Honda fits are like a bag of holding, I've moved 500lb machine tools in one.

I wouldn't mind the flexibility of having a pickup truck shaped object because I never use the rear seats and always have them folded down for moving around other stuff, but nobody makes tiny pickups like they did in the 80s/90s. I also can't be alone in thinking this because I've seen an explosion in 80s Japanese micro trucks around town recently after some people documented the import process online.

My favorite personal anecdote was when I drove ~90 minutes to a friend's house in January so we could use his '98 Tahoe to pick up a king sized bed from Ikea. But we couldn't actually close the back doors with all of the boxes in there. It was quite chilly. When we got back to his house, I said "you know what, let's at least try to fit this in my (2007) Honda Fit. If it works, I'm warm, you don't have to waste 180 minutes on a round trip (with the first half freezing), and I save a bunch in gas." He thought I was crazy and it would never work. But wouldn't you know, with the passenger seat folded back we could get everything in with the hatch closed. I was able to drive the bed straight home and save my friend a lot of hassle!

They're not going to see you driving it at night because they're not going to see anything at all with you blinding them from half a block away with completely hostile stadium intensity headlightd mounted at eye level.

I never understood this, don't the presumably mature adult engineers and product managers who design lighting systems at places like Ford and Chevy not have children of their own, some of which being infants have to sit in rear-facing seats and get their retinas seared by these aggressively attention-seeking manhood cosplay accessories?

Which; Zipcar, GetAround, Turo all work that way. Set up the rental via the app, show up, drive away.

Last time I rented a truck from Home Depot all those processes took less than 5 minutes at the counter.

It's only an issue if you make it sound like an issue. Certainly worth it for only needing it once every 2-3 years, as most truck owners actually do.

An argument against this is that you will “own nothing”, but I sometimes feel like these tools I’ve acquired are more of a burden than they should be. Yes it’s convenient to have a table saw when I need it, but… I use it very occasionally, and I know well in advance when I’ll be using it.

It would be really nice to own a cleaner, more spacious home rather than a bunch of tools, most days.

We've both always just did the "stick it out the trunk with a flag" or "tie it to our roof rack" thing when getting stuff from HD. But his experience was so good that we decided we'd be better off renting a truck in the future. Hopefully our future experience isn't like yours. Renting on a weekday in January is probably easier than a weekend in the summer.

You know they'll deliver. Plus, you can rent a moving van from U-Haul. There's no reason to spend Big Money on a truck you'll be using every now and then.