Sprinter vans, utility vans, or even minivans are far, far more useful for trades than modern pickups. Heck, my minivan was the goat for home renovations—it’d easily fit a dozen full 4x8 sheets of drywall/osb/ply/mdf/etc and I could still close the rear gate. I always got chuckles from guys awkwardly wrangling/securing sheets onto a pickup’s bed at the supply yard when I’d easily slide the sheets off the cart directly into the van by myself.

A heavy duty pickup makes sense when you have regular towing, or large bulky transport, needs. While on this topic, I’ll take a moment to lament the demise of the light duty pickup that provided a bit of extra utility while still fitting in a normal parking space.

I miss the hell out of my '82 Chevrolet S10 with extended cab and two-tone paint job. The extended cab isn't going to be used for hauling the soccer team, but I could put it was plenty of space for "inside only" cargo. Damn thing threw a rod and cracked the case, and I never could convince my parents to keep it and put a new engine in it. I'd like to think I'd still own it today if they had.

USA seemingly can't sell small or base trim cars.

Product of mfrs cheating CAFE standards.

Half these people still choose to buy the vehicle they do for insane and superficial reasons like "It's got a Hemi", like my uncle, even though Hemispherical combustion chambers haven't been state of the art or even good ICE technology in decades.

Remind me of my favorite article title: In the land of the free, why can’t we have mini-pickup trucks like the Taliban and ISIS?[0]

[0]: https://www.kansas.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/dion-lefler...

For the "I need to sometimes pick up large objects" use case it's hard to beat.

Sedan handles 99% of my driving, but can't really tow anything. Truck handles all of my towing stuff, but gets ~14mpg which hurts so I don't drive it.

Jeep is a jeep, it's always being worked on, but when I use it I'm using it to go ride around on dirt paths or for camping. It gets 17-20mpg when I'm driving it but I don't want to drive it often.

If the jeep was a 2000's series jeep I would totally just get a small trailer for the occasional towing things that I do with the pickup and downsize to 2 vehicles. I know I could rent a uhaul from time to time for about what I pay for insuring and titling the truck, but the $100 annual difference is worth it for the convenience of not having to deal with uhaul 4 times a year.

But I said all of that to say, that a hitch isn't a perfect solution for everyone. I would feel very uncomfortable towing an empty 4x6 trailer behind my sedan, not to even mention the occasional couch or dresser or bunch of boxes from helping a friend move.

Why? 1500 lbs rated tow hook on an average sedan should be no problem at all. And that's more than enough for a 4x6 with a couch and a couple of boxes. Might even get a slightly larger trailer so you don't have to take the couch apart.

I've towed 14' sailboats including all gear behind a Corolla, didn't even feel the trailer was there.

So I replaced it with a 5x8 trailer, which anymore gets pulled behind a Chevy Volt. I'd hesitate to load it to the max and take it on the thruway, but for most of my tasks it's actually more convenient than the truck. Loading up a riding lawn mower or a few hundred pounds of scrap metal is way easier with it being closer to the ground, and I'm mostly driving 10-15 miles over back roads so if I'm worried the load is too heavy for the compact car I don't mind taking it a little slow.

Also, it's convenient to load it while it's unhooked, piling in garbage and debris over a week or a weekend and then hooking it up to run to the dump; likewise, just unhooking the trailer full of construction materials and (weather permitting) just unloading it as you build.

I occasionally miss being able to drive it into the woods, but to be honest not being able to parallel park the trailer is a bigger inconvenience than not being able to off-road it.

[0] Since having kids I've come around on the second-row-of-seats/short bed trade-off; not being able to pick up dimensional lumber with kids in tow is way more limiting in my current phase of life than not being able to fit it in the bed with the tailgate up.

People mostly still do it though, because it's cheap and easy to do.

With an Impreza.

That included highways in the Yukon that were more river rock than gravel, backwoods of Montana and Wyoming, you name it.

It was totally fine. Especially in a Subaru, with AWD and a low well centered center of gravity. I'd do it again.

The 2 door model unfortunately has a pretty weak tow rating of 1 ton, and I'm fairly certain I have gone well over that a few times. IIRC the four door models a few years later took that up to 5000 lbs because of the extra length.

After deciding to replace it, we struggled to decide what kind of vehicle to upgrade to. For our lifestyle and the side projects I like to do, another minivan was the obvious choice. Now it's a 2018 Pacifica and we're retired. The quality is outstanding, with 112K miles on it, I expect to put on another 100K before seeing what's available for the next upgrade. None of these vans ever gave us any engine or transmission trouble, despite the high number of miles I was able to put on them.

Ironically, the Honda Ridgeline - long lambasted as “not a real truck” - can fit a 4x8 sheet of plywood, at least width-wise. You’ll have to either prop it up on the tailgate, or drop it and strap it down (which honestly you should do either way), but it will fit between the wheels.

