Smaller than an F150? Maybe it's because I live in the Bay Area where there's more money being thrown around but trucks of that size and larger seem to be common for trade workers.
And a number of construction jobs in our house were performed by a gentleman who arrived with a Vespa unless he specifically had to transport something sizeable.
Most trades workers don't need full-sized pickup trucks. They do need an 8 foot bed. An amazing number of full-sized pickups come with 6.5 foot beds by default, and cost extra for the 8 foot. They won't put 2 tons of gravel in there; they will put plywood sheets and lumber and power tools; boxes of nails and air compressors; the toolbox that they always want, the toolbox for this job, and the toolbox with backup tools that you lend to the guy who 'forgot' stuff. (Not the guy who 'loses' stuff.) None of that needs the big V8.
If you've got a 4 seat cab, you'll be asked to take a couple people out to the other site, but if you've got a 2 seater, maybe you don't get asked.
Four wheel drive and big wheels mean bad fuel economy. If you need them, there's something wrong because the mud is supposed to go on your boots, not your wheels. Your pickup is not an earthmover or a wrecker. One exception: if you've got a really big truck, you might get wintertime snow-plow jobs. They really aren't fun.
Source: neighbor is a contractor.
The one exception was the HVAC guy who had an old 90s-size pickup, which he liked due to the better mileage. He needed to fit bulky stuff, not massively heavy things.
A small truck would not work for me though. And 3/4 plywood on a roof rack is just begging for an injury when I'm an hour or more from the hospital.
If something medium - a van could tow.
On European highways it is common to see van like Mercedes sprinter full of goods and also towing a car carriage with something huge like WV Passat.
The three things are bed capacity, max bed weight load, and towing capacity.
Weight in bed can matter, but once you’re above a few thousand pounds, you need to consider getting a dump trailer. Max carrying load matters more for conversions (e.g. to ambulances, adding toolboxes, etc). Towing matters for moving lots of weight.
In the cheap 150/1500 ICE class, Ford wins these days on bed capacity (3000lbs), due to having aluminum frames. Ram wins at towing capacity (10,000lbs).
As much as I like dunking the cybertruck for its impractical bed and Musk’s shenanigans, it can tow 14,000lbs, making it best in class for quarter ton trucks (assuming you count it in the same class as the ford F150 lightning).
So, I’d like one for driving to and from our local rockery, except that using it for that will beat it to hell, and a used truck + nice EV sedan will cost less, be more fun to drive, and win on total CO2 emissions. The sedan uses much less electricity than the cybertruck, and would be driven many more miles than the truck. I’d only put a few tanks of diesel into the truck per year.
Eventually, the grid will be more decarbonized, and batteries won’t be scarce. At that point, the cybertruck would probably be a better choice for me.
Source: We bought a 1500 truck that is slightly too small for our use cases.
Has this claim been independently verified? If not, why trust it? And even if it's true, how far can it tow 14,000 lbs?
If you don't know why I'm asking, well...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/doj-subpoenas-te...
Four wheel drive is more necessary in specific climates (before the snow tire scolds come in, I run snow tires in the winter) and because an unloaded truck has a light rear end. Many trucks with 4wd can switch between 4wd and RWD. My truck has RWD, 4A (4 auto, aka AWD-ish), 4 high and 4 low as an option. I drive mostly in RWD unless I need power to all wheels for traction in snow and ice or when I am accelerating quickly off an incline (think uphill a dirt road onto blacktop where you have a blind corner) and then I drive in in 4A. I have needed 4 high and 4 low a handful of times. I have a "big v8" and get 21-22 MPG on the highway in RWD and and 18 or so around town. I drive heavy all-terain tires or my MPG would be better.
Work trucks should be making you as much money as possible while costing as little as possible, so as to increase your profits.
This one comes to mind: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/04/28/what-does-your-wo...
Anyone who uses a truck a lot will have a 150+
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How many programmers do you see with MacBook Airs
> How many programmers do you see with MacBook Airs
The people working on some of the most complex projects of our times rely on compute that isn't available in a laptop, so they're perfectly fine taking an Air. I personally used an M1 Air for a couple of years.
I mean, this isn't even hard to figure out: the F-150 is the best selling vehicle (not truck, but vehicle) in the U.S. for what, a decade or more?
https://www.ford.com/trucks/maverick/
It’s a Subaru with a truck bed
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaru_BRAT
Owned an '86. It was a riot.
Think auto shops shuttling parts around, or needing to toss dirty parts in the back of the truck without needing the hauling capacity.
And the current F150 is much bigger than one from 10 years ago, so even an older F150 would be smaller than the current monstrosities.
The Maverick can tow 4,000 lbs - which is pretty prohibitive with a small bed and the weight of a trailer. You're better off getting a modern Tacoma, of which there is an entire subreddit of people who will gleefully show you they too can haul.
I drive a Chevy Bolt EUV fwiw and love it.
Take a 10-year old california pickup to anywhere with winter and people will be amazed.