you might know how to hook up a NAND gate or write some javascript code doesn't mean you are qualified to decide what vehicle someone should own. Please just stop the judgemental posts.
I live in a rural area. I personally know plenty of people that own truck that shouldn’t, and plenty that actually use them.
Both sides are right. There’s a significant portion of the population that think trucks are “men’s vehicles,” even if they never actually use the bed. All of the dealerships around here (usually) have their front highway facing row all pickups and maybe one sports car.
Point being people who live an apartment are far more likely to be buying a truck because they want it, and far less need for it for actual jobs & chores.
Also, plenty of people use pickups for work (plumbers, carpenters, electricians, etc) and there's no reason they might not live in an apartment.
There's even a whole class of pickups for the people that find the occasional use but don't need the big ones, and want to fit easier in places designed for cars. The small pickup.
Toyota has pivoted marketing for the Tacoma as an adventure vehicle rather than a work vehicle. It is awesome for that. Small enough to get around in a city, but big enough to fit four sets of skiing/climbing/backpacking gear. You don't have all that crap in the cab getting snagged on stuff or falling into the foot wells. No skis knocking my elbows while driving. I've had mine packed up to the ceiling of the camper shell. I used to live out of it. Now I usually spend 10-15 nights per year in it rather than getting a motel for $100/night.
I drive an older "full size" SUV ('04 Ford Expedition), mainly because my parents' gave the thing to me when I graduated college. It's fairly easy to work on, so I kind of just keep the thing running. The fuel economy is very bad (like 17 mph highway, 11 in the city), but it's one of those situations where even if I bought a new car with double the fuel economy, it'd take me over a hundred thousand miles of driving to make up the cost difference in fuel savings alone.
It's also really nice to be in a situation where literally everything I own can be moved with it. Strapped my box spring / bed frame to the top of it once.
There's something worse than "ridiculous" for insisting on a toy that has so many drawbacks for the people around you while you're using it for your own enjoyment. It's selfish.
That would include most motor vehicles, due to brake dust, tire wear, and exhaust, since the alternative of using a bicycle is always available. If you need to travel long distances once in a while, you can always rent a car.
I hope you draw and quarter your friends who spend $50k+ on sedans/coupes/sports cars that have no reason for being other than to go faster than is legal and to burn extra gas.
It's a slippery slope to go down to say you know better than others what they should be allowed to own.
You're 5x more likely to kill a pedestrian in an urban area than a rural one, and 2x as likely to do so after 6:00pm.
The relative risk of being killed by a light truck compared to a car is only 1.45 (i.e. 45% greater) and is 0.96 for a heavy truck (in other words less likely than being killed by a car). Buses have a relative risk of 7.97.
So living in a city and driving at night is custom-designed to kill pedestrians and selfish to do so. Encouraging public transit is even worse.
Or you could just, you know, not turn this into a giant moral argument.
You're 5x more likely to kill someone in an urban area because more people live there (in fact, well above 5x more, so...)
> being killed by a light truck compared to a car is only 1.45 (i.e. 45% greater)
"Only"? "You're 50% more likely to die if a light truck hits you than a car, that's "only" a bit more!"
> and is 0.96 for a heavy truck ... buses have a relative risk of 7.97
People tend to bounce off of heavy trucks, for better or worse. Buses are 1) significantly different in design than most heavy trucks, and 2) for obvious reasons, operate in very heavy pedestrian environments.
Just to clarify, he asked for a downside of trucks, I said they're far more likely to kill pedestrians and bikers than normal-sized cars in the event the driver hits someone (which is true). And the next logical step is "we should all live in the farmland and not leave the house at night"?
I think there's a difference between "One drawback is higher pedestrian fatality rates" and "They're basically custom-designed to kill pedestrians and bikers".
Depending on how you drive and what options you get (engine is the big one), the F150 may well get the same fuel mileage if you are barely getting 20mpg.
Though the real answer is a truck for times when you need a truck, and bus/bike for everything else. Too bad transit in the US is in general horrible.
I think if you are going to take an environmental stance all the city dwelling commuters (the ones who drive an hour+ each day) are the real offenders, Trucks or not.
I'm considering buying a Truck, but I work from home and drive only a few thousand miles each year or less.
I have rented trucks and cars plenty.. it would be quite a bit of a hassle for a lot of these jobs though. The traveling back and forth to pick up the rental and then take it back would add significant time and require someone else to take me back and forth. $20/day would rent a truck like an F-150 plus extra costs for mileage. (not a big deal at all.)
It's not necessarily worth it with my Outback, which is itself a large car that city folks would sneer at.
But until this F-150 EV was introduced I was pretty much fully convinced I was buying a Tesla when my Outback needed to be replaced.
Spending $40-50k on a Model Y vs one of these F-150s is a whole different scenario, that's all.
Gas F-150 I'd feel like a jerk on my commute, EV F-150 I would not, I'd feel better than doing the same in my Subaru, and in many ways it would fit my use case better.
My Outback was < $30k and it's 8 years old. Putting dirty stuff in the back of it is not the same as putting dirty stuff in a brand new Tesla.
Agree. Bigger vehicles going EV quells a huge portion of my resistance from owning one. The safety tests of these for pedestrians being better would further the point for me. It’ll be interesting to see those tests.
One thing I've noticed from doing WFH all this time during the pandemic is that I started noticing the inefficiencies of burning gasoline to move a one ton piece of metal to some store and do some minor thing like mail a package or buy some small items.
You can help that by shopping for an entire week at a time. I think some places will pick a package up from you too.