I love my Ridgelines; had a Gen1 RTL, and now a Gen2 BE. A neighbor I used to have traded his F-150 for an F-350. The most I ever saw him haul was a very small trailer with some furniture. I’ve had a cubic yard of mulch dumped into mine repeatedly (a Gen1 Ridgeline will hold and haul this, but it’s heaped, and depending on moisture content it’s slightly over max rating, so maybe don’t bring a passenger).

Couple years ago I was driving through Arizona during a massive blizzard. Everyone's doing 15, and I'm doing 50 - taking things slow and careful because of the traffic.

I had people in vests standing out in the road waving at me trying to get me to slow down! And I'm going "What in the hell are you doing out in the road!? Don't you know this is a blizzard!"

I grew up in Alaska, we laugh at the snow :)

> AWD inspires more confidence

Stop and work backwards and ask yourself why that is rather than doing the Principal Skinner "no everyone else is wrong" routine. In practice, all seasons on an AWD car result in less slipping around than snow tires on a FWD car. Heck, if the difference where anywhere near close everyone rich enough to have a new car would probably have snow tires because the dealership or tire shop would be able to make that sale. The reason they can't is because in people's experience they're just not necessary.

Stupid internet circle jerks about stopping distance are not the pain point or performance bottleneck for the average user. The degree to which you can enter/exit a side street that has snow plowed in front of it, navigate a steep and poorly plowed driveway, park in an unplowed space, cross the slush between lanes on a main roads or highway, those are what "real users" care about and they're where AWD shines.

>but once you are, every car still only has 2 wheels to turn and 4 to stop, which are quite possibly more crucial in snow..

These trope needs to be taken out back and shot. Regardless of your tire type the amount of traction available in snow conditions is such that "not being stupid enough to come into a situation too hot" is the dominant factor in overall outcome in braking/turning situations. Snow tires are an incremental improvement, not a categorical one. And the difference between a wet road and a snowy one is very much a categorical one.

AWD is the right choice for the statistical average person or "casual user" who's snow experience is dominated by somewhat plowed, somewhat churned snow/slush roads and is already driving incredibly conservatively. If you're driving on a frozen lake all the time like in the tire commercials or live somewhere rural and drive on a ton of fresh snow, by all means get the snow tires. But most people aren't, in that category they're better served by some random crossover and not thinking about it. And if you are one of those people, then spend a little more and get something with studs for all the ice you're inevitably also encountering.

Uh, it should be? The ability to confidently stop is far more important than to go. If you can’t get going, you’re not in a wreck. If you can’t stop, well…

You also missed another key reason to get snow tires: many (most?) vehicles do not come with AWD even as an option. Telling someone to trade their Civic in for a CR-V just so they can get AWD isn’t sensible, when they could mount snow tires and get a significant traction boost.

First off, this is the principal skinner "everyone else is wrong" take.

Second, it's just not how things work in practice. In practice what happens if you have a FWD car that can't "just go" you wind up driving way harder to make up for it. Stuff like hitting hills at speed and trying to take on-ramps at the limit of traction because you are having to work around the limitation of being unable to actually put power to the ground when you need to. Say nothing of all the sketchy situations that happen at the margin of that (backing down a hill you couldn't go up, getting stuck less than graceful merges, etc).

>You also missed another key reason to get snow tires: many (most?) vehicles do not come with AWD even as an option

I don't think that's anywhere near true for the US market.

And, like you said, people think that an AWD car will stop faster. No, it'll just start moving faster, more traction doesn't make the brakes better or the road any less slippery.

I owned a single 4WD car and it was super fun in the winter, but... when it's icy, you're most likely moving faster than you would be with a 2wd, which again results in some heart palpitations when you're trying to stay on the road =)

What does more traction mean unless it's that the road is effectively less slippery (to my vehicle)?

The only people I know who think this way are made up people who exist only in the minds of people seeking to validate a purchasing decision.

I would’ve stopped to help, but I was concerned that if I lost momentum, I wouldn’t get going again.

Don't forget the people who just want to sneer at other people in ill-considered condescension! Plenty of that from the "the world outside the Bay Area and NYC isn't real and none of those people exist" folks.

But I believe most vans on the market have an AWD option. Ford Transit and Volkswagen IDBuzz both offer AWD. Toyota’s Sienna is (only?) AWD with a silly lifted trim for the off-roading soccer mom market. Chrysler’s van is AWD.

That leaves the ProMaster as the only two wheeler I’m certain about. Mazda and Kia also have vans, unsure about their drivetrain options. Did I leave anyone out?

Most companies prefer vans over trucks. Much better economics.

Either AWD/4wd is necessary when you're going to other people's property because you can't guarantee any given property isn't an icy shithole and when you're a professional being paid by them to be there for a specific purpose the last thing you wanna do is slip out trying to do a 25-point turn on their stupid sloped driveway and put a tire in the landscaping.

Even in cold parts of the US your hvac or plumber is going to be using something like a transit. Very few trade jobs opt for a truck. They don’t make economic sense and impossible to secure anything in the bed.

Sure landscaping crews can utilize trucks but even then, your mowing operation can get more value from a transit style van if they are only using pus mowers.

