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> Feels like every Tom, Dick, and Harry around where I live is driving a 3-ton or greater truck that's never seen anything more strenuous than getting a load of fertilizer for mom's garden, and like, that's fine.

Yup. An Audi mid-size SUV has a towing capacity of nearly 8,000lb. Moving your horse from the top paddock to the bottom and back, every six months does not mean you need a dual-wheeled F350 as your daily driver.

> An Audi mid-size SUV has a towing capacity of nearly 8,000lb. Moving your horse from the top paddock to the bottom and back, every six months does not mean you need a dual-wheeled F350 as your daily driver.

If you’ve done any towing, you would know that Audi SUVs are terrible at it in practice, despite the advertised numbers. There’s a lot to the practical experience of towing that trucks get right in their design and features. Many of the SUVs that show high towing numbers are almost never seen towing on the roads for a reason.

Also there are a lot of trucks that are not a dual wheeled F350. I feel like that is a misrepresentation when people are overwhelmingly buying half ton trucks like the F150. Also keep in mind, full size SUVs (like the Yukon) are similar in size to a half ton trucks. People gets lots of use out of them in their daily lives - it’s not just about towing horses or doing farm work, but also just hauling a family and gear around. Like if you’re a family of four going for a day at the beach, you can easily exceed the capacity of mid-size SUVs or small trucks.

I say this as someone who doesn’t own any of these but would certainly get use out of one. I think there is lots of room to improve road safety by simply mandating the usual modern features like sensors, automatic braking, blind spot detection, better mirrors, cameras on all sides, etc.

> Also there are a lot of trucks that are not a dual wheeled F350. I feel like that is a misrepresentation when people are overwhelmingly buying half ton trucks like the F150.

Doesn't change the the vast majority of F-150's are not being used for actual truck-appropriate tasks. They're hundred-thousand-dollar grocery getters, and like, I wouldn't give half a shit what other people are buying and running, if not for the fact that we're currently on-pace to boil ourselves to death and a chief cause of that is oversized vehicles that require more energy to move than otherwise, while offering more and larger blind-spots and more aggressive designs that heighten their ability to kill people, so that a middle-aged accountant can feel like "more of a man" than he would in a van.

> Also keep in mind, full size SUVs (like the Yukon) are similar in size to a half ton trucks.

Yes, which is why they're arguably even worse since you just have a vehicle with the dimensions of a truck, that lacks the capabilities a truck offers. Not that most consumers need EITHER ONE but that's neither here nor there.

> but also just hauling a family and gear around

Literally any class of vehicle is better than this. For decades prior to SUV's becoming dominant, people accomplished all of this in minivans and station wagons, which offer more carrying capacity than an SUV (thanks to not having so much dead space in the middle behind interior panels and styling) and they offer a lower loading height, which makes them easier to take things in an out of.

An SUV is just a van, but worse, and sitting an extra foot off the ground that it doesn't need to, which also thanks to sharing suspension components and engines with the truck it's based on, gets worse fuel economy than it could, so higher fuel costs, and inherits the higher maintenance costs of the truck too.

You're literally any way you go as a family man further ahead buying a van, a station wagon, a sedan, or an MPV.

A minivan has nowhere near the capacity of a Yukon or an F150, and is more comparable to a mid size SUV. I’ve not driven a truck but I have driven modern minivans. They have lots of conveniences but are very easy to fill up with gear even on a modest weekend trip. I am not sure if you have a family, but just consider the amount of cargo room used up simply by throwing in the equipment you need to care for a baby (like a stroller, pack and play, etc).

As for sitting an extra foot off the ground - that’s very useful in very common conditions like snow on the ground, or unpaved roads, or whatever else.

My family has moved houses in a minivan. If you and the missus are exceeding the carrying capacity of a van moving the gear for and the infant, you are bringing WAY more shit than you need to be bringing.

And, even if you are somehow doing that, then don't buy a minivan, buy a van. A full size van with a finished interior can hold an astonishing amount of stuff.

> As for sitting an extra foot off the ground - that’s very useful in very common conditions like snow on the ground

Only if the snow is unplowed and has piled up more than a foot or two. And arguably most people shouldn't be driving in those conditions anyway. I do just fine driving up to and around Tahoe in my AWD coupe, even in conditions when I probably shouldn't be out.

> or unpaved roads, or whatever else.

Which 90% of SUV/truck buyers will never, ever see.

And for the snow conditions where high clearance matters, more than half of SUV/truck buyers will probably never see those, either.

> People gets lots of use out of them in their daily lives - it’s not just about towing horses or doing farm work, but also just hauling a family and gear around. Like if you’re a family of four going for a day at the beach, you can easily exceed the capacity of mid-size SUVs or small trucks.

