Hatchbacks and vans are enclosed and not fun to haul stinky stuff and aren’t conducive to hosing out after.
The main problem in the US is companies not making Coupe utility sized vehicles like the Subaru Brat or the El Camino. Small and light vehicles with beds. I would love a small AWD electric or hybrid truck that size that has good mileage for commuting and just enough convenience for moving cumbersome and stinky things around. The Ford Maverick is a move in the right direction, but is almost a midsized truck instead of going full on compact.
AAAAAAH, it’s happening again!
Let me speedrun through this: I’ve never seen a pickup truck and I am in a rural place where people move stinky stuff all the time. Vans can be purchased with sealed off cabins, and with all doors open can be hosed down easily. It’s fine. Nobody here has pickups. I haven’t seen a pickup or known anybody to have one and everybody is fine. This is a strictly American thing and the US isn’t the moon, there really isn’t a unique need to use a truck bed for school runs.
You’re doing the thing the man said: drive a tank to buy groceries in case you have to haul manure once a year.
It’s about impossible to make this point with some Americans. Don’t cause yourself an aneurysm.
I want a truck the size of a Subaru Brat, which had a shorter total length than a Honda Fit.
Is that unreasonable?
Congratulations you anecdotal experience means nothing. I see pick up trucks ALL the time in rural areas (in Germany and the US) and in the US they aren’t all hulking behemoth dodge rams. Those fill the suburbs. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a small compact truck for hauling stuff. Trucks like the 95 toyota hilux, 98 Ford ranger, and 92 Jeep Comanche are great for hauling stuff like used furniture or concrete powder and picking up your kids from school without looking like an Abrams tank.
This is a strictly American thing and the US isn’t the moon
Except the 2 best selling cars GLOBALLY in 2020 was the Toyata corolla and the Toyota hilux a fucking truck. The hilux was 2020′s best-selling VEHICLE in 14 countries, including Argentina, Australia, Panama, South Africa and Fiji.
You don’t speak for the rest of the world
Wait, in 2020? Why not look up 22 or 23? I mean, it’s not like anything weird would have impacted the market in 2020, huh? And hey, it doesn’t even look that bad for your case, the Hilux and the F150 both break the top 10 in the most recent source I could find, if narrowly. The best seller I see is a SUV, and man, trust me, I don’t share your defensiveness here, you are super allowed to mock those.
Now, I don’t speak for the whole world, but I sure speak for myself. Since I was checking, in my location small vans and pickups all together account for less than 10% of the national market as per the most recent data (they don’t even bother separating those segments, apparently). Large commercial vans and small commercial trucks are actually as big of a segment.
So yeah, anecdotally and statistically, it’s exceedingly rare to see a pickup truck here. Turns out you also don’t speak for the rest of the world. Because, you know, nobody does. That tends to happen with hundreds of countries and billions of people.
I live in rural Germany. The only people with these trucks are the ones that never use the bed. In fact, I’ve recently seen one at the hardware store. The guy bought a shelf maybe 1.5 m long. Neither did it fit in the bed, nor did it fit in the cabin. Such a worthless piece of shit.
Everyone in the trade business uses vans. For heavy duty hauling they obviously use something bigger than a fucking pickup truck.
That out of the way, I see the appeal in smaller old-school trucks. They usually have larger beds than the ridiculously oversized pieces of shit that start sprouting in urban areas.
I think people tend to pick the wrong targets in this debate. Stuff like the Ford Maverick and F150 are usually people who really don’t need a truck, and most crossover/SUV drivers would be fine with a sedan. Once you get into the F250 and higher, though, you’re mostly dealing with people who actually use their truck for a living. There are reasons workers in the US choose those–such as fifth wheel trailers–and there are reasons why European workers don’t (except when they do).
And it’s really silly. Vans for that kind of work are generally truck frames with a different back end. It doesn’t make that much difference at that level. The best you can say is that the hood doesn’t stick out as far and therefore visibility is better, but even that’s not always true, and there are other tradeoffs with that design.