Maybe it’s just in my neck of the woods but if you cannot get up or down a hill because a homeowner does not clear their driveway then it’s a no go. Very acceptable boundary.

I've never seen or known a trademan that drove a van. They all drive pickups. Maybe this is a regional thing.

I am quite surprised to hear you have never seen an electrician use a van. That said there are certainly specialities where it’s more common.

90% of trade work is all on pavement and trucks suck for tools. If you are a logger yeah sure you may be using a truck to get to your equipment, similarly for lineman but for the vast majority of trade jobs companies opt for commercial vans. You are describing trade work like it’s the tv show landman.

Pickups are absolutely a regional affectation. I kinda want one, but I do not need one.

I grew up in Minnesota driving rear wheel drive cars to start. They worked fine even in the olden days where plows would take a couple days to clear the country backroads and even rock salt was applied sparingly due to the expense.

Not a single one of my vehicles had winter tires - all seasons were perfectly serviceable. You’d get stuck once in a great while but that’s what the bag of sand and shovel in the trunk were for.

Front wheel drive came along and made it easy mode.

All wheel drive is certainly something I love these days, but it’s an extreme luxury that makes winter driving laughably easy.

A basic utilitarian work vehicle does not need to be 4WD in 90% or likely even 99% of use cases anywhere in the country.

Only in the most strictly technical "I'm not touching you" sense.

Either AWD/4wd is necessary-ish when you're going to other people's property because you can't guarantee any given property isn't an icy shithole and when you're a professional being paid by them to be there for a specific purpose the last thing you wanna do is slip out trying to do a 25-point turn on their stupid sloped driveway and put a tire in the landscaping.

Even if it's some megacorp's facility that "should" be plowed and salted, it might not be when you show up at 6am on the dot to service something.

>I grew up in Minnesota driving rear wheel drive cars to start. They worked fine even in the olden days where plows would take a couple days to clear the country backroads and even rock salt was applied sparingly due to the expense.

>Not a single one of my vehicles had winter tires - all seasons were perfectly serviceable. You’d get stuck once in a great while but that’s what the bag of sand and shovel in the trunk were for.

I completely agree but the past isn't coming back. Those standards of performance are unfortunately no longer acceptable, especially in business settings.

The average contractor servicing suburban and exurban properties in a work van is going to be able to trivially navigate 95% of all snowfalls with FWD with a modicum of winter driving skills. It's just not that hard, and very few places get the type of snow that requires a fully off road capable vehicle.

If I lived in the mountains of Colorado and servicing ranches or something of course I'd be buying for those conditions. But a standard city in the northern US or Canada? Meh. Total waste of money for a fleet vehicle. These sorts of locations are where something like 99% of all vehicle miles are put on.

For personal use now that I can afford it? AWD is on all my vehicles. It's a magical technology since it allows turning your brain off, and making some situations comically easy to navigate. But I'm not optimizing for cost efficiency or practicality there - I'm optimizing for luxury and convenience.

I'm not talking about places that can be written off because "the boonies are a rounding error".

I'm talking about some guy who owns a plumbing business in Boston and wants to reduce the number of days per year that conditions make things sketchy. $3k per truck or $4k per van is absolutely chump change compared to the PITA of having to add more buffer to winter scheduling to account for delays and inconvenience.

>for personal use now that I can afford it? AWD is on all my vehicles. It's a magical technology since it allows turning your brain off, and making some situations comically easy to navigate. But I'm not optimizing for cost efficiency or practicality there - I'm optimizing for luxury and convenience.

Baffling that someone who readily admits that "you can turn your brain off" doesn't see why people who either have to drive their own work vehicle every day, or put a vehicle in the hands of an employee wouldn't value that even higher.

It could also be just a further deal with Quigley. You can already order from a dealer with the 4x4 option, and your vehicle will go factory->Quigley->dealer and be sold to you as "new", with good warranties.

First of all I'm not convinced that the utility of the trucks is mostly unused. This seems like a trope from anticar people. But second of all and more concretely, I've done a lot of trade work that would have simply not worked in a van, so seeing your common sentiment is always bemusing.

Funny story, the guys who demolished an old bathroom for us hauled the crap & dust away in a very dirty beater van (either a small cargo van or a minivan with rear seating removed, can't remember). It was their designated demolition vehicle.

Source: own minivan

Yeah, everything about it is generally "solid" and well done but at it's roots it's a very german car. The longblock will theoretically go a million miles but realistically you're gonna replace every part around it several times over to get it there. I'm sure they're fine when new but as they age it's basically the same "replacing way too much BS because while nice it's over engineered" as the rest of german car ownership. Like c'mon man, an asian or american car would "just" require simpler less invasive things and generally be less of a headahce in old age.

Source: semi responsible for keeping one running

Vans are way better in almost every regard.

Actually, I'm buying a house with a garage and I may get a bike trailer, and a tow hitch for my BMW. That would be an even simpler solution

There are only two trades that use sheet goods: drywall and carpentry. Most of the time they’re getting dozens or hundreds of sheets delivered to a job site.