In general the first step to cutting emissions is electrifying everything that can be electrified. Whether moving lots of metal around in a vehicle is efficient regardless of energy source wreaks of the perfect becoming the enemy of the good - or in this case the perfect being the enemy of the critically needed change.
I think the first step to cutting emissions is cutting unnecessary energy use, regardless of the source of energy.
Try crunching the numbers: you'll see that it's not going to be feasible to replace all of the vehicles on the road with electric cars and trucks, while also electrifying everything else. We need to take a triage approach to energy use, strictly rationing the remaining fossil fuels.
The concept of “yard waste” that has to be exported in a vehicle should make you see a flaw in the system. Can you change your system to use trimmings on site or nearby?
There is not flaw in the system. Trees and large shrubs come down. Municipal compost sites have the space and equipment compost large amount of material that home owners can't deal with. The arrogance in this thread is unbelievable.
Its because environmentalism is quite literally a religion for a subset of users on this forum and they cannot believe that other people don't want to optimize their entire life around reducing their carbon footprint.
The attitude in this thread is even more ridiculous considering that this is the exact sort of product which could bring EVs main steam (so you would think environmentalists would love it), but of course this vehicle is unacceptable because you aren't forced to make a whole series of quality of life compromises to use it like you are with a bike, public transportation, or an impractically small car.
People in the global south, who have a tiny fraction of the carbon footprint of those in the north, are the first to be devastated by the climate and ecological crises, which they're least responsible for.
If you're considering shopping for your next $40k monstrosity of a vehicle, try to take a broader perspective than your own short-term desires.
Instead of harassing the ancestor for not perfectly optimizing their use of resources (which has zero impact on the climate one way or the other) or harassing me for suggesting that an 80/20 solution to a problem is better than no solution, perhaps you should try to take a broader perspective and realize that most people are selfish: they aren't going to massively sacrifice their quality of life in order to help people in the global south that they don't have relationships with. Aligning incentives to help them do the right thing (e.g. by creating a vehicle with a form factor they can readily accept while still being an EV) is the smart way to go at the problem. Brow beating people for not being totally altruistic and demanding they make massive cultural changes is the dumb, ineffective way to tackle the problem, although it does allow the participants to feel morally superior as they fail to convert anyone else to their cause.
Religion requires penance, and there's no penance in a non-believer buying a quality product that they like based solely on its merit per value.
If someone's not buying their EV out of a sense of guilt (for the original sin that is exhaling CO2), then how are they supposed to exploit that guilt into other forms of behavioral modification?
You can heat and cook with wood. If so much tree material is falling on your property every year, and you're carting it elsewhere, you're just throwing away a useful resource.
this is a weak argument on several levels. if you need to move things five times a year, rent a pickup truck. Unless you're moving things on the regular, there's no point owning a very inefficient and heavy vehicle.
You can't do that. You can rent a truck no problem, but a truck that you can actually use as a truck cannot be rented. They carefully check to ensure you didn't scratch any paint, and that means no hauling.
There are work a rounds, but they are limited (home depot will rent a truck but the fine print is only to go from home depot to your house, no other trips). If you have a CDL you can rent a commercial truck that lets you work it. However for general purpose I need a truck to be a truck the average person can't rent.
I don’t know about your state, but here in WA you can rent a “commercial” big box truck from UHaul, Penske and others with no CDL. I rented a 26 feet box truck for my move and drove it around town just fine. They do care about damage, but they don’t consider scratches to be damage.
This is just wrong. Besides Home Depot, who aren't going to literally sic the gestapo on you if you use it to run a 2nd errand, there are plenty of companies that rent beater trucks for hauling anything you like.
Home Depot et al also rent pickup trucks by the hour (something like $20) and they're quite capable and nobody checks the paint.
As long as you bring it back and it's not on fire they're unlikely to care.
You can even optimize by buying your own trailer so you can load and unload at your convenience, and only rent the truck to move the trailer - and trailers (even enclosed ones or dump ones) are significantly cheaper than trucks, and really only need tires as maintenance.
$10k and getting a brand new truck every tax year has to be one of the greatest and most successful "carrot" tax incentives ever conceived of by a government office.
It's kind of ridiculous, really. You know who buys F150s? Everyone. If there were a stereotypical "truck owner" then Ford wouldn't sell better than a million of these every year. They have broad appeal to diverse demographics.
(I didn't realize this was a thing till my civil engineering company last century bought a GMC to replace the fords).
To this day I remember a Huge Ram diesel dually with a big dog in the bed towing in a single roll of landfill liner (23 ft long and About 2000 lbs of plastic) and thinking.. wow.
The recent resurgence in Ram is a bit mind-boggling to me, not because they are good or bad, but because the lack of historical brand power has always seemed so arbitrary to me, and it's resurgence even more-so.
Whereas Toyota approaching Tier-1 makes a bit more sense. If nothing else, based on the fact that they're now more ”American" built than the three "domestic" truck companies.
Toyota isn’t even attempting to compete. They are playing it safe in a “if people only buy Toyota’s we have a truck for them” space.
Ram has always been a popular truck. It held they have UConnect and one of the better infotainment ecosystems. A lot of people
Still don’t think of trucks as luxury vehicles because the higher end brands don’t badge one, but the top fit and finish Trucks are trying to be something else.
Buying a Chevy truck makes sense if you are upgrading from a 90s Chevy truck because they lasted a long time and were easy to maintain and cheap to repair. Mine is still going strong at 322K miles. Of course it isn't until after someone upgrades and puts a few years on a new truck do they realize they aren't as cheap and easy to maintain as the 90s version.
