I have a truck and I’ll mention some uses for it since most people here seem ignorant. I use it for the following multiple times a month.
- Hauling plywood, sheet rock, and other lumber
- Moving furniture
- Dirt/mulch/fertilizer
- Landscape pavers/rocks
- Moving gear for camping for groups of people
- pulling a trailer to haul equipment
- moving large tools
There’s a lot of hate here and it seems misdirected.
was just about to say, it can be cost effective if it makes sense for what you’re using it for then it’s not a bad investment.
Americans really love to act like 99% of those trucks aren’t just used to haul someones ass to wallmart for some groceries
I have a diesel truck which currently costs EIGHT dollars a gallon to fill up in California right now, and I use my truck for the following every day for the past six years:
I literally live in it.
No rent, no mortgage, no property taxes, no utilities payments because all my electricity comes from my roof solar panels, I can live anywhere I want, usually the ocean, sometimes Colorado mountains, sometimes Arizona desert which is lovely in the winter. All it costs is the same amount everyone else is paying for their own vehicle maintenance. Except it’s the only expense I have ❤️
Doesn’t that lifestyle become lonely after a while? I tried some car living for a while (didn’t even have curtains, so I ‘couldn’t throw rocks at others’). I found a nice groove with a gym (went there for showering, then eventually working out as well), but I felt like a pariah in the city. Cops shooed me away twice, which made me feel insecure everywhere.
It’s about saving money & enjoying freedom. Loneliness happens even when people live in apartments, houses, & mansions.
I’ve always said they try to compensate for something because I can’t for the life of me understand why’d you’d need a massive pickup truck and you live in the suburbs
The answer was hybrids, but that wasn’t good enough for the “environmentalists”. So battery only power was forced on us before there was even infrastructure developed for it. Now, adoption rates are stagnant and we are creating even more environmental hazards than before.
We did it y’all!!
When the planet gets too hot for us to go outside, our dependence on motor vehicles will deepen that much more. But we’ll need ways to interact with the world safely, so engineers will find ways to redesign cars and trucks into relatively almost affordable wheeled mecha. These Mechars will still put us into a lifetime of debt, but that’s okay because the way people use their cars is already like a minihome, and so the mechars will continue that trend of essentially being our homes on wheels, complete with mortgage. We won’t need houses, which is great cause they’ll be demolished to make room for the charging stations for these mechars.
I can’t get the imagery of countless mecha stuck in rush hour traffic out of my head.
this should be an anime. the image of mecha traffic jams especially.
I just want an electric 90s S-10/Ranger. Someone, just make that truck. I’m begging you. I’m so tired of these big boxy pieces of shit.
Slate.auto
I want an electric minivan for under $50k is that too much to ask
Maybe I’m an outlier, but I bought a used 2011 Tundra with 230k miles on it for $7k. It’s the base model, bone stock except for replacing the broken radio and I use it to tow the RV I live in and transport my ebike that’s the size of a moped or small motorcycle.
I’m also non-binary and stuck some cutesy cat stickers on my back window. 😂 The idea of spending over $50k on a truck is just insane. I found the original dealer window sticker in the glove box and mine sold for $21k new in 2011.
I live in Texas and pass these huge lifted trucks with the super wide-set tires and always wonder how they can even load anything into the bed. And if MY truck gets 17-18mpg on a good day, what is THEIR monstrosity getting? 😭
I just looked up the Toyota Tundra and it’s still a large truck.
Funny sidenote, this week I saw a VW Eos pulling a caravan.
An Eos has a 1,500kg rated towing capacity. How big was the caravan? Seems kind of dangerous, but I’ve definitely seen people with worse towing setups. 😂
My RV is 8,000 pounds dry (3,600kg). I wanted a smaller truck for better gas mileage, but I wouldn’t have been able to tow with it, as they were mostly rated at about 5,500 pounds (2,500kg).
They’re rated differently here in Germany.
