Who else buys pick up trucks?
A lot of people around the country don't realize that lots of commercials are tailored for Texas. A big part of those are pickup commercials, saying they're built "Texas tough" or whatever.
I stand by my Mazda, though. 2014, 110k and it has only needed a replacement alternator.
There seems to be a bit of growing pushback on this since it causes a ton of deaths and injuries due to speeding, drivers not paying attention, etc.
Although a lot of the larger, more dangerous streets in cities are run by state level Dept of Transportations whose only care in the world is how quickly a car can get from point A to point B, and won't downsize streets even though their standards say it is acceptable.
There are lots of videos, etc out there on the insane size increase of driving lanes to accommodate these massive vehicles speeding through areas.
I’ve had to park the truck in downtown San Francisco a half dozen times. I’m pretty good at fitting into tiny spots, but it devolved into Austin Powers-style 100-point turns a few times. That’s with cameras, proximity sensors, power fold mirrors, sticking heads out the window, etc. I take the car instead of the truck whenever it’s possible.
As someone who’s visited Europe a few times, I can say that your big city delivery truck drivers make it look easier than it is in the US. I’ve seen more than one back down an alley at speed after folding back their mirrors to make the truck fit!
An American pickup truck is comparable in size to a European-style delivery van. (Eg: the common Mercedes ones, or the things where the driver sits over the engine.) US delivery trucks are much larger. Our streets were made after automobiles were common, so they’re wider than they should be (I prefer to walk!). That makes driving a truck easy.
Parking spots tend to be under-sized, however. Also, there aren’t consistent rules regarding “compact” or even full-sized parking spots. Some compact spots can’t fit an American sports car (it will be over the lines on both sides, but other compact spots are 2 feet wider and 4 feet longer than a full sized pickup truck.
And when I'm not doing that, it's basically a spacious luxury vehicle on the inside. What's not to like?
The deaths and injuries caused from allowing any average person to drive a vehicle with a 6’ high hood with massive blind spots on crowded public roads.
Here's a video demonstrating frontal blind zones for several cars/trucks: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/14/21065319/suv-truck-front-...
Many have a comparable cabin to SUVs for two rows. So essentially if you buy the "Crew Cab"-style you're buying an SUV but instead of a traditional indoor trunk, you have a much more flexible outdoor one.
I'm not saying everyone needs a pickup truck, but what I am saying is that it makes just as much or as little sense as a similarly priced/sized SUV, and maybe more in certain circumstances. Even for non-pros (assuming a smaller/cheaper pickup, like the F150).
I've lived in both places, and in Europe the default assumption is that you'll have no way to transport stuff (e.g. Ikea furniture, large TVs, DIY supplies, etc) so everyone offers inexpensive delivery. In the US, a lot of places won't deliver or it will be expensive so either owning or having a family member own a pickup is very valuable.
It is one of those things you cannot know until you live in the US.
But cars have tow hooks, and IKEA and the hardware store lends you a trailer for free. Or you can rent one for $20 for a few hours. Where in Europe do people not want to use trailers? I (Sweden) wouldn't buy a car without a tow hook, because they are hard to resell.
This is what I don't get about pickups: all the time that I'm not hauling stuff I'm still hauling around that big space.
Granted, towing a trailer to get a sofa from IKEA isn't the best experience either, but it seems to be pretty good compromise for aerodynamics/cost/weight.
By that logic you'd buy a vehicle with no trunk, since you're hauling around that "big empty space." Or a vehicle with only a single seat for when you have none or fewer than capacity passengers.
You're just arbitrarily distinguishing an outdoor trunk space from an indoor one, and claiming one is wasteful without actual justification. If anything an outdoor trunk has less vehicle side panels, glass, mechanics, and weight therefore less drag: Making it more fuel efficient for its relative size.
The complaint reads like: "It is different to here, therefore I assume it is wrong."
As I said I've lived in both for tens of years, what is popular in the US makes sense for the US, and what is popular for Europe makes sense there too. Without considering the big pictures (e.g. size of roads, size of homes/apartments, parking, quality of public transport, etc) it is difficult to grasp.
It's a compromise for all vehicles obviously. Ideally you'd want one that didn't have those empty seats - but that's not practical. If you want to minimize weight/drag/cost/fuel consumption while at the same time hauling x cubic feet and 5 people, then that is an optimization problem. I don't know what the optimal solution is, but I doubt it looks anything like the traditional pickup (A cybertruck possibly comes closer). The optimization problem becomes differeent if you add more constraints, for example ability to tow X thousand pounds.