It’s signaling; in my mind it’s the same for many Tesla drivers. But I mean, same for me, I drive a Subaru Outback because while I do use it for outdoor exploring and want to signal that, its off road use is honestly limited to a dirt parking lot. It’s often about image.
(Edit) consumption waste of traditional F150s, and yes, even that of my beloved Subaru is not great, but the absolute worst are coal rollers and those with loud modified exhausts. That Newsom didn’t veto legislation that undid AB1824 was very disappointing to me.
Come to southwest Montana -- you'd be signaling "I like to blend in to the crowd" :)
While nationally Subraru marketing emphasizes being different by owning a Subaru, around here its far and away the most common car. You exit Costco, look at the parking lot and ask "which of these 10 gray Outbacks is mine?".
I think we’re saying the same thing - just because it’s common, doesn’t mean it’s not signaling. You can signal that you want to be seen as part of the majority.
I think it's also practical -- if there are tons of Subarus around then it probably means they cope with the road conditions here and are reasonably cost effective and reliable.
If you live in San Francisco and drive a truck than you might be signaling. But if you own a Tesla you are just blending in.
By contrast, here in Idaho owning a truck is just blending in. Owning a Tesla out here would be signaling.
It is interesting how perspective changes so much based on where you are.
In Oregon I swear 80% of the population owns a Subaru Outback. The other 20% owns a Prius. So owning a Subaru in Oregon is just blending in. It doesn't mean anything. But if you drove that Subaru to San Francisco, now everyone thinks you are "outdoorsy".
But blending in can also be a form of signaling. I mean, pretty much everything is I guess. From Zuckerberg’s t-shirt and jeans demeanor to my favorite form of signaling which are those that wear their faang badges to malls and restaurants on weekends. It earns an instant eye roll. I’ve made my point on signaling poorly and disjointly in the thread but my original point was that buying a brand new vehicle, whatever it be, has a lot to do with image and what you want to signal to others. You can signal that you want blend in or that you are different. It’s mostly harmless, but when you do so with a vehicle, you consider actual perf second.
The irony in this is that the imaging for subaru outbacks is "the car of choice for gays and lesbians." It's not just pickups that have associations with them.
Keep in mind this is only in America. F-150s sell terribly anywhere else because they have to actually compete with trucks made in other countries, unlike here where foreign trucks are heavily tariffed.
I see a lot of "rent one for a day" type of comments. I paid $4k for a 93 F150 a couple of years ago. I live on a 1/4 acre lot in the suburbs and just the amount of stuff I've hauled to my small property over the last two years would've far surpassed the $4k in rental charges. Mulch, compost, rocks, lumber, etc. Lots of back and forth with not knowing whether I'll need more or not... so many unknowns in-between. Take into consideration the time it takes to rent a truck, sign all the forms, repeatedly argue with the rental rep about why you don't want their shitty insurance, and the anxiety of renting a truck to haul items that could potentially damage the rental. I've probably put on about a 1000 new scratches, dings, and dents in the short two years I've owned this thing.
On top of the landscaping and project work I use it for, it's perfect for going dispersed camping in rough areas that need high clearance. I would never be comfortable risking a rental for such activities.
And the comments completely ignore that means a return trip for the rental too. When you do as many trips as someone in rural/burbs with fixer houses, that's completely impractical.
Not all. I live in the countryside (rural Scotland), in a house with a decent sized garden, and only need something as big as a pickup or van 1-2 times a year at most.
Same deal with almost everyone I know nearby - the ones with a pickup I know are farmers, or one guy that's honest and just likes the aesthetics and the way it drives (and it counts as a "commercial vehicle", so it was some kind of tax dodge too).
I get it's indispensable for a farmer or business owner, but for for the vast majority (not all, obviously) of regular folks, even outside of cities, it's really not needed.
For sure these responses, which are predictable and common on pretty much any thread related to American trucks here or on sites like Jalopnik, don't reflect actual, real general sentiments about trucks or SUVs. It happens all the time and I've learned just to ignore them.
As someone who comes from a rural area but drives an EV, my whole issue with trucks is that 90% of the people I know that have trucks do not need them for work, it sort of a status symbol in rural America. A lot of these trucks are huge, not your standard truck, but more like a tank.
Trucks get shitty gas mileage and potentially cause more wear and tear on the public roads, and are definitely not good for the environment.
IMO - Trucks should be taxed accordingly - if you are a farmer or work in construction you get a tax break, if you just want a truck to have one, it's gonna cost you.
Most people use their truck for something where they need a truck about once a month. However the cost of two vehicles (insurance and parking space) means that they are better off with one truck than a truck and some other sensible vehicle.
An SUV is just a truck without the convenience of a truck bed. Never understood why anyone would get an SUV over a truck unless they need seating for 6+ people.
Where (and how) do you draw the line with gas mileage, materials used, and weight of the vehicle? If trucks are so bad, what are your opinions of popular SUVs like the Subaru Outback?
To further point out the stereotyping in this thread, take a look at the announcement thread of the tesla cybertruck and compare the sentiment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21602437).
Not to mention that the cybertruck has nearly the same dimensions as the f150 (https://youtu.be/sLvopc9oI4A?t=199) and has a shape that is more likely to cut you in half if it were to hit you. It also has a payload that's more comparable with a ford super duty and will likely weight more than the lightning to support that.
It's not, I think, so much that the idea/aesthetics of a pickup truck is offensive to people.
There are obviously many cases where a truck of some kind is exactly what you need to do some task or other.