I regularly see setups like this here
But I truly appreciate you converting your measurements
I do actually want a truck. I like to thrift shop and do home projects. being able to move furniture and construction materials would be nice. Too bad they’re stupid big, full of tech garbage, and 30K. I just want a little ford ranger or something. There’s no reason it should cost as much as it does when the only people using it are tradesmen and posers. A truck is meant to be the work horse of vehicles. Somehow they convinced enough people to pay a premium price for a thing that has near no versatility.
The upcoming Slate could be what you want.
I have a lot of hope for the Slate. I’m worried about a dozen different things happening to it as a new company. I wish I could see their financials but it’s a catch-22. If I can see their sales numbers it’s more likely some big shitty company tries to hostile take over them (because they’d be publicly traded.) Getting one would be cool. Getting one and then having the company shutter (or get eaten by Amazon), not so much.
The trucks useful for actual hauling are nothing like these awful pavement princesses. They’re smaller, lower, with a small cabin and bigger flatbed.
Unfortunately they are much less common nowadays. Wonder why that is.
Why not buy a used one?
Public transport is for commies, and electric vehicles are gay.
I had a girlfriend and we got along well. She was really into cars, but it’s not something that really comes up often, so it’s kinda just whatever. Out of the blue she told me that whenever she parks next to an ev and the owner is there too, she revs up the engine really high, so they know what’s up.
I looked at her for a long time and legitimately didn’t know what to say, and all i could think off was: “but why?” And she said something like: “so they know what they are missing out” i told her that they either think you are mentally unwell or can’t drive a car.
I totally agree with the “but why?” sentiment. One of the reasons I got an EV is precisely to avoid the engine sound.
Even if you’re into loud cars, a 4 cylinder turbo engine hitting something like 6k rpm is nothing impressive…
Gay as a fox!
Which makes you a gay commie if you ride on one of those electric trams. Makes a man want to just… curl up and die… maybe curl up in a comfortable place, next to his extremely straight friend. Maybe he wraps his arms around you, not too tight, just enough. Maybe he leans in and whispers in your ear, that it’s going to be ok. Your nice and safe in your extremely straight friend’s large, muscular arms. The tender kiss is a surprise, but a welcome one. It takes you away to a land without worry. Where the only two people that exist are you, enveloped in his embrace. Just thinking about the electric tram makes you so angry, and his loving arms wipe it away as they tear away your clothes in an extremely straight and macho way. There’s nothing gay about a little blowjob, you tell yourself, as you ta-
I’m sorry were we talking about robot Teslas?
Now you make me want to go to ride electric tram.
We say that, but if the prices maintain habits will change. After the Iraq invasion in 2003, I saw people buy more and more smaller city cars over the next half a dozen years (at least in Canada).
Even GM, Chrysler and Ford were bringing small cars to the market until 2008-2010.
Once affordability and credit dry up, there’ll be demand for small hybrids, economy cars and electric cars. SUVs and Pickups are just popular because car loans were so cheap. And gas prices have never been as low as the last decade.
Its already happening. 2000 f350 7.3L ZF6 4x4 rust free is worth less than 4k, trying to sell it for a recently widowed person and it sucks. Truck value, especially diesel, is shitting the bed.
What i find most interesting is that the modern style truck that people are buying are actually so awful to use for real work. The increased bed height makes it harder to hand load to the point that they added integrated stairs in the door which doesnt help at all because youre still climbing wasting energy. When getting tools out of the back seat if your not 7 feet tall you cant reach in without physically climbing in. They kinda just suck in comparison to the old. When i see trucks like the one below i genuinely think that person is using it as intended probably likes that model more than something theyd buy new. My brain cant help but comment “thats a real truck with a real contributer to society inside”
style
GMT 400s and 800s are the most goated pickup trucks off all time. Besides the pre-Duramax diesels. Those were garbage.
Gavril D-Series. 🤤
I’ve wasted way too much time on that thing. I’m not sorry, had fun. More of a brucknell legrand wagon man myself.
The Legran is a great car. I love its frumpiness. XD
I’m pretty sure that’s a gmt400, haven’t heard of a gavril before!
