A lot of folks live places with absolutely no delivery options. Not even pizza. If you don't have access to a truck, you don't buy certain things.
I have zero problems with the situation you describe, which is a household having a truck or SUV out of practical need.
Mr. Range Rover Number Three can just trade in for a Tesla anyway. Our ire doesn't do much here. Maybe it's therapeutic?
Instead, the electricians, plumbers, etc. drive vans. They're smaller in footprint and easier to get things in and out of. Some have a covered and insulated shop inside (mostly the electricians) while others are purely for transportation. The materials and machinery that don't fit are too large be transported by a pickup too. Instead, lorries arrive with two or three pieces of machinery on a flatbed, or a single piece of machinery and a bunch of big pieces of material in a closed trailer. I can't tell where a pickup truck would ever be more useful in the construction landscape I'm seeing literally outside my window.
That being said, I don't really care to litigate the pros and cons between work vans and work trucks. I was mostly trying to make the point that there are legitimate uses of work trucks. It's very easy for the HN crowd to be in a kind of bubble where they wouldn't understand that, so I thought I'd add some nuance to the conversation.
At least half of the serious landscapers that I see tow a trailer with their tools, bins and stuff on it. Wouldn't matter much what was pulling it, as long as it could pull it.
Someone has to plow the neighborhood. Someone has to drive the power washer to the worksite. And so on.
And the farther you live from a city, the more likely that someone is either you or someone who trusts you enough to borrow their truck.
Some people have a good reason to own heavier vehicles for private use, but even in a rural setting, those are few and far between. There are many more good reasons to own such vehicles for a trades person or a farmer. Commercial use of those vehicles is completely justified.
Maybe it is an American thing I don't get, but there seems to be a confusion between private lives and the work people are doing? Someone does have to cart the tools and materials to the worksite, but that person should be using a work vehicle. There doesn't seem to be a need for that person to own their own truck and pay for their own gas?
But sure, I take your point, there are legitimate, "ordinary" needs to pull a lot of weight sometimes. The question is whether the frequency of these really justifies this sort vehicle being someone's daily driver.
There are many pull-along vehicles ("campers", "trailers") that offer precisely the same space and features as any particular fifth wheel, but connect to a regular ball hitch instead.
At least that is how I've learned the meaning of this term.
Home Depot rental truck prices start at $19 for the first 75 minutes, and then $5 for every 15 minutes thereafter.
So 3 hours would only be $59... assuming it's unlimited mileage.
Comparing to U-haul, which charges $1/mile, for $59, you could drive 40 miles, for the whole day.
Either way, doing this once a month costs under $1000/yr. Saving on gas, loan payments, and maybe insurance.
It's not. Add $.70-$1.09 per mile for mileage.
> Unlimited mileage on all vehicles
Or have a truck.
Why would you exclude this on a cost analysis comparison?
This does ignore the time that needs to be spent buying the vehicle, transferring the title, obtaining insurance, etc, which is significant. But procuring a rental truck is also time-consuming; on a typical Spring/Summer/Fall weekend where I live, you're lucky if you're able to get one at all. The local hardware stores are first-come/first-served, and can't guarantee over the phone that they'll have a rental truck available by the time you arrive.
A truck will cost you what, US$ 50k? What are the opportunity costs of having this money parked on an ever depreciating passive? The depreciation only shows the net result of the purchase but completely disregards that you could use this money for investing somewhere else with a better return. Not only assets or financial instruments, I'm considering even quality life improvements such as home improvements, etc.
You are moving the goalposts with new issues such as availability of rentals, these might even be caused by you and everyone else buying a truck instead of renting when needed. More demand for rentals, more trucks for rentals.
It works quite well here in European cities to depend on rentals for DIY stuff, no one is buying a truck just do their own renovations or construction...
Considering just the depreciation is very simplistic, it doesn't capture all the other stresses and time-consuming processes of buying, selling, as you mentioned. I'd prefer to rent a truck once every two months instead of dealing with all the paperwork, insurance, maintenance and so on. This is wasted time.
