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I think the bigger issue is parts availability over the repairability issue... from what I understand, these have been quite reliable but parts for Ford's EVs have been backordered as much as months, where having a "work truck" down for months is an intolerable position.

The cost is also kind of crazy between inflated factory and dealer pricing as much as $20k over sticker price. Yeah, there was some early demand, but over-charging really cooled that and the demand overall.

I'm with you on some of the interior features, they're cool, but the overall inflated price is just too much. On the flip side, the Chevy "Work Truck" is kinda too far the other direction imo.

Similar on the more complex exterior, though I actually like it, it's not practical for its' prescibed purpose. If Ford could create a stripped down EV equivalent to Chevy's "Work Truck" at even 50% higher cost, I think it would do very well. They're very good for in-city use in terms of range on a charge, it's definitely good enough for most general tradecraft use, but the bloat and pricing really drag it down. Much like most cars in general these days.

Pretty much the only interesting new car I've seen this year was the Hundai Palasade, which IMO was just a good value for what it is. Kind of disappointing to see Nissan drop the Titan line. While I'd prefer to buy American brands, the fact that is that I don't think they deliver on overall value or reliability as well as competing brands. And it gets muddied further with foreign brands with US assembly and American brands now owned or otherwise operated or significantly built outside the US.

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> parts for Ford's EVs have been backordered

The part with the worst availability is the godforsaken shifter, which happens to be shared with the ICE F150s.

I mean the biggest issue is that “trucks” like F-150 are actually used because of US tax system that exempts such massive vehicles from emmision taxes because they are work trucks. They are pretty ineffective work vehicles but some people just love them as a symbol.

That symbolism goes completely against electric/green vehicles. In other words - people who buy F-150 would never buy electric vehicle and people who are looking for electric truck for work wouldn't buy F-150.

Ford actually makes a highly practical electric work vehicle. It's called E-Transit.

Oh I agree! I didn't mean that they can't make a good work vehicle.

I don't mean this personally against you, please don't take it as such, but the number of people in this thread who seem to have absolutely no idea what a work truck is used for is absolutely wild.

I'm one of those people. What is a work truck used for?

When my neighbors hire a contractor to do some work, they show up in a work truck carrying supplies and tools. If their truck is broken, they are losing money every day.

When I was working at Boeing, my lead engineer explained it to me this way. When the airplane is flying with a payload (note the word "pay" in payload), the airline is making money. When the airplane is sitting on the ground, it is losing money at a prodigious rate.

The point of making an airliner is so the airline can make money, and that means minimizing time on the ground and maximizing time in the air carrying payload.

I saw (and rode in) a lot of them in Alberta (Canada's Texas). Typical day for a work truck:

-owner starts you up from the hotel parking lot

-3-5 guys get in, you get your morning coffee via a drive through

-You pick up a 'slip tank' of diesel (think a metal box with its own fuel pump that sits in the bed and holds about a ton of liquid when full). You might fill up your own tank at the same time, typically on the employer's dime.

-you drive 1-3 hours over dirt roads and ice to get to the work site

-you fill up the heavy equipment from your slip tank, then stand for about 10 hours - you might be idling for part of that depending on temperature

- you drive another 1-3 hours back to the hotel parking lot. the owner plugs in your block heater so your fuel doesn't solidify overnight and you get ready to do it again the next day.

Trucks look impractical when they're getting groceries in the city, but everything about them - the height, the large cabs, all of it - is highly optimized for a particular kind of job. It might not be as common a job as it was when this design rose to prominence, I have no insight as to that, but there is a reason for everything about them being the way it is.

Yes this is why every other driveway in the zero lot lines of DFW need 1-2 pickup trucks. Totally.

This is way more extreme of usage than 99.99% of trucks made will ever see.

I wonder whether it's a nostalgia thing. People rode in these trucks and saw senior guys they admired owning them when they were young and on the make, and now they think that's the kind of truck successful people own even if it's not necessary for their own workday.

I'd generally rather see a crew cab pickup on the road than an oversized SUV with a single, tiny person driving solo. There is a lot more utility to a pickup, and the SUV doesn't particularly do much better on fuel economy.

That said, my SO has a large SUV, mostly in that I have trouble getting in and out of a low car now, and I'm no longer able to drive myself. My daughter has a smaller SUV/Truck (Hyundai Santa Cruz) with a smaller bed, that suits her needs nicely.