I think it's more like there are a bunch of people who have never owned a pickup truck, and have rented trucks when they needed to "move stuff", and are suspicious of the explanation given by others about why they bought them because those explanations don't match their own life experience.
If the answer to "why did you buy a pickup truck?" was "I like to see past the other traffic, I'm worried about the safety implications of a smaller vehicle when there are so many pickup trucks on the road where I live, the infrastructure here is set up for them with wide roads and ample parking so it's not really a thing, plus I very occasionally avoid needing to rent a truck when moving lumber" then things would be less contentious.
Of course, one can then proceed to the question of if there's a double-standard on why the question doesn't get asked to owners of sports cars with speed and handling limits that are of no relevance to public roads.
Some people seem to enjoy passing moral judgements onto others.
What doesn't make sense to me is when someone who drives any gas car judges someone who drives a truck. Do they feel validated in their choices because someone made worse choices? Or do they decide that 30mpg is such a morally superior position than 20mpg that they have the right to judge others?
Is this not the average state of humanity? Anyone who does something less than me is an uneducated idiot, and anyone who does something more than me is a wasteful idiot?
Yes, I recall a comedian saying that about driving on the highway, people who drive slower than him are idiots, and people who drive faster than him are nuts.
The moral judgement isn't mileage, it's that pedestrian deaths are rising, partly because of cars that have zero forward visibility for no good reason (no, the engine doesn't need it) and weigh tons.
This is what is referred to as a moral hazard, because the people driving these trucks are not taking any risk, even reducing their own risk, but at the cost of increasing the risk of everyone else, and most importantly people who didn't drive to begin with and opted out of the risky activity. Particularly when deaths are involved this is obviously behavior worthy of (1) popular condemnation (2) fucking regulatory action.
> it's that pedestrian deaths are rising, partly because of cars that have zero forward visibility
Relative risk for light trucks is only 45% higher than cars and is lower than cars for heavy trucks. Buses are the real dangers on the road.
I suspect most of the increase in pedestrian fatalities is from pedestrians and drivers staring at their phone instead of where they are going. I have definitely had close calls where I watched someone looking at the phone start wandering through an intersection without seeing if it's clear.
> I suspect most of the increase in pedestrian fatalities is from pedestrians and drivers staring at their phone instead of where they are going
Seatbelt and airbag regulations were fought on the grounds that bad drivers killed people, not good drivers. It was the drivers responsibility to be safe. Since airbags and sest belts have become important safety features, hundreds of thousands lives have been saved in the United States alone.
My same questions still apply in the case of pedestrian deaths.
Have we decided we're okay with the number of pedestrian deaths caused by compact cars and SUVs? Some SUVs are heavier, have less visibility, and would presumably lead to more pedestrian deaths than cars, so why isn't there a similar condemnation against those vehicles? Or maybe there is?
I don't think you would find a pedestrian or cyclist in the US that would prefer being around an SUV vs sedan or hatchback.
But the trend of stock pick-up trucks getting lifted, having high hoods, small windshields vs their equivalent models 10 or 20 years ago is so much worse than the default cross-over SUV in the US. Sales of trucks have gone up, so have pedestrian deaths.
I think mountainethos's point is that would pedestrians and cyclists prefer sedans and SUVs to other pedestrians and cyclists, or even motorcyclists. The likelihood of serious injury or death is such a step function from one to the other that the difference between sedans and trucks is hairsplitting.
> The likelihood of serious injury or death is such a step function from one to the other that the difference between sedans and trucks is hairsplitting.
Given the choice of hitting an inclined windshield and rolling over the top of a vehicle vs. taking the full force of a giant body-length grille, I'd rather take my chances with the windshield.
Hmm, perhaps I was not clear. Given the choice between going over the top of handlebars versus the top of a vehicle or grill, I believe the difference between the handlebars and vehicle/grill is much larger than the difference between vehicle and grill.
I moved to Idaho 4 years ago, primarily interested in human powered mountaineering activities. But then joined the local SAR team and was fascinated by how snowmobiles and dirtbikes were such good tools for going further in less time and how going further in less time is actually important. From there a pickup becomes essential to get your moto vehicles to the trailhead. So now I drive an F250 - itself a fascinating tech platform - and I can't imagine life without one.
But the whole point of this is that I had a similarly dim view of pickup owners and moto sport culture based on the pop cultural narratives. And I can feel the stares from the haters as I roll my dirtbike down the ramp. Hopefully they'll be thankful when they get help before spending a cold night out.
I’ve lived in rural communities for 95% of my life. There are times when I really think that electoral college is obsolete and should go away, but all it takes is a thread like this where I just see comments from adults that seem wholly uninformed and underexposed to basic aspects of living outside of metropolitan environments. Yes, by itself, doesn’t really bother me as I am certainly a group of the inverse in many ways, but the derision that comes along with it is the part that really makes me think we’re probably not quite ready for a proportional representation at the level of each citizen citizen.
So are you in essence stating that because metropolitan people do not understand the needs of rural life that they deserve for their votes to continue to be worth less? Even despite rural people not understanding metropolitan life to the same degree?
There’s a fairly well established pattern that direct democracies are not friendly to minority intersts. US being a republic creates a buffer there, but it would just slow the inevitable in a popular vote.
I grew up in a place where I can't even think of a family that didn't have at least one truck. I'm honestly confused by the dislike of them. I really don't understand how you can own a house with a decent sized yard and not own a truck or at least a trailer. How do you get any yard or house work done without one?
