I dont do those things.
It's actually extremely convenient because I run my own business. Being able to do things you need for your business without renting a truck is very useful. I do a lot of hardware building, equipment moving, etc.
Walk outside in any city and you will see tradespeoples trucks, vans. That's me.
To be clear, my point isn't to try to make you feel bad about your choice, but to demonstrate why it's bad on a societal level to have this profusion of large vehicles. Societal problems need societal solutions.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/tall-trucks-suvs-are-45-dea...
[2] https://www.epa.gov/dera/learn-about-impacts-diesel-exhaust-...
My car is the smallest available 4 seat car in the US.
I actually don't use either often to commute, I bike.
As I said, we use the truck for RV travel mostly.
I live right where the interstate dumps into the city, we have soot on our windows. The problem is real, but the diesel trucks, big trucks, are 95% of the problem, not the 5k miles I drive a year in my truck.
While true, that's a pretty low bar. I wouldn't bring that up as an argument in defense of it, because it comes off kind of like "at least it's not burning bunker oil!"
The rest of your situation makes perfect sense, though. You need something with that power and size regularly enough to justify owning one, and rather than have 2 vehicles, you just use the one you already have for other things. That's completely reasonable.
I’m so exhausted of the constant online morality policing over such inane, trivial things like this. Hell, it’s even electric rather than a gas-guzzler like the normal F-150, and people are still screeching because “iT’S tOo BiG!”. Yeah bro, because trucks aren’t made to be DoorDash vehicles in NYC, they’re made to haul RVs to the lake and lumber to the build site.
And I disagree that it's inane or trivial. Motor vehicle crashes kill ~45k Americans per year, the leading preventable cause of death for everyone 4-21 years old and the second-leading cause for 22-67 year olds [1], and the numbers are climbing. As my comment pointed out, light trucks are ~50% deadlier in collisions with pedestrians (don't have the data on-hand for other vehicle inhabitants). Anecdotally, I have friends and family members who have been hit by cars and lucky enough to survive, but (knowing the details of the cases) likely would not have were they hit by a 5'-bonnet-height truck.
I agree trucks aren't made for tooling around cities, but for heavier duty activites. What's upsetting is that more and more vehicles like this _are_ being used for city and suburban daily driving where all of their externalities are at their worst and none of their utility is needed.
[1] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/deaths-by-demograph...
Yes, and you should go out of your way to minimize this as much as possible, as a high priority of life in a shared space with other people. Rather than make it worse, on purpose, because "f150ck you, I got mine" (which is at least honest), or failing that, whatever excuse serves to mask the juvenile selfishness of this attitude.
This is astoundingly obvious when you park an unmodified 80's-90's vehicle next to something new.
The question to me is what overall reduces mortality rates, improved roll-over and side impact protection or driver visibility?
Personally I think blind spots everywhere suck and would much prefer better visibility.
Just because they made a window bigger or a member longer doesn't mean it's weaker. They could have changed the material to something twice as strong, added hidden structures, etc.
The difference is mandated crash testing, and now simulated crash testing. They are required by law to build cars that are safe, and test to make sure they truly are.