> an outdoor trunk space from an indoor one, and claiming one is wasteful without actual justification. If anything an outdoor trunk has less vehicle side panels, glass, mechanics, and weight therefore less drag:
Drag is a shape coefficient, not a weight coefficient. Most modern cars, even SUV's, have drag coefficients in the low .30's. Most pickup trucks don't come close, even in marketing values (One of the lowest claimed values is the Ram 1500 with .36, and the Cybertruck will be lower). An F-150 is north of .50 in testing [1]
[1] https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2019/12/02/heres-how-the-cybe...
This is a very valid point.In Europe the default expectation for anything that weights more than 10kg is that someone will deliver ro your door and most often put it where it need to be( furniture, washing machine). That's why I don't know a single person who has a house and needs a pickup truck. In the worst case scenario, people simply hire a trailer,which solves 99% of transportation issues. Also in Europe,most things are close to you and a thought of driving two hours for some shopping is almost surreal.
There's also those fold into floor seats in some minivans, and you can buy a correctly sized mattress online to turn them into a sleeper. They're definitely very comparable to cargo vans in Europe, and I've seen small businesses use them as delivery vehicles with no modifications.
For example: I would not _ever_ haul chicken manure in my Toyota Sienna (even if I'd haul some muddy mountain bikes post-ride)
But I wouldn’t want one as my daily driver.
The biggest downside to a truck is frankly meh fuel economy. The F150 for example is currently 21 city / 28 highway, which in 2020 is not competitive (e.g. Subaru Outback/Nissan Rogue get 26/33, and Toyota RAV4 26/35).
Creature comforts are comparable to SUVs, the driving/handling is "fine," and while the prices start out higher because they sell more there're more deals to be found too.
I could see myself driving a hybrid Crew Cab-style truck.
Also if you want to haul toys like jetskis, boats, quads, motorcycles, campers, you need a truck. Tons of rural americans have those.
Countries often implement backdoor protectionism through things like vehicle emissions regulations.
In America, the American auto makers weren't competing effectively for anything smaller than an SUV - and when CAFE standards were set, requirements for SUVs and trucks were made much laxer.
And the auto companies' marketing responded rationally: If you're paying for the hero in a movie to drive one of your vehicles, better make it the SUV or truck if possible.
Europe, meanwhile, had auto makers who were disproportionately successful at making diesel cars - and promptly set emissions standards that were barely possible to achieve unless you knew that everyone else was cheating and you needed to cheat too. And decided tax gas and diesel by volume, when diesel happens to have 20% more energy per unit volume and higher emissions.
Can you imagine having this vehicle in an emergency where there is no power. It could power a refrigerator or a small space heater if necessary. It could help out camping for sure.
Pickup trucks are no longer just work or farmer trucks. They are as luxurious as a high end Lexus with just as much room or more. My brother has an F150 and it is just as comfortable as my wife's Lexus ES350 with a better view out the windshield. The gas mileage is pretty good these days also.
I daily drive a Tesla, but my wife daily drives our F150. It's a great do-everything truck. Hauls the kids and sometimes their friends. Fits their bikes in the back. Hauls bark dust, gravel, big things, etc, whenver we need. Tows our travel trailer a couple times a month. And it does all of this very comfortably.
It's really a great all around vehicle for a lot of families.
On threads like this, that gets repeated often. There are probably dozens of nearly identical posts here already. It's just about as common as insinuating the people who drive trucks must have small genitalia. Awful lot of projection going on.
So, can you back that up with something other than your intuition? All of my neighbors have pickups. and we all use them routinely for things only pickups can do. Please don't suggest that it would be financially better for me to rent a pickup every two weeks to tow my RV. I've already done the math.
Data from an automotive research consulting firm. Article is below. https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-siz...
In other words, you probably are fine paying a little more to not have to get a ride to the rental yard, fill out the paperwork, decline the damage waiver add-on, etc. Then have to do that all again when you're done with the truck.
I don't own a truck, and it sucks sometimes when I want to do some yard work, or buy a large appliance/furniture on craigslist. If I add just one more use case to my life (more frequent camping, or larger projects), I'm going to go buy a truck and eliminate another hassle.
Come on, you know that's not the case.
Here in Canada it's a great vehicle due to snow and rugged terrain. Even in small towns snow is on the ground 25% of the year but in some places nearly half the year.
I don't care if the truck is gas or diesel as long as it moves. But electric would be preferable for efficiency as long as it can haul a trailer or carry a load.