This is a strictly American thing
If by “American” you mean North American, then yeah, you are correct, because pickups are also super popular in Canada and Mexico. But I don’t think that’s what you mean. I think you mean to specify the US which again, is incorrect. The fact that pickups are so popular in Canada and Mexico as well tells us that contrary to what I suspect you’re trying to imply, there isn’t some kind of special innate idiotic pickup truck gene that’s unique to Americans and that instead, it’s all about marketing.
After all, if marketing and advertising didn’t work, it wouldn’t be a multi-billion dollar industry. What the big American car companies have done with amazing effectiveness is to make owning a pickup truck an intimate part of a lot of people’s self-image. That’s what you are arguing against and that’s why it’s nearly impossible to change anyone’s mind about it.
That’s all fair enough. And let me just include the first part about North America in there and not also pick the fight about Canada being mostly in that same cultural bundle because this thread is already trolly and angry enough.
I think if this thread wasn’t such a hassle it’d be interesting to pick some of that apart, because I do think the marketing is culturally bound, not arbitrary (if it was arbitrary it would have worked in the places where it didn’t). I do think it’s obviously hard to argue about the identitarian bit you mention, though, because… well, look around this thread.
Congratulations on having a different experience! A van is too big for my tastes, you know they are basically enclosed trucks right?
I clearly said I didn’t want a tank, and have no idea why you automatically equate an exposed bed with a tank. Do you know how small a Brat was?
Non-tank sized vans are available and have better aerodynamics and overall utility than a truck.
Right, but in this scenario you end up with two vehicles: a light, economical car to drive and a dedicated work vehicle. The original point is that expensive, heavy vehicles as daily drivers can be less practical and economical than mutiple cheaper, dedicated vehicles.
For some reason, this makes Americans, and especially American car people VERY angry to hear, and it’s bizarre.
What about a small car trailer?
How is an extra piece of equipment that is less convenient and takes up more space a better solution? Where the fuck am I going to keep that when I could just have that same space in the back of a vehicle instead of an enclosed trunk?
Either truck means something different in your language where you cannot conceive of one being small, or you are somehow opposed to a vehicle with an open bed existing at all.
Please keep offering less convenient solutions than having an open bed in the back of a car sized vehicle though, it is entertaining how fucking ridiculous the suggestions are instead of just agreeing that a smaller trucks would be a nice alternative.
The base answer to your problem is owning a **small and light trailer. One that is capable of hauling a few boards or an appliance or two like a clothes washer or refrigerator. And when done with the task, can be parked in a corner and forgotten until needed again. A perfectly good one can be had for around $500US - Some simple assembly required.
**Apartment dwellers might not be able to own one.
The trailer takes up space when not being used, the back half of the vehicle does not. This is true no matter what the parking situation is. Zero space is better than any space, if the back half of the vehicle doesn’t need to be enclosed or have seating.
The trailer requires some extra maintenance too. Keeping things oiled, tires aired up and replaced regularly. Driving with the trailer means needing to use to parking stalls when parking. Backing up with trailers is a lot of fun too!
The trailer is a very situational benefit for situations where the main vehicle space is needed. Hell, if I need a trailer I can just rent one from UHaul. But I don’t when the same thing is solved with a truck bed, and the truck bed format is far more convenient if the vehicle with the bed is the same size as a normal car!
There are light trailers that can be stored vertically to take very minimal space and can be deployed in a few minutes of effort.
The maintenance costs and effort of greasing two bearings and tire replacement is still far, far, less than the total cost of owning and insuring a pickup truck. Plus, they have the bonus of being a whole lot easier to load and unload due to the much lower bed height.
Any place you might go with your trailer to haul larger/heavier items will have proper room to park your vehicle and small trailer. After all, they are getting far larger trucks and trailers to receive and ship items in bulk. Appliance, home improvement, furniture stores and the like seldom have “street only” parking. And if that’s all that’s available, you didn’t need either the trailer or a pickup truck to shop there.
Backing up a trailer isn’t hard - learn to drive.