What are you going to do with (12) 32 sq ft pieces of sheet goods anyways, put up drywall in a half of a bedroom or reroof a quarter of a garage?

If you really want to do this, you’ll get a roof rack for hauling sheet goods.

Crappy used trucks simply aren't up for sale. And even the rare listing I do come across, the asking price is ridiculously inflated.

Get an SUV with a trailer hitch.

worked out great. Maybe better than a pickup.

For example - taking mountain bikes somewhere to ride - you can put them in the back, go ride, and leave them there while you go eat without someone stealing them. You can even load them the night before.

dirty stuff can use a trailer (I've never needed one)

and suv carries lots of people - which has worked out many many times more than I predicted.

(it is a gas guzzler, but was cheaper because of that, and didn't compete with higher-priced pickup market)

I can attest to the fact that minivans are much more comfortable. I picked up my Pacifica hybrid minivan in early 2021 before the price hike and it was a steal compared to SUVs and pickups. When I was doing paperwork for the vehicle at the Chrysler dealership, I was chatting with some sales guys and discovered the shocking fact they had recently sold a luxuriously loaded-down pickup for over $100K. I was fortunate to easily haggle with them over my minivan because they don't make much money on minivans so they focus on pickups, Jeeps, etc.

A couple decades ago, I had started looking to replace an old hand-me-down car from my grandma, and had been mulling over whether I could ever justify spending $30K on an Infiniti at that time. My boss at work got a new pickup, and he was rather proud of it, and I innocently asked if it cost $25K because plenty of my Texan relatives had driven them over the years and I assumed they were a no-frills working man's practical vehicle. After a brief pause, he answered, "It was a little over 40 thousand." That was over 20 years ago.

Vans are commonly used in urban areas, especially by businesses, but suburbs, rural, and construction benefit from higher clearences of SUVs and trucks.

SUVs are also usually much better in hazardous driving conditions because of a more optimal weight distribution.

Reality is, people buy these things thinking they would drive them off road, and never actually do it.

It's possible to make an off-road van, by the way. It's just that real demand is so vanishingly small that you don't really see them.

I deal and have dealt with enough deep snow that would eat a van.

I still might get a Sienna Hybrid for daily commuter

It also makes more sense for me to get a large SUV, as towing is important.

The SUV or Truck is still more capable in hazardous road/off-road conditions compared to the van.

Though in my current neck of the woods, a Sprinter would satisfy my needs well.

I had a RWD pickup with snow tires and went anywhere I wanted to through two utah winters and many vermont ones too.

From all of the bitching in the driveway, vans were not pleasant to work on the engine. Some of them had to remove a cover from inside the van to gain access, and that cover tended to not be well insulated and was the source of a lot of heat. Not much of a firewall as a car with the engine fully separated from the passenger compartment.

There were a lot of things people did not like about vans available in the land of Yanks. The Limey vans are not the same, so do not equate your experience as being the same.

There are two current reasons

- Millennials grew up in minivans and its viewed as a mom mobile and they don't want that look (despite the fact that most family SUVs are basically mini vans with out the sliders

- US laws favour light trucks

There's also the fact that it's a lot harder to take the top off a van than it is to add a top to the bed of a pickup. If I sometimes moved manure and had a van... I'd probably rent a trailer.

There are many that buy trucks for off road capabilities but probably 70% or more of truck owners don't go off road more than once a year. Many pick up truck models, like stock versions with crew cabs, are too long and not equipped for serious off-road use. Shallow sand/snow they can handle but so can SUVs.

Even if you're not going to do the knuckle-skinning work yourself, the packaging negatively influences book rates when you take it to a shop

The 70s/80s screwed them up big time. They were big ugly garabge cars. I love fast wagons, but they are dying here.

I can't fit an ATV in a van, and I really don't want to put a dead deer in the back of a van after I hunt one.

I wouldn't trust a van to haul 75 8x8x16 concrete bricks (over 2000 lbs/1100kg) because the suspension wasn't designed to do that, nor was the transmission, and the van will quickly deteriorate.

How about moving a couch? Fits in the truck, not in a van.

I did all of those things in the past 12 months.

All that being said, vans are great, especially with kids. They absolutely do not replace trucks... if you use the truck and don't mind getting it dirty. Shiny trucks with 5.5ft beds are fucking stupid. My kids all laugh at "trucks with a baby bed" these days.

Or, downthread, people just assume everyone with a truck is insecure, projecting wealth, and generally ignorant. Which ironically, is a very ignorant take.

There are some pickups here, having said that: more rural utilities people, or landscapers who move lots of dirt, or farmers, might have one. They tend to be smaller than an F-150, but then everything's smaller in Britain including the roads...

For moving yards of mulch, topsoil or concrete blocks, almost anyone in my country, including people in construction would just have that delivered to the site, next day, by the seller.

No clue what van you're imagining, but weather alone makes many things much worse in an open bed. Moving a couch is a very common use of vans, people rent them specifically to move furniture all the time.

minivan != van.