And let's face it -- cars in general are completely unused at least 95% of the time (EDIT: probably an exaggeration). And you could just as easily say that most of the seats in a car go unused most of the time, even when in use.
So it's really about the gas milage rather than the fact that it has an open bed. Sports cars and SUVs fall into the same category. It's just that a bunch of empty truck beds on the road are more visible than empty seats or over-powered engines.
Also, I advocated sharing a truck rather than owning one truck per household. So if we disagree about something, I don't understand what.
Can it be addressed with, say, liability insurance premiums (and is it already)? Do we need a stigma associated with unnecessary trucks? More laws?
if it's priced in already, I would guess that it's in a way that doesn't really discourage driving heavy vehicles. if you get in a collision in your SUV but you're not at fault, the people in the other vehicle are more likely to have serious injuries but your insurance doesn't have to pay for it. if anything, the risk is probably distributed across everyone's premiums, unless SUV drivers are more likely to be at fault for some reason.
frankly I'm not sure how best to deal with it. there are a lot of people who would do just fine with a small sedan but are unwilling to drive one because they (correctly) perceive it as less safe. this is of course a negative feedback loop where the average vehicle gets heavier and the incentive to buy a heavy vehicle for yourself increases.
perhaps there could be an additional tax for vehicles over a certain weight with an exemption for people who genuinely need it for work or have a large enough household to justify it.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-to-make-a-tax-saving-d...
What I don't care for are the SUV designs that have basically recreated the minivan with 3 seat rows and they're really not as good for hauling people as a minivan is.
Because they are the most versatile vehicle on the road, if you are not constrained artificially by narrow roads and heavily taxed fuel.
The biggest reason is probably purchase price. An F150 Raptor (the only model I could find a price for) is $100k in Britain, versus $60k in the US.
You do see quite a few pickups in Europe, especially as commercial vehicles. But the Toyota Hilux, Mitsubishi L200, VW Amarok etc. outnumber the American trucks at least 10:1.
And very few trucks are owned by "regular" people. Much better to get a Land Rover Discovery or a Toyota LandCruiser, and throw the big unwieldy stuff you need to move in a trailer.
(As an aside, we used to have a Chevy Avalanche with the 8.1L Vortec. That was a fun car, I'll agree, but you had to close your eyes while filling up with petrol.)
Then you have pay the yearly $675 green tax and $1.51 per litre of diesel.
I would say that taxes are constraining how many people are buying this type of car.
Edit: more taxes.
My point is that a truck is arguably the most versatile, not that it is the best choice for all use cases.
A similar cultural thing made wagons not cool in the US 30 years ago, and they didn't come back (Which is a shame).
The options for me are a big SUV or a pickup truck. Right now it’s an SUV, but an F150 is looking pretty attractive.
"Cox Automotive data shows Middle America, with household incomes of $50,000 to $99,000, was the segment of buyers who stayed in-market mostly for new pickup trucks and SUVs, while upper- and lower-income buyers shied away,"
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a32380257/first-month-ever...
For the First Month Ever, More People Bought Pickups Than Cars (That was May of this month)
They fit a niche. I saw plenty of trucks and other big vehicles driving around a city of greater than 2 million people.
Perhaps a couple bags of grass fertilizer.
Perhaps hauling the kids stuff to/from college.
That's about it. The rest of the time they struggle to park them in strip mall parking lots.
I have hauled multiple loads of mulch, other landscaping stuff and animal feed when helping my parents at their home/small farm in the summer.
I have moved in and out of college dorms/houses with all of my belongings (including my TV, kitchen equipment, lots of electronics lab equipment that I purchased to resell as a side-gig in college...)
All using a 2005 Buick LeSabre.
If you need literal truckloads of bulk supplies often enough to justify owning a truck then congratulations you're probably running a landscaping company or something so you might need a truck.
And that's clearly not what I'm talking about at all in this thread.
But what's nice about having a truck now is that I don't really have to try. I can just plop most things in the bed and go. You're right that it's not 100% necessary, but it's a great tool when you need it. That's one of the reasons they're so popular where I'm from (Georgia).
I used to live in Alabama, a common enough thing was that a guy who recently graduated high school, if they got a halfway decent paying job somehow (e.g. a local factory), they'd rush out and buy an F-150 or similar. They had no real use for it yet, but it made them look and feel more adult.
In 2019 I spent 1400$ on deliveries and truck rentals. If you own a property, not having to set a 60$ delivery on a 30$ load of bark becomes a major convenience.