Much of the hate is for modern trucks. Trucks from 40 years ago were much more practical than the modern truck -- 8 foot beds, sides you could reach over, et cetera. The massive height of current trucks just makes them more dangerous, less fuel efficient, less practical.
Massive height, less durable materials in the work areas (aluminum bed, I'm looking at you), more seats, and much smaller bed areas. All of those things contribute to the fall of practicality.
I tried to find a regular cab, regular bed F-150 about four months ago. To do that, I would've had to buy a fleet vehicle intended for a manufacturer or to be converted into like a plumbing truck. Everything else has 4 doors and a 5' bed. I don't want an SUV, I want a truck with a full sized bed.
The sales people were genuinely confused as to why I wouldn't want a quad-cab, and why I needed an 8' bed. They legitimately never had that conversation with anyone unless they were looking for a fleet truck.
Yeah I don't think that Ford even makes a 2-seater anymore in anything other than their XL/fleet model. You can buy the "extended cab" in the XLT (the base trim sold to consumers), which is the 2 seater with a small bench in the back, but even those are really hard to find, you don't see them often.
But after you get above the base model, the only thing available is "crew cabs" which is the full 4-seat SUV size interior.
Really trucks have become 4 seat vehicles now. The super-crew (4 seat) cabs are essentially standard at dealerships. The only way to get a 2 seater truck is by buying one through a fleet program. And right now that would be essentially impossible. Trucks are hard to get right now and most dealerships won't sell a fleet vehicle to a consumer because the demand for fleet trucks is too high right now.
To get a 1500 with an 8ft bed, you have to get the "1500 Classic" -- they're halfway through a refresh, splitting it across multiple model years and starting with the crew cab + small bed.
I see the practicality of a crew cab every day when I see one truck after another of landscaping crews. The crew cab is full, the bed has stuff in it, and many are towing trailers.
>today's Corolla looks like it's twice as big as the 90s' Camry.
With almost the same interior dimensions. Those tree-trunk pillars, thick doors and smooth sculpted aerodynamic shape all take up space formerly reserved for drive-train and passengers.
Yeah, people around there also seemed to prefer taller vehicles. Easier to see, generally had 4 wheel drive (better for rough roads and winter conditions), safer (for the people in the car anyway, especially for things like hitting a deer).
It is also a stark reminder of one’s socioeconomic class. I can afford to consume this much fuel and sit this high and be safer than you, who can only afford the smaller vehicle and be subject to more risks, including being constantly blinded by the LED lights of all the higher pickup and SUV in your rear view mirror.
When I was in college a friend of mine who did construction work drove a Ford Ranger from the mid 1980s. It had a larger bed than the typical truck I see on the road today, while also being far smaller.
I live in a wealthy town, and you can tell someone's political affiliation like this:
Now that’s a clearly doubtful Venn diagram. Tesla owners I know in wealthy towns are Republicans. God forbid if you have a Nissan Leaf and an immaculate crew cab truck, what would they call you then?
I'm not going to defend stereotyping. There are lots of legitimate uses for a pickup truck, whether it be hauling things around or off-road capabilities.
In the suburban environment where I live, the majority of pickup trucks are effectively commuter cars. They haul their owners' asses to a cubicle farm and back home again. These are people who fully buy into the stereotype and have bought a truck so they can purchase their masculinity on a monthly payment plan.
I dislike pickups in cities because they are too big. Many times I've been stuck behind pickup truck driver trying to squeeze into a parking lot, waiting... I've got nothing against pickup trucks in rural areas where I grew up
As far as the trim is concerned: I also wonder what the cost for the 4-door model will be. All of the marketing photos are 4-door "Super-Crew" models. Currently a Super Crew truck with the base trim and 4x4 starts at $42k. The electric version sound like a bargain if they are actually talking about that version of the truck.
On my drives, I usually count how many pickup trucks are carrying something/anything. I have one this is Austin, Kansas City, Seattle, Los Angeles. My assumption when I started was that this data would differ by location and about 40% trucks would be carrying something.
In reality the average is 2 out of 100 trucks carried anything in my counting. The highest I have seen in Los Angeles with 6 trucks carrying something.
That makes me believe that when you own a pickup truck, there is a small change of needing its large bed and powerful engine.
It maybe like gaming ready computer, swimming pools or fireplaces - usage is very low for most people, but you just might need it urgently someday. Or you think you might change your habits if you buy it
It may depend on when you are driving as well. I saw several trucks carrying things just yesterday on the way to get my 2nd COVID shot. Anecdotally 2% seems very low to me (around central Ohio). It does seem that in the middle of day or on weekend afternoons I notice it more though.
Practical?! Have you ever tried loading heavy objects into a truck bed that's 4.5 feet off the ground? There's literally no utilitarian use for them at this point even in agricultural settings, much less the urban and suburban landscapes where they typically plague. What ever happened to the small truck? Much easier to load, much less of a road hazard/nuisance.
For me it's the increasingly large size of all trucks which have made them hugely inconvenient, and frankly dangerous, to circumnavigate. You know how you feel when you get boxed in by a couple tractor trailers on the freeway? That's how everyone else in reasonably sized vehicles feels driving around your truck. There are way more blind spots involving the modern truck compared to other cars which present a danger to everyone else on the road, I don't care what kind of whizz-bang "safety" cameras you have. And you also create blind spots for everyone else who can't see around your absurdly bloated truck in places like parking lots and passing lanes.
It's a safety and practicality issue which goes beyond the "you don't need that" mentality, there's legitimate reasons for people to NOT like them.
> There's literally no utilitarian use for them at this point even in agricultural settings
That... What?!