It is. Gavril is a made up brand from a game called beam ng. The game is basically car physics with some game attached and gavril are the trucks similar to an s10 up to a gm 3500.
Even that truck is on the bigger size. Looks like it was even lifted.
nobody is using them for real work. they are status symbols.
they make fleet/commercial vehicles for real work.
Modern trucks are just emotional support vehicles for the egoistically challenged.
And they’re expensive status symbols at that. I don’t own a pickup anymore but I’ve had a few and the total cost of ownership is quite a bit higher than for a relatively nice but economical passenger car.
Especially in the south, but not limited to, you see a lot of new Z71’s and Raptors with lift kits, brush guards, spray in bed liners and diamond plated bed boxes in office parking lots, all with pristine trailer hitches.
pavement princess compensation carriers
People who modify their Raptors, generally are only making them less capable.
In the US, trucks got so big because of poorly-thought-out EPA regulations that mandated specific gas mileage based on hood height rather than tonnage. In order to be subjected to the lower, more achievable targets, the hood height has to be above a certain number or else the truck can’t be sold.
Too bad they wrote it with the un-erasable ink, otherwise after a few decades someone would’ve done something to fix it.
Changing that kind of thing is easy to spin negatively for political opponents. If a politician you don’t like were to propose changes to the fuel efficiency requirements as they relate to vehicle footprint, would you give them the benefit of the doubt to assume that it would be for the better?
And this is why you can’t have nice things
Can you share a source for the hood height regulations? Never heard anything like that before.
I’m not sure about the hood height part, but CAFE (US fuel economy standards) loosen the MPG requirements as vehicles get larger. The curve is poorly made and it is simply easier to increase the size of the vehicle and hit the looser fuel economy requirements. The regulation with the goal to increase fuel economy…encourages larger vehicles with worse fuel economy.
That is not the primary issue. If it would be tonnage the incentive would be also perverse and dangerous for everyone. The emission targets are absolutely achievable, the industry does not want to achieve them or do what is needed to achieve them (lighter, smaller and more efficient vehicles).
The real problem is that authorities allowed the lobbyists to get their way to open an aicraft carrier large loophole to allow rules for commercial vehicle for purely and exclusively private vehicles, designed and marketed from day one exclusively as such.
No kidding, not to mention the footprint regulations forcing all cars to get bigger. Can’t even sell an ICE smart car in the USA anymore because it’s not efficient enough for its footprint! Old Subaru gc8 is a small car and would require 75+ mpg to be sold under current regulations, so we just have bigger Subarus to increase footprint and get them back under regulation. Manufacturers love regulations because more regs = higher price = more profit per vehicle sold. Ever wonder why screens used to be illegal in cars, but now anything under 10k lbs is legally required to have a TV screen and back up camera?
I find myself right between “you suck because you drive a truck” and “you suck because you don’t drive a real truck”
I have a Honda Ridgeline. It’s the smallest thing I’ve driven that I am comfortable in. We also have a Honda Civic, which is fun to drive for short trips but being wedged inside it gets painful for me.
We’re probably going to get rid of the Civic. We had it mostly for the kids to drive, but they are all grown up and have their own cars now, so we can’t justify the expense of keeping it around for no one to drive (my wife doesn’t drive anymore for medical reasons).
When my previous Ridgeline was totaled (stopped for a school bus dropping off kids - the guy behind me didn’t), I ended up driving the Civic for a couple months. It was unpleasant driving in Philadelphia.
It’s nothing new. I drove a VW rabbit in Philly in the early 90’s when I was in college, and noticed how everyone just drove like you didn’t matter. When the VW was being worked on, I borrowed my dad’s suburban, and all the other drivers suddenly became polite. When everyone drives like a bully, I understand the desire to go bigger.
Not a silver bullet but we seriously need to reform the CAFE standards that reward automakers for producing vehicles with larger footprints.