It’s hundreds of dollars to have the same literal dirt, delivered and dumped on my property. So now, instead of driving the truck full of dirt around my property and using it as desired, I now need to do it one wheelbarrow full at a time.

Fuck that.

As for weather, they make removable flat and domed “roofs” for truck beds, the weather argument is a nonstarter.

Trailer is kind of obnoxious pain in the ass and has a bunch more shit to go wrong with it's use compared to a vehicle that "just does what you need".

It might not be the literal cheapest but a truck with the desired cab to bed ratio is the right call for the casual user who just wants to do homeowner things and doesn't wanna think about it.

If your local government doesn't offer this, there are many commercial operators that do this in the UK. Seems bizarre to buy a whole giant, inefficient, vehicle just for 'hauling' occasionally.

There are private options, of course, but the fees are nowhere near "small" for this service.

I started looking into getting a trailer or hitch hauler but it didn't seem to make much sense. I could usually pay somebody on-demand to move stuff around and it always worked out to be cheaper than owning and maintaining a truck. I presently work from home and don't even own a car anymore; the math is quite similar with rideshare and motorcycle maintenance coming in significantly cheaper.

Having said that, I'm still in the market for a larger vehicle with a better tow weight rating as I use the trailer more than a handful of times per year, and my current tow vehicle is getting a bit long in the tooth.

The best used work truck is actually a van. They lack the coolness factor of trucks, but are far more versatile. You can pick up a <10 year old Transit with under 100k miles for like 10-15k. That price point will get you a >10 year old F150 in the 100-150k mile range.

Plus, there are good options if you want something smaller can car-based, like NV2000s and Transit connects. Which don't really exist for trucks outside of newer (maverick) or niche (Ridgeline) options.

Bonus points, a nice Transit is a great daily driver too.

In the UK, Truck and Driver Magazine featured one so equipped in a head-to-head AWD tipper test (AWD in the sense of all wheels driven regardless of number of axles, not Subaru AWD/Audi Quattro type AWD), alongside a variety of extremely large trucks. Proper trucks, not F150s, we're talking 18-tonne Scanias and stuff here.

Everyone wanted one of the little Hijets to take home.

I don’t get it. Why would you buy, maintain, and park an entire second vehicle for something that is beyond trivially cheap to hire out?

If you wanted to DIY then renting a truck for the day makes more sense.

Renting a vehicle invites bureaucratic nonsense. For my personal situation, I need it ready to go at virtually a moments notice or I'll simply just avoid the chore.

"I guessed that 98% of all truck beds are empty"

"In 25 minutes I had counted 150 trucks, and 99 of them had been empty. This 66% empty ratio was much lower than I had expected. I hadn't realized that so many trucks were being so successfully utilized."

"The results were similar: 39% of the trucks were hauling goods, and 61 of them were empty"

"Along with this adjustment of my perception, I also realized that an empty truck is no more wasteful than an empty back seat. Most cars AND trucks in the US drive around with 75% of the cargo space unutilized...what difference does it make if it is interior or exterior space?"

https://cockeyed.com/science/data/truck_beds/truck_beds.html

People using truck for work (tradesman etc) do it all thorough the day. People who just use it as status symbol get to work and back from work at given hour. Also probably more usage in weekend when people doing weekend project go shop and people not doing that don't even get out on the longer trips.

Sitting on one road for an hour (and looking at photos, far from peak traffic) is near meaningless

To the people I know who drive trucks like that, they're basically mobile offices.

I'm not familiar with the USA. What do contractors over there do in terms of clean/dirty clothes? Do they change into clean boots and trousers before getting into the truck? Or are they all in roles where they don't get their hands dirty?

In my country, vehicles marketed to tradesmen and agricultural workers usually aim for a hard-wearing, easy-to-clean interior that's fairly spartan.

Using my wife's fairly recent (2024 model year) pickup truck as an example, every horizontal surface is covered in papers, clipboards, horse tack and medications (she trains horses and operates a horse rescue). The floors and kick panels are probably muddy at this time of year, but I'm so used to it that I don't notice. The surfaces that aren't covered by papers or something else have a nice thick layer of dust (the truck spends a lot of time on gravel roads).

It might actually be vacuumed out a few times a year, but that's far from a priority. Generally, the cleanup only happens if one of us has to wear "nice" clothes to go somewhere.

But bear in mind that the areas that your body touches tend to clean themselves simply because you're moving around. So, the floors, dashboard, etc., might be muddy or dusty but the seats will generally be clean.

The basic "spartan" trucks tend to be for uses where you don't have to travel very far. If you're driving a hundred miles or so on an average day, you'll want to be as comfortable as possible or it gets old really fast.

Because the only truck owners the people who bash trucks see are their neighbor across the street who is that guy.

The demographically comparable guy who commutes in 80mi one way from his "country estate" in his Audi isn't on the internet bashing truck owners because the guy he lives across from uses his truck.

There's a reason these "luxobarges" are the best selling vehicle in the U.S., and the answer is not virtue signaling.