I paid $600 for my first truck back in high school, drove it for a couple years, and received something in the ballpark of $100 from the scrapyard I sold it to in the end. In the current market where I live, ~$3k can get you a truck with no mechanical deficiencies and a few years of life remaining. Financially, I wouldn't advise anyone to shell out $50k for a new F-250, but some people enjoy saving money and others enjoy shiny new vehicles.
There's nothing wrong with buying $3k worth of VYM instead, and using the dividends to subsidize your rental truck costs. It's probably the better decision if you move things only 1-5 times per year, no maintenance obligations, and more free space in your driveway. If you move things more frequently than that, you enjoy the buying process, and you dislike the complexity of renting, then the calculus reverses.
Even if you own an EV yourself these gas prices could hurt you. Converting from hydrocarbons is going to take decades.
Pretending the economy doesn't run on oil and gas is just counter productive in general. Basically, we will pretend until things have gone too far and then we will do what we would have done anyway.
Morally, I don't think judgement can be passed on drivers until there are EV models that undercut budget unleaded models.
"Just learn to code and buy a Tesla" is not an answer to our problems.
High gas prices disproportionately affect the poor. Even if that weren't the case, lowering oil prices right now would have a strong negative effect on Russias ability to fund its war in Ukraine. We can push to lower oil prices AND keep pushing into renewables. We should invest in both at this moment.
"Let them drive EVs" has turned into a modern day SV version of the Marie Antoinette (mis)quote.
Where do you suppose they plug these EVs in at the jobsite? The elephant in the room that no one addresses being the complete lack of EV infrastructure.
Are they really being bought in the "overwhelming" majority by trades people? The numbers suggest they're just popular cars.
Americans are in love with pickup trucks, it's an entire subculture.
And at least where I live, which has some nasty weather conditions, the trades people I've worked with over the last few years all drive vans. Landscapers and garbage pickers are some of the exceptions.
(1) https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/08/pickup-trucks-dominate-ameri....
(2) https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/02/ford-pickup-remains-americas...
And yet so many new trucks have a single driver hauling a trailer with stuff while the bed is empty because the bed is too short to carry anything useful.
The extra cab area, of course, isn't useful because there's only one person. The bed area isn't useful because the cab area has shortened the bed.
So, that driver has to expend the space and weight for a trailer because he bought a truck that isn't useful as a damn truck.
You absolutely do not understand what it’s like living rural, please go try it for a bit and then come back to talk about how we should “F “ ourselves.
What do you expect to do when the price of petrol inevitably doubles or triples?
Not GP, but that's an easy one: vote for people who would increase production.
If you need the truck for a farm or other job, well that's a bit different. But you will have to get used to the rest of society increasingly wanting to put a price on the externalities your work generates. Owning a truck _is_ going to keep getting more expensive and you should be planning for that now.
Not an option if you actually use your truck.
Again, most trucks aren’t towing long distances so towing range is not critical to electric trucks making sense for most uses.
What I'd really like, no one makes: namely an electrically driven, so GOBS of low end torque, but with a diesel powered generator to keep the batteries charged. Give me 150mi of electric range (unloaded), and then a fuel tank big enough to pull a heavy load 500mi. Oh, and the ability to keep it plugged in at night so 80% of the time I'm not needing to use the diesel motor.
Its not that hard to have a $500 old shitbox for when you actually need to haul things, and drive something efficient the rest of the time.
I live in Oakland the current atmosphere is to reduce the quality of life to bare minimum and suffer. Not have kids. Depopulate.
Not only is this arrogant and self-serving, but also incredibly ironic. Progresssive cities have some of the highest income inequality.
I would vote for 1) Increase nuclear energy production and crank it up to 11. 2) Make electricity cheaper than it is worth metering 3) I agree with your EV take.
But for fucks sake, please be nice to fellow humans. I see no difference between toxic liberals attacking conservatives and vice versa. You're doing a disservice to the rest of us.
Increases in rent, tuition, or medical costs, or even my personal transportation expenses absolutely dwarf them. A semi moves food way more gas-efficiently than my car moves me.