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.
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.
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?
Or have a truck.
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-$1.09 per mile for mileage.
> Unlimited mileage on all vehicles
Why would you exclude this on a cost analysis comparison?
This does ignore the time that needs to be spent buying the vehicle, transferring the title, obtaining insurance, etc, which is significant. But procuring a rental truck is also time-consuming; on a typical Spring/Summer/Fall weekend where I live, you're lucky if you're able to get one at all. The local hardware stores are first-come/first-served, and can't guarantee over the phone that they'll have a rental truck available by the time you arrive.
A truck will cost you what, US$ 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.