At the local MFA, when buying feed or fertilizer, you back your vehicle up to the warehouse-style loading dock, where the raised floor of the storage facility is about the height of the average truck bed off the road height. When I buy things in my sedan and load them into the trunk, I either have to drop them off from a great height, or take them down a small set of stairs. When people buy in a truck, the employees use a forklift to put the pallet directly into the truck bed.
At the farm, it's not uncommon to have a tractor with a front end loader either with a bucket to dump things into the pickup bed, or a set of pallet forks for loading/unloading solid or bagged objects.
How can you _possibly_ say that there's "literally no utilitarian use" for truck beds in agricultural settings?
When you have to have specialized machinery to load/unload a vehicle, that makes it wholly impractical for personal use. This is what purpose-built moving equipment is for, not personal mobility vehicles.
Yes but I’m 6’3” so it’s not particularly difficult for me. And mine is from 2012 & I don’t think it’s quite that high off the ground. I see trucks that are lifted significantly far less often than I see midsize trucks (& obviously full size that are similar to the height of my own)
That being said they are generally unnecessarily large now & at this point midsize trucks are more than capable enough for most people. I think they mainly buy full size trucks for roomier cabs and more luxury features at this point
I don't know your age, but the fact that they're putting grab bars and foldable stair steps to get into a truck bed should tell you all you need to know about their practicality and incurrence of unnecessary back strain.
I held out 15 years after moving to the US before I picked up a Toyota Taco. It's one of those rare life changing purchases that you wonder how you got on without.
I live in rural America. I have a bit of generalized fear toward truck drivers exactly because they tend to be the most aggressive and dangerous on the road. They also belch diesel pollution and that can get into my cabin. So I own a big vehicle to be somewhat closer in footing, which is itself ridiculous.
There are two types of truck owners: those who do truck things and those who show off. The latter are mostly what I call 'house' truck owners, most they might do is pick up a desk or chair.
The first thing I did when moving to a rural area was to get a F-150. I plow my own driveway. I pick up dirt by the yard for lawn/garden use. Tow. Get big things. I look back now three years later and am thankful I did not waste any coin on a bed cover as I'd be very tired of putting it on and taking it off. Living nearly two miles in on a dirt road I only bother washing the truck twice a year as 'clean' is very fleeting.
The issue with this e-F150 is the low payload and tow capacity of the standard models. Think I'm rated 2350 payload and 13K tow on an out the door $44k XLT supercab.
> It’s like the aesthetics of a pickup truck is offensive to some people. Kind of bizarre and not something I’m used to seeing but I guess I live in Ohio so that probably has something to do with it.
The vehicles are gigantic and are capable of carrying thousands of pounds but are operated by people who may not be able to handle something considerably smaller without getting into an accident. Suburban neighborhoods are plagued with tailgating road warriors in consumer tanks that endanger people for the sake of having an adventure on the road. The aesthetics of a truck are as much a problem as the drivers operating them.
In my experience suburbanites in large SUVs are much more reckless than pickup drivers I encounter. Obviously an anecdote but they tend to be far more oblivious to their surroundings.
Very good point and a sign that I’m prejudiced against trucks. There are bad drivers in every category and it’s unfair for me to target only one group.
Lots of the negative comments are about how tall this truck is (and how tall trucks in general are getting).
Truck owners don't just use them to carry rocks and trees, they also drive them to the city, where the high grille, large footprint, crazy rate of acceleration make them threatening, dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists, and frankly just detrimental to improving the quality of life in cities.
It's absolutely rational that a vehicle optimized for rural workload isn't going to be ideal in cities.
What's irrational is pretending they have to be taller and wider every year.
Honestly do not understand it either. It’s nice to have a giant bucket attached to your car! It lets you do all kinds of useful things plus you can still get to all the places that smaller cars can.
Totally unrelated: has anyone noticed that the bar on the F in the FORD logo ends with an e? It has been like that for a while. I remember reading somewhere that Henry Ford had forecasted that transportation was going to be all electric in the future; maybe related? Anyway, I think the demand for this will take them by suprise, and incidently, CT and Rivian need to get those factories churning quick.
I live in more or less the country too. I just find an SUV handier day to day and week to week. Some things I have to put on the roof or take a short drive home with the rear hatch partially ajar. I could rent a trailer or have something delivered. Or I could borrow a pickup. I just find the interior space is more generally useful than having an open bed every now and then.
I suspect most people with big trucks rarely use them for moving stuff. Not to say they never do, but from my observations owning a big truck has a lot more to do with signaling a certain status to others who value big trucks.
Not to say, of course, that owning an EV, a hybrid, or a Geo Metro (or a converted hearse with a Pratt & Whitney aircraft engine in the back) has nothing to do with signaling status....
Owning a Geo Metro signals that you don't give a damn about status or what anyone thinks and you don't care much about how long it takes to get to your destination. The Geo Metro owner in 2021 is truly the most independent thinker.
I will likely never drive anything but a truck. They are the ultimate useful vehicle. I have an F150 as my daily driver and an F250 for my farm truck (I have 10 acres).
No, I am not a Trump flag flyer. I just happen to really like useful vehicles.
Since when stating facts deserves downvote? Did the media not say the protests were "most peaceful"? Was it not CNN reporter who said the exact words in front of a burning building? Did Nicole Hanna-Jones not say "Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence"? Was it not justice warriors (I use it as a neutral word, as it does not makes sense to use left vs right) who protested last year? What did I miss?