I promise you with all my heart, those luxobarges are not being purchased because they’re practical in any way, shape, or form. It’s 110% virtue signaling.

I don’t get the recent internet trend of trying to excuse any bad behavior by saying it’s all actually very logical and simply a tragedy of reality. Nobody is buying a gigantic vehicle because it has seats that are easy to clean. Nobody is buying an expensive ride because they just NEED those auto rain wipers.

People are bad with money, and keeping up with the Joneses has always been a high priority in American culture. I see people making $20-25/hr driving brand new Cadillac SUVs. I talk to my car selling friends, and they have the loan rates for 6-10 years memorized, not 3-5 years. Nobody does those anymore.

Of course there is an enormous amount of virtue signaling around cars. It’s one of the strongest social signals people purchase.

Playing Devil's Advocate, if you're going to be fucked either way, why not be fucked and have a nice truck than not?

It seems like, at least from an uninformed EU perspective, that if the "system" gives you the ability to get a big truck for no worse off that if you weren't going to get it, why wouldn't you?

It seems like auto manufacturers overly inflated their prices, and the loan issuers are mopping up said inflation back - so in the end the borrower (at least if poor and they're going to default either way) is better off getting more truck for their buck than less.

Again, I don't understand the desperate internet trend of defending terrible choices by focusing on the, like, 0.001% of people who do everything right and still fail. We've got the highest living standards on the planet. It's absolutely a choice.

Let’s say a normal car costs you $200/month and a big truck costs 400.

200 is not going to make a difference in your situation - you are either good either way or close to breaking point and therefore fucked either way (if not this month, then the next one when you have an unexpected large expense).

If you’re fucked, why not take advantage as much as possible and get the most truck for your buck? Well “your buck” in quotes but you get my point.

If my budget was at breaking point and for only 200 bucks extra (one time payment since I’m gonna default next month) you can bet I’m gonna take advantage and get another ~20k worth of truck that I’ll get to keep until the bankruptcy proceedings complete (at which point the extra would’ve depreciated off anyway). Or is there something I’m missing?

You’re also presenting a false scenario of “screwed either way”. One decision is getting a car that doesn’t leave you with $10k+ negative equity in a year because you did $1000 down on a $85k truck financed over 10 years with an 8% rate. That’s a decade long financial albatross that will cost you $150k by the time it’s done.

The alternative is you put $1k down on a $30k vehicle over 4 years with the same monthly payment and never end up with negative equity.

The gulfs here are enormous and the “screwed either way” altitude is pure defeatist financial ignorance.

200 * 12 = 2400 * 4 years( let's be real it would be longer ) = 9600. That IS a lot of money, it's not going to solve every problem immediately but applying the mindset of whatever Im screwed so I might as well set my money on fire is exactly how people keep sinking into the hole. You take the 200 extra on the car, on the apartment, the 150 pants. Its death by a thousand paper cuts and it will make a bad situation much worse.

It has nothing to do with avocado toast, though that wasn't nearly the zinger you thought it was. As it turns out, eating out is insanely expensive. Cook most of your food and you can save a TON of money. The fact that this simple idea is so hard for people to pull out of the avocado toast comment continues to astound me.

And you're right - you can certainly scam the system for 6 months of "more truck". That's exactly the kind of monetary responsibility that got us into this situation in the first place. Thank you for showing everyone a perfect example, I suppose.

Yes some are, but not everyone with a big truck. I'm in truck country and most people can afford their big trucks no problem at all. It's not virtue signaling, they are do-everything cars. Nothing else beats them.

You can go to a off-road work site during the day, and take it downtown for dinner after. Lots of people are making good money and can easily afford them.

not sure virtue signalling is best description here. I think "conspicuous consumption" is far better description of the process

You have such a deep misanthropic view that it's prevented you from seeing anything outside of it. You're preaching a faith not practicing an understanding of the world.

> Nobody is buying a gigantic vehicle

There are tons of contractors, laborers, small business and property owners who need the space or the utility of the vehicle. The reason these vehicles sell well is because they come in _tons_ of configurations.

> because it has seats that are easy to clean

No, that's why the manufacturer puts them in there, it helps them sell more vehicles by expanding their options.

> People are bad with money

Just.. like.. universally? Then how do you explain the number of billionaires and millionaires in this country? Let me guess.. from your heart it's 110% graft and corruption and 0% skill and sense and building wealth?

> I talk to my car selling friends,

Who has "car selling friends?" Your access to anecdotal information may not be helping you.

> It’s one of the strongest social signals people purchase.

We know this.. how?

> So what do people actually like about trucks? According to Edwards, the answer is counterintuitive. Truck drivers use their trucks very much like other car owners: for commuting to and from work, presumably alone. The thing that most distinguishes truck owners from those of other vehicles is their sheer love of driving. “The highest indexed use among truck owners is pleasure driving,” says Edwards. Truck drivers use their vehicles this way fully twice as often as the industry average. “This is the freedom that trucks offer,” says Edwards.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-siz...

