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Comment by colinmhayes | Hacker News Reader

Who actually does stuff that needs a pickup more than 10 times a year that doesn't work in a field that obviously requires a pickup?

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Me, for home and property renovations.

Oh, the hill is starting to give way. Cool, build a retaining wall (including getting the base rock to fill it). Oh, we ran out of firewood this winter. Cool, build a bigger wood shed (BTW, firewood is a lot cheaper if you pick it up yourself). Oh, the siding on the house is rotting. Cool, grab some plywood, tar paper, and siding and fix it myself. Oh, the weeds on the property have overgrown again? Rip them all out and haul them to the dumps.

I've saved probably tens of thousands of dollars including the price of my truck by doing these things in-house instead of hiring. All thanks to my truck.

When you don't have one, you don't do these things (because hiring people is expensive). But once you get one, it opens a completely different world of "wow I can do this myself." I found rentals don't cover that gap. I resisted getting a truck for so long, but once I got one I kicked myself for not doing it sooner.

My friend with a pickup gets a lot of his building materials delivered still.

Tell him I said hi.

I do. I'm a software engineer, living in a city, but slowly renovating a house on the weekends. I routinely need a few sheets of plywood and dozen 2x4s, or drywall, or bags of concrete, or something to that effect.

https://www.homedepot.com/c/Delivery_Services

Not the same. Deliveries are often late, incorrect, or don't show up at all. It can wreck an entire day of work. Read that page...you have to pay extra to get even a 4-hour delivery window. This is great if you want to sit around with your thumb up your ass instead of building. "Just deliver the day before." Oh yeah, I'll take every Friday off of work to wait around to receive a delivery that I could have picked up in an hour with a capable vehicle.

I used that, once, during the early stages of the pandemic to avoid going into the store.

They showed up outside of the expected delivery window, left a stack of drywall in my front yard in the rain, and didn't ring the bell or notify me in any way. I found it several hours later.

While I understand they were likely overworked due to Covid in this instance, this kind of thing happens often enough I can only use it when I have space to securely store materials delivered several days before I need them.

To their credit, Home Depot did refund me; but I still had no dry wall when I needed it.

Also, you can't get immediate delivery when you're in the middle of a project and mess up a cut on your last sheet of plywood. There's no ctrl+z with a saw.

This is a thing, but there are a million edge cases that you can’t rely on this for. Sometimes you underestimate the amount of material you need, sometimes you need to make sure that the sheets of drywall you’re getting aren’t damaged, sometimes you need to pick individual pieces of lumber from the pile because there is a ton of variation in the grain etc etc

If you’re doing a project you very much need to be able to run to Home Depot that same day and pick up additional bulky items.

More expensive than owning a truck.

Why do you need a truck for that? What's wrong with trailers? Even my 2-door coupe can tow a 1800 kg trailer with brakes (750 kg for trailers without brakes).

I don't drive that much. Why would I buy a sedan and give myself the hurdle of arranging to rent a pickup any time I need one? If I must own a vehicle, why not make it one that provides utility?

Because the fuel efficiency on pickup trucks is terrible. You could double your fuel costs by driving a truck all the time.

So if you're going on a long trip, just rent a car.

Or arrange to use my wife's car or my brother's van. So many options.

No. Sell your truck and get a car. You're not allowed to have a truck.

That's an argument for not owning a car at all, actually.

If only someone would come out with an electric truck...

> Because the fuel efficiency on pickup trucks is terrible.

>> I don't drive that much.

Millions of people own RV's. Most people that tow them with their SUV are way, way over the limits for the vehicles they use. (the salesperson will ALWAYS say your vehicle can pull it)

I know a guy who for several years towed a 30' travel trailer (7500 GVWR) with a Jeep Grand Cherokee. That's one of those "well, technically, it could work in a narrow set of circumstances" situations. He swore it only had a tongue weight of 500# because that's what he got told by the salesman.

Not someone you want to share the road with. He was a big guy, married with two teenage boys and a dog. He was so far over the payload limit on that Jeep...

Home repair and gardening / recreational farming come to mind as hobbies where a flat bed would be useful. BMX or dirt biking too.

People who live in the country, which is OPs point here.

Or anything like suburbia. I live in Gainesville, Florida, very near the center of town. It's a 130K city limits burg, and our property still has a yard, and good use for trucklike patterns. I solve that with a Cheep Jeep at the moment.

Good luck when you get into an accident with your teardrop trailer, rv camper or even motorcycle trailer and you find out your insurance company won't pay it because you were over your tow capacity (if you even had any) with or without e-breaks.

Short of doing something criminal, you will always get covered by your insurance policy in this situation. But they will drop you like a hot potato the moment they cut the check. Insurance covers stupidity at least once.

They will cover your liability to others but there is a good chance they won't cover your losses other than medical unless mandated by the State's Department of Insurance regs. I am only talking about the US based P&C here.

As a desk-bound software engineer, nearly every weekend I'll use my pickup to go get stuff I couldn't (or would be very inconvenient or dirty to) bring in a car. Lumber, concrete, rock, soil, large pots & plants, etc.

I don't drive the pickup during the week though (I mean pre-covid when I drove places), too inconveniently large for that.

If you are into home improvement it is very easy if you are getting materials, hauling garbage, bringing tools from one place to another. You could substitute a trailer for a lot of stuff, but then you need to park that. Parking the truck instead of an SUV/car is easier than parking the SUV/car + a trailer.

I tow my travel trailer once every two weeks on average for about 8 months of the year, and in between those trips I routinely haul stuff for my projects around the house and some hobbies.

I do maintenance on an office building and use it all the time.

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