At $20/hour for a new F-250 rental, Home Depot has better options available. If people wanted to haul lumber, they probably wouldn't show up with a trailer attached, they would buy a truck with a 8 foot box.
I _think_ you mean they wouldn't attach a trailer to their Camray? I was confused initially by your post because a trailer behind a pickup I find is a great combination. You can load stuff much more easily on the trailer but the pickup bed is there for any overflow. But I think you mean 10' box, no?
It's the smoothest car rental experience I've ever had. I checked the nearby Home Depots and one had a truck. I was in and out with the keys in 10 minutes. Drove to pick up a couch, delivered it, and brought the truck back. Parked it in the parking lot and walked in with the keys. It was about $30 and painless.
1) There are three Home Depots near me. None of them offer diesels for rent
2) The $20 is for the first 75 minutes. I guess I'm wrong, but I couldn't imagine a use-case where you're only going to need the truck for 75 minutes.
3) Use restrictions. Home Depot greatly restricts what you can use the truck for, including no towing.
4) Availability. At the three HD's near me, good luck getting any rental truck let a lone a diesel (mentioned above). They're always checked out, sometimes weeks in advance.
> The $20 is for the first 75 minutes. I guess I'm wrong, but I couldn't imagine a use-case where you're only going to need the truck for 75 minutes.
The idea is that you drive the truck home, unload it, then drive the truck back to the store and return it. If you live less than 30 minutes away from the Home Depot then it is completely reasonable amount of time.
Example: 30 mins driving home + 15 mins unloading + 30 mins driving back = 75 minute rental.
It seems very practical to me. Most people live less than 30 mins from a Home Depot. In fact Home Depot has an internal goal that they want 95% of Americans to live 15 mins or less from a Home Depot store. So if you fall into 95% of Americans, then you can rent a truck for 75 mins, spend 15 mins each way driving and have 45 minutes to unload or mess around before returning the car.
Home Depot really rents the trucks with the idea that you drive to the store in your car, buy something at the store, use the truck to take it home, drive back to return the truck, and then drive your car home.
Have you had a bad experience doing so? I rent probably three or four times a month and I have never had a problem. Obviously YMMV but personally I can get work done for less than an oil change, let alone paying for the truck itself.
A truck costs tens of thousands of dollars. Even assuming half the cost would otherwise be put towards an alternative vehicle, you'd still need to move stuff uniquely suited to a truck literally hundreds of times to make it worthwhile.
You can get a truck, in CA, for less then $10K (including initial repairs). Why does everything need to be new?
The truck I got about 9 months ago has already paid for itself by saving me from having to hire people to do things that I could have done myself if only I had a truck.
Renting is fine once in a while, but if you're hauling base rock or lumber every few weekends, I cannot imaging having to deal with rentals every time. It doesn't make sense, and would be such an enormous waste of time.
> if you're hauling base rock or lumber every few weekends
Yes, exactly. If you've actually got a use for it, great! The comment I was replying to was suggesting that realizing you need to get one more bulky item would happen frequently enough to make up the difference for someone who would otherwise rent, which is ridiculous.
Even used, the marginal cost of a truck in maintenance and higher gas bills really adds up. Comparing a used F-150 to a used Prius, mile-per-mile, the truck is going to be more than twice as expensive.
Yes, it does all depend. I guess where I'm coming from is people have skewed ideas of the thresholds that define "need" here, and often say "why do you even need a truck??" in an almost shaming way, and ignore your reasons when you list them off (you're not doing that here, but in general I'm sensing an ideological stigma against trucks).
> Even used, the marginal cost of a truck in maintenance and higher gas bills really adds up. Comparing a used F-150 to a used Prius, mile-per-mile, the truck is going to be more than twice as expensive.
Again, depends! For me, the cost of a truck in maintenance and gas is much cheaper than a Prius, because the Prius can't do most of the things I'd want a truck for to begin with. Gas included: I don't take the truck on long road trips. But I'm lucky and have a honda and a truck. If you only have budget for once vehicle, then yes, weigh the pros and cons much more carefully. If you have a used car and a used truck though, you can pay about as much as you'd pay new for either of them (less, even), and have much more utility.
Lastly, I'd wager that an F150 from the 90s is going to be a lot cheaper to maintain than a Prius in the long run due to the Prius' overall complexity. I wouldn't make that same bet on any truck built after 2005, though.
Only if you insist on buying new, you'll pay a lot. My pickup is about as big as it gets (4 door, 8ft bed, diesel dually) and it didn't cost tens of thousands since I bought an older one.
Diesels don't depreciate that much, so I'll probably get most of it back whenever I sell.
I'm not sure why you'd assume if I can afford and am willing to buy a $50k truck that I wouldn't buy a $50k car or SUV. So now renting is in addition to that, and it's not as convenient.
I think people are taking my comment to read "don't get a truck" when it was really just responding to the suggestion that "return your rental and come back home and realize you need to buy more of some heavy large item" would be such a common occurrence that ownership makes more sense than renting even without some other use.
Large items are pretty easy to predict. You aren't going to buy a bathroom vanity, then rent a truck to take it home and then realize you needed two vanities.
If you are buying wood you can measure the size of the wall. Estimate the studs you need based on 16" gaps. Buy that much plus a few extras.
The constant trips back and forth to home depot is generally smaller items that you forget. You need a special socket size, you need a different type of nail, etc.
I've happily carried plenty of lumber and even full sheets of plywood/drywall with my Civic. It fits 10' lengths inside, and sheets on the roof. What it lacks is capacity, and convenience for sheet stock. Recently I've gotten into towing trailers (on a light SUV), which seems like a great capability for the times that I need to transport more at once. If you're transporting large things frequently, I get the utility of a truck. But most truck owners aren't hauling anywhere near that much.