The F-series is the best selling car family in the US. Some of them are using it for its intended purpose sure, the majority are just using it as parent said, a luxobarge.

A F550 box truck and a crew cab shortbed F150 are both F-series as well as everything in between.

If not the best selling it had better be damn close with all the different vehicles that exist under that one nameplate.

If you're saying "a less bad thing is still bad!" then your comment reads more like the "We should improve society somewhat. / Yet you participate in society. Curious! I am very intelligent." meme.

People generally buy vehicles for to fit all of their needs not 95% of them. My back seat and trunk are almost always empty and my passenger seat is mostly empty.

For being certain about something based on industry data?

>There are tons of contractors, laborers, small business and property owners who need the space or the utility of the vehicle.

And if that was the majority of these purchasers, this would be a reasonable response, but the extreme majority of truck owners use their truck for its intended purpose ONCE A YEAR. Bro just rent it from frickin' Home Depot and drive a Camry.

>No, that's why the manufacturer puts them in there

Ah, and of course the cheaper cars are purposely given seats which aren't cleanable? Or is it still correct that in the context of our conversation, it's nothing special and completely unrelated to how most people use their car? It's not within a million miles of a decision point.

>Just.. like.. universally?

Yes. You got it. I literally meant that every single person on the planet, rich, poor, and everything in between, is bad with money. I certainly wasn't making a hyperbolic point to bring an idea to the forefront - incredible detective work.

>Who has "car selling friends?"

I buy a lot of cars, and eventually made friends with the people I keep buying them from. We hang out sometimes. Do you just... not make friends with anyone?

>We know this.. how?

Who knows? My friends actually sit around talking about the specs on their refrigerators and the color options. They tinker in the garage on the cooling coils for hours a day. You should see how smooth the drawers in mine are.

It’s not “virtue signaling”, it’s lifestyle messaging like wearing cowboy boots or walking around with DJ headphones as if you’re going to drop a set after the morning standup.

I mean… do any of the commercial services in US use pickup trucks? It seems to all be vans? Why not to get a van then as a contractor?

I don't understand why flatbeds aren't more popular here. (Well if we assume that pickups aren't actually for utility then I guess it makes sense.)

You need body on frame, not the van unibody junk.

Reading the HN version of truck drivers is such a stark contrast to interfacing with actually contractors on a day to day basis.

A vehicle being comfortable and luxurious isn’t something only the bourgeoisie can appreciate. People who work spend a lot of time in their vehicles too.

As you say though I do see trades workers with the fancy pickup trucks (often with a trailer, cant scratch that bed paint aha) which I attribute to low interest on auto loans and poor business sense.

Certain jobs in certain trades, not all of them

> and a 80k f150 platinum

Base F150 starts at half that. This is silly

No it isn't [1].

> There seems to be no limit these days to how lavishly equipped, not to mention expensive, full-size standard-duty pickup trucks have become at the upper reaches of their respective model lines. [...] They’re brash and uniquely American alternatives to fine-tuned European luxury SUVs. For those keeping score, Kelley Blue Book says the average full-size pickup sold for $66,386 last month, due in large part to the growing popularity of such upscale models.

Sixty. Six. Thousand. Dollars.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimgorzelany/2026/01/14/the-cos...

Correct, which is why I used said most trades and not all trades

> Base F150 starts at half that. This is silly

The average new vehicle price in the US is 50k, people are not buying the base model.

$50K is much closer to the $40K base model than the $80K platinum model.

Everyone loves to cite the platinum model as if all the contractors or CEOs or whoever were bashing today are driving it, but most people are not buying the most expensive models.

Half of the vehicles are below 50k.

This is a textbook example of a case where median would be better.

Sprinter/Transit will NOT replace F250s.

It can be that but all the major manufacturers have a ton of trim levels and options. Personally I drive a f150 that doesn't even have power windows.

Most Cybertrucks I've seen in the wild are running at a low ground clearance, reminiscent of a 'coupe utility' vehicle like an El Camino.

It's a big car platform with a bed. It's the "top of the line" for "car based" pickups like the old Subarus, the Maverick/SantaCruz and Ridgeline.

While it nominally competes with the F150 it doesn't really. Same as how the Ridgeline nominally competes with the Ranger, but doesn't really.

I think it's a real shame the cyber truck never took off. While gimmicky I think the longevity of it's absolutely stupid thick(er than typical) gauge stainless body would have put pressure on other OEMs to stop building shitty truck beds that dent and rust if you look at them funy.

There are millions of workers carrying tools, parts, supplies, and refuse in pickup trucks. Where I live (rural), almost everyone has a truck, and it is for work, not show.

And in cities, as I walk around neighbourhoods, I see endless roofers, plumbers, builders, gardeners, and more using them for work.

Of course the real money is in the high trim levels that sell for twice as much but don't really cost much more.

Cybertruck is a product management failure.

Edit: OH, you mean the CT. Silly me.

(Same bed-size as Tacoma; midgate that folds down to hold a full sheet of plywood; seats 4 people comfortably; same length as a Mini Cooper SE).