Is it that much of an improvement, though? When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, we did just fine with a 4-door sedan, including lots of multi-hour car trips to amusement parks and beaches and nearby cities. My parents eventually bought a minivan, but I was puzzled by that choice since I was in high school (and would move away in a couple years), and my sister was only a few years younger. (To me one of the big draws of a minivan or SUV for families is when you have young children and need to get into the car with them to strap them in or otherwise deal with them.)

To me, many SUVs are worse at these sorts of trips. You have a lot of extra unusable space because of their interior height, and the cargo space in the back is more vertical than horizontal, which can sometimes be a challenge depending on what you're bringing. Loading and unloading people inside is harder due to the passenger compartment being higher off the ground. Mid- and large-size sedans, station wagons (I know they've fallen out of favor, but so what), and minivans are way better for this.

Also not sure what kind of beach gear families of four are lugging out these days. Towels, toys, fold-up strollers, snorkel gear, and even some folding chairs and a sun umbrella should fit just fine in a sedan's trunk, no? (Ok, you might have to strap the umbrella to the roof, but otherwise...)

I won't comment on towing since I've never done it; you seem to know your stuff there.

I think people just make excuses for why they "need" the larger vehicle.

> Simple fact is that full-size trucks are the only vehicle category that Detroit is able to compete on

It's telling that, aside from the Mustang, Ford now exclusively makes SUVs, trucks, and a couple transit (not mini) vans.

Yeah and our politicians are instead of going back and fixing the problem they created deciding to add more on top in the hope we stop getting shit out...

Actually the politicians are doing nothing which is forcing the agencies to try to act which is inevitably going to be struck down by a Texas judge with stock in the big 3 auto makers.

CAFE was passed by Congress but implementation details and the actual limits are controlled by the agency. These rules have been changed several times:

>Starting in 2011, the CAFE standards are newly expressed as mathematical functions depending on vehicle footprint, a measure of vehicle size determined by multiplying the vehicle's wheelbase by its average track width. A complicated 2011 mathematical formula was replaced starting in 2012 with a simpler inverse-linear formula with cutoff values.[9] CAFE footprint requirements are set up such that a vehicle with a larger footprint has a lower fuel economy requirement than a vehicle with a smaller footprint. For example, the fuel economy target for the 2012 Honda Fit with a footprint of 40 sq ft (3.7 m2) is 36 miles per US gallon (6.5 L/100 km), equivalent to a published fuel economy of 27 miles per US gallon (8.7 L/100 km) (see #Calculations of MPG overestimated for information regarding the difference), and a Ford F-150 with its footprint of 65–75 sq ft (6.0–7.0 m2) has a fuel economy target of 22 miles per US gallon (11 L/100 km), i.e., 17 miles per US gallon (14 L/100 km) published. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/CAFE_per...

The agency has the power to fix this; All they have to do is propose a rule change, do the necessary notice and comment period and then implement.

Also it is amazing they are patting themselves on the back for the estimated 67 less deaths given >The report's conclusions include a finding that in the absence of CAFE, and with no other fuel economy regulation substituted, motor vehicle fuel consumption would have been approximately 14 percent higher than it actually was in 2002. However, due to the effect of these standards on the types and weights of vehicles sold, it has increased the costs of vehicles and may have led to an estimated 1,300 to 2,600 increased fatalities in the year 1993 alone

> The agency has the power to fix this; All they have to do is propose a rule change, do the necessary notice and comment period and then implement

Theoretically. In practice I doubt it's this easy. Bought-out judges in Texas have had a field day since chevron is gone and you can easily say "well the law didn't say this!!!"

Our current regulations made the cut off. Going forward, I have much less faith in the agencies (or congress) to actually get anything done regulatory-wise. Which, frankly, has been the aim of the American right for at least 50 years.

If there was "Bought out Texas judges" that were blocking such rule making, I would agree. However, if the agency has not even tried, I can't sit here and blame Texas judges or anyone else.

Why aren't these same judges blocking this rule? It's from the same agency.

We have had this problem for how many years exactly? Chevron was overturned this year.

And when has the possibility of a court blocking action ever stopped an agency from even trying? Trump with his stupid boarder antics went through at least 5 lawsuits, Biden tried to get student loan forgiveness at least 3 times.

If the agency gives a damn, they try lawsuits be damned. This is just them clapping themselves on the back for doing what amounts to almost nothing.

> However, if the agency has not even tried, I can't sit here and blame Texas judges or anyone else

Fair enough, I'm being overly cynical