FWIW after reading the other thread specifically about home backup power, I was thinking this new F-150 sounds interesting. But then reading this whole product page and coming to "automatic software updates" I remembered why new vehicles are non-starters for me. I'd rather keep dealing with gasoline than resigning myself to surveillance culture.
Don't know why you're getting downvoted. I feel the exact same way. OTA updates for my vehicle gives me the shivers. Why not build the fucking thing right the first time? Why does every machine need to be a supercomputer? At what point does it spend more energy thinking then it does getting me from A to B when I push down on a pedal?
I do really think the idea of an electric truck seems cool, and the F150 looks capable, but I'd rather not have yet another connected device. Give me dumb toasters, dumb refrigerators, dumb laundry machines, dumb vehicles. I'm tired of this "smart" bullshit. It doesn't need to be smart because I can tell it exactly what I want.
IMO sheet goods are easier to haul on car roofs than they are in a truck bed that's too short. A truck bed they can fit flat in is easiest but not the default these days.
Really? I find it hard to imagine that anyone who owns a freestanding home hasn't wanted to carry some sort of large item home from Home Depot. It's not some unusual "salt of the earth" kind of situation. I only have a tiny Chevy Sonic, and have often thought how handy it would be to have a truck for carrying home soil, mulch, random wood things, a new lawnmower, heck even a large TV, etc, and have had to rent or borrow one occasionally.
As someone upthread pointed out, Home Depot will rent you an F-250 (or another model with a slightly larger bed) for $20/hr. I buy a fair amount of "too big to fit in my car" stuff from Home Depot (mostly lumber), but I'd have to be doing it multiple times a week for it to be cheaper to actually own the truck.
It's actually really nice, because if you buy your goods before you rent the truck, the person that shows you to the truck will usually help you load your stuff into it. That can be a godsend if you're trying to manipulate big sheets of plywood or something heavy. I also like that they clearly treat them as work vehicles; when they inspected it before I took off, they were only interested in fairly significant damage to the body. The truck I got already had scrapes on the body, and they really only noted the large and/or deep ones.
It is weird, like if you own a house, having a truck is perfect. I bought a tacoma 1 year ago and have used it countless times. Getting mulch, buying lumber for shelving projects, moving couches, chairs etc. Literally the perfect vehicle for me. Also it is very versatile. You can get hard tops, soft tops etc. Great for camping etc. Having a separate trailer (and storing it somewhere) or always having to rent a truck or whatever just sounds like a hassle.
I think what people miss is that once you have a truck, all sorts of things happen that you wouldn't have bothered if you didn't have the truck, because the hassle is removed.
I certainly didn’t expect it to be, or I would’ve added something about the truck lol
I’m interested to see what exactly is included in the base model and when that will become available since they’ve only given us information on higher trims so far. $40K for this vehicle is very affordable, that’s about as cheap as you can get a new Model 3 right now but at least for awhile it could be eligible for electric vehicle credits. If the government extended these credits they could get A LOT of people to buy these trucks.
In my view it appears more to me that some Americans are reluctant to give up their world view on why they need to drive bigger, larger automobiles than using environmentally better smaller cars.
The problem is, this is all marketing, and pricing it lower than Tesla is just a head-turner for the press, not the average citizens that actually buy these things. The base model F150 the low-end of the Lighting line compares to is only $28,940. That's $10,000 less than the electric model. Most consumers are not going to be buying a base model and dealers rarely carry them on their lots. So, the realistic starting point for these is most likely going to be around $50k. Slap on top of that the $10k to $20k dealers are currently getting above MSRP and this will be out of reach for most people.
It depends on how ordering them works and if the base model is actually available and if it’s still a crew cab; finding a new affordable near base model F150 is actually pretty difficult. If closer to minimum spec Lightnings are more common the effective price difference is smaller.
Well said. Lots of people like to assert that light trucks are pedestrian killers compared to cars but according to at least 1 source[0] they are responsible for fewer deaths than passenger cars. I have worked in downtown Houston, where a lot of walking was the norm. There were multiple times that I would walk down the street and see vehicle, after vehicle occupied by a distracted driver. At one point in time I counted 7 vehicles in a row where the driver was moving and looking at their phone and not the road ahead. IMHO this is the real problem. Another problem is there seems to be a migration towards the hot take tabloid for car magazines/websites. More clicks are generated with hot takes about cars than something I would prefer which was objective testing and data.
Now for the tongue in cheek ironic part of the post
Finally had to just stop visiting sites like Jalopnik(a car site written by people who hate cars), TTAC(used to just be the right leaning car website, but now is having Jalopnik envy), and The Drive(A new car site by the guy who started Jalopnik and decided only one toxic car site attributed to him was not enough).
A lot of people just want to move stuff, they don’t want to like…burn your house down while wearing a MAGA hat or something. There’s no reason to have an irrational hatred of a vehicle that is pretty practical in non-urban settings.
Edit: since this ended up as the top comment I’ll add some thoughts on the truck itself in the spirit of not being overly-negative. I’m interested to see what exactly is included in the base model and when that will become available since they’ve only given us information on higher trims so far. $40K for this vehicle is very affordable, that’s about as cheap as you can get a new Model 3 right now but at least for awhile it could be eligible for electric vehicle tax credits. Especially if the government extended these credits they could get A LOT of people to buy these trucks (and more Teslas which would help with EV adoption since demand for the Bolt and Leaf seem pretty low)