Make it illegal to build vehicles that aren’t crash compatible with average sized sedans and coupes, get rid of the light truck exemption that allows regular people to drive work vehicles (pickups trucks) on public roads without a truck driver’s licence or work permit.
Problem with the pickup truck thing is that you would also nuke those of us driving older trucks like my 01 Tacoma, my fucking hood is shorter than the back bumper of some modern pickups. Mind you that could be corrected with height and tonnage specifications.
Yeah I feel like if it is crash compatible there’s no problem. You could also let current truck owners be grandfathered in and have no new trucks sold to the general public.
There’s really a ton of options other than just letting people get bigger and bigger trucks that really just kill more people.
One of my primary use cases for even owning a truck would be an 8ft long bed single cab so I could drive to the hardware store and pick up sheets of drywall, plywood, or lumber.
You really think I need a commercial driver license or whatever a work permit is to do that?
Absolutely. Extremely few people need a truck that size full time. I was a cabinetmaker for years and I actually needed a truck so rarely that I saved a ton of money just renting one every few weeks and had the option to get a van (which is what most people really want anyway) if I needed one too. Most proper home renovations require a permit so you could tie that to it. I actually had a lot of options for free lumber and sheet stock delivery which is a huge time and money saver even it in the boonies where I lived and of course to my shop in the city. Most people really don’t need a truck, they just don’t take advantage of the services offered to them.
I don’t really understand the difference between the size of an F150 or a Sprinter van for example in your proposed policy.
No hard feelings either way. I don’t own a truck and order material from Lowe’s or Home Depot for that very reason.
Size? Vans are often less vanity sized, bumper height wise. But that’s not really what I meant. When I want a vehicle that can store a bunch of stuff, sheltered from the elements and thieves, like materials or tools overnight, a van comes ready for that, stock. I don’t need to add a whole shell or a flimsy cover, they’re just good. And I can stick lumber all the way to the front of my passenger seat and not have to have it sticking out of the back. Vans are just superior in most transportation cases.
Any home owner should own a truck. I don’t, but I’ll say that my Subaru identifies as a truck (regularly haul trash in it, have used it to move bucked up logs about riding on the bump stops) but I have on a couple occasions had to borrow friends trucks. If I didn’t have friends with trucks, id probably have to get rid of my jeep and replace it with a shitty lil ranger or s10 or something of the sort.
Subaru outback with a tow hitch. This is the way…
Trump just lowered the standards lol
The older I get, the less and less heed I pay to supply and demand Econ101. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Americans “choose” the most profitable kind of vehicles.
Supply and demand is a framework, not a model. It doesn’t say anything.
Apparently the entire internet failed to learn Econ101.
Supply and demand is correct in isolation. But so is advertising, they have spent decades learning human psychology to make people want certain things, hence creating demand for things that they want to sell. And they have also learned to create scarcity to Jack up prices.
Trucks are demonstrably more dangerous than other vehicles on the road.
My unpopular opinion is that truck drivers should pay a higher penalty when they’re involved in accidents. Every moving violation in a truck gets bumped up, one degree, from civil to misdemeanor, from misdemeanor to felony. By driving a pickup truck you are choosing to endanger other drivers on the road.
They’re also not performance vehicles, but everyone tries to drive them like they are and none of them care to give you any indication of what they are intending to do.
I agree. Funny enough, when the taller vehicles were first becoming popular, “I can see everything” was popular. Well, if your visibility is improved, you should be penalized more for being at fault.
Even more so with all these driving assistant systems, if you rely too heavily on them (thinking OK to text and drive), that’s on you for still causing an accident. Those systems are to aid alert drivers, not replace them.
Not arguing, but my understanding is the main problem with driver assist systems is that people don’t meaningfully understand their limitations and assume they will do more than they are capable of. Think highway lane assist being treated as a self driving system, for example, or the woman who jumped in front of her tesla her toddler was driving because she thought it would stop if there was a person in front of it.
Since the expectations are so wildly different between vehicles, and none of it is covered in drivers ed or road tests, it’s bound to happen more.