I love it. Full-flat back allows for camping in your car (I'm just over 6 feet tall.) Three bicycles and three people can fit. Wood, tools, DIY... And it is tiny, so it is easy to drive and park.

It doesn't like driving faster than about 110km/hr, but that's good enough for me.

The utilitarian trucks you are talking about are k-trucks, or kei-trucks. "Kei" just means "lightweight."

In Japan, they are refered to as "kei-tora": 軽トラ

Are you suggesting that modern trucks can’t be used as trucks?

There are some good EV trucks out there. The Cybertruck is kind of uniquely bad because they tried so hard to make it unique and funny looking.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/opinion/marie-gluesenkamp...

<blockquote>

“Spreadsheets can contain a part of truth,” Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez told me. “But never all of truth.”

Looking to illustrate this, I bought the recent book “White Rural Rage” and opened it more or less at random to a passage about rural pickup trucks. It cites a rich portfolio of data and even a scholarly expert on the psychology of truck purchasers, to make what might seem like an obvious point — that it’s inefficient and deluded for rural and suburban men to choose trucks as their daily driving vehicles. The passage never does explain, though, how you’re supposed to haul an elk carcass or pull a cargo trailer without one.

It’s all but impossible to go into any rural bar in America today, ask for thoughts on pickup trucks and not hear complaints about the size of trucks these days, about touch-screens and silly gimmicks manufacturers use to justify their ballooning prices. Our economy, awash in cheap capital, has turned quality used trucks into something like a luxury asset class.

It’s often more affordable in the near-term to buy a new truck than a reliable used one. Manufacturers are incentivized by federal regulations, and by the basic imperatives of the thing economy, to produce ever-bigger trucks for ever-higher prices to lock people into a cycle of consumption and debt that often lasts a lifetime.

This looks like progress, in G.D.P. figures, but we are rapidly grinding away the freedom and agency once afforded by the ability to buy a good, reasonable-size truck that you could work on yourself and own fully. You can learn a lot about why people feel so alienated in our economy if you ask around about the pickup truck market.

Instead, the authors of “White Rural Rage” consulted data and an expert to argue that driving a pickup reflects a desire to “stay atop society’s hierarchy,” but they do not actually try to reckon much with the problem that passage raises — that consumer choices, such as buying trucks, have become a way for many Americans to express the deep attachment they have to a life rooted in the physical world. A reader might conclude that people who want a vehicle to pull a boat or haul mulch are misguided, or even dangerous. And a party led by people who believe that is doomed among rural voters, the Midwestern working class and probably American men in general.

</blockquote>

Would you believe that moose are also hunted in places that have very few pickups?

Not really true. Something like an F150/250/350 is absolutely built for utility. It's popular for a reason. It's just not used for utility by a large number of buyers. It's a "pavement princess".

The Cybertruck is an objectively bad product for many reasons of which utility is pretty high up there.

For example, it's really heavy because of the steel body yet it has an aluminium frame. The problem with aluminium is that it deforms with stress in a way that steel doesn't. Why does this matter? If you're towing a heavy load over rough terrain the frame is going to face large forces up and down that will end up snapping that frame.

> It's the suburban equivalent of a yuppie's Rolex Submariner.

That's a funny example because it shows you know just as much about watches as you do about trucks, which is to say nothing.

Sure, finance bros might buy Submariners but that doesn't change the fact that it's a very robust product designed for diving, originally. Now the need for that has been diminished because we now have dive computers, quartz dive watches and such and you can argue it's not worth ~$10k or that there as good or better options for less (which there are) but it's still an excellent product with many years of design to suit its original purpose.

Even if you use a dive computer as an experienced diver, you'll generally also have a dive watch because computers can fail [1].

> I say all of that to say that making a pickup truck for that market segment isn't a bad idea from a numbers perspective

So we have luxury SUVs where once the SUV was a commercial vehicle (eg Toyota Land Cruiser) and they may sacrifice some of the features such vehicles originally had (eg AWD) but the trades are made for a product that people want.

So yes, you could make an equivalent truck and say it has a market. Maybe it does. But even if it does, the Cybertruck isn't it. Because it's a terrible product for every purpose other than an expensive demonstration of your political leanings.

[1]: https://www.analogshift.com/blogs/transmissions/watches-for-...

Nice ad hominem. No diver is buying a Submariner specifically as a backup for their dive computer for the exact reasons that you went on to outline in your post. It's a textbook Veblen good. The Chinese can build a mechanical Sub clone that keeps the same time as a real one for $100. Swatch (via Omega) builds a more technically-impressive dive watch at a fraction of the price. Oris makes one with an analog depth gauge for even less than the SMP. All of them are more inaccurate and less reliable than anything quartz or digital.

Rolexes stopped being tool watches a few years into their post-Quartz crisis recovery. My GC buddy drives a Tundra. Fleets of white collar workers drive Crew Cab F-150s with wheels more expensive than the worthless Regular Cab I had years ago. No need to get twisted up about it.

I would have gotten a Tacoma, but I need the extra towing capacity.