For that matter, there are plenty of people here that would do well if they could import the Japanese sized smaller trucks, which have a lot of import restrictions.

That said, I wouldn't want to drive such a thing offroad, up and over hills etc. regularly. I know a lot of Jeep/Pickup drivers that tow heavier things than you can with a car and go offroad to places you can't get to in a light vehicle regularly. Being functional for workloads as well is another benefit even if it isn't your job. That doesn't cover tradesmen who need the utility regularly and includes those who live in an apartment and can't otherwise just keep a large trailer parked at a random spot.

And yeah, it might be a status symbol... so is a typical super car, large suv or things like a Range Rover. There's nothing wrong with it, if someone wants to have it and anyone who has a problem with that can fuck right off.

> I'd generally rather see a crew cab pickup on the road than an oversized SUV with a single, tiny person driving solo.

If it's the same person doing the same activities, why would you prefer if it's a large truck instead of an SUV? Shouldn't we prefer people realistically right-size their vehicle choices? If it's just a small person driving around running small errands shouldn't they probably be in something other than a large SUV or a large truck?

Also, you mention the SUV has less utility than the truck. That's all about perspective and needs. I used to drive a large Durango back in the early 2000s. We regularly rented and towed camper trailers a few times a year, so we needed the towing capacity. But we regularly also needed to seat six or seven. A truck would have had less utility for us and been a worse fit for our needs.

IRT small trucks, while import restrictions limit bringing those exact cars there's nothing legally stopping them from making similar-ish small trucks in the US. Examples are like the Santa Cruz and Maverick, but I understand many Kei trucks can be significantly smaller than that. But in the end there's tax incentives for vehicles that have a GWVR > 6,000lbs, so as a company truck fleet machine buying a tiny truck is a non-starter. There's also the image of "not a real truck" of these smaller trucks that make them unpopular with a lot of traditional US truck culture. Between safety regulations, emissions regulations, tax incentives, and the market demands such a truck would probably be hard to sell at any kind of big profit compared to the giant trucks they sell today.

> I know a lot of Jeep/Pickup drivers that tow heavier things than you can with a car and go offroad to places you can't get to in a light vehicle regularly

Sure, I get it. I too know people who actually do take their vehicles off-road, or who actually do regularly haul things or tow their boat to the lake every other weekend or whatever. I'm not against someone buying a machine and actually using it, that's cool. Have fun. As mentioned above, I did the same when I had camper trailers often. But for everyone I know buying a Wrangler or FJ to go do off-roading, I know several who would never do so. For every truck owner I know who actually use it as a truck I know several who just use it to commute to their office job and pick up the kids from school. I know several who bought a big truck specifically because they could expense it better with their small businesses, even when their business was insurance sales or real estate sales or marketing or whatever.

> And yeah, it might be a status symbol... so is a typical super car, large suv or things like a Range Rover. There's nothing wrong with it

There is a lot of things wrong with people massively oversizing their vehicles to their actual needs. It makes our parking lots bigger as they restripe for ever larger vehicles. It makes our roads wider and harder to cross as a pedestrian. It means you're more likely to die as a pedestrian in a collision. It means you're more likely to die in a car accident when a larger vehicle hits you. It means we're releasing more emissions and making the air less healthy to breathe. It means we're worse off just because someone wants to feel big in their big pick up truck.

Yeah, maybe it's actually none of your business what other people drive.

Its totally my business when their choices make my family and friends less safe and less healthy and makes our communities worse off.

Imagine if someone had a machine that they could press a button and it would just give them a bit of happiness, but gave your kids asthma and lung cancer, poisoned the water, killed crops, and could potentially kill a random innocent person in a gruesome way. Should they press that button? Are you good with them pressing that button all the time for practically any reason? Do you feel you should have a say on if they should press that button, or how often they could press that button? Do you think you'd probably go around talking to people about these machines and the issues of pressing that button, to try and convince others to only buy the machine and press the button if they actually need to, or maybe buy the machine that poisons us less per press?

Should you have a say when a company excessively releases cancer-causing particulates into the air? Should we have a say when a company releases machines into our communities that have an excessively higher risk to maim and kill the people around those machines? If we should have a say when a company does these things, why shouldn't we when its private individuals doing the same?

I've said in my previous comment, if you actually do drive around in places where you need the ground clearance, when you actually do tow things, when you actually do use the bed in ways that are needed, fine by me. I see lots of trucks doing actual truck things as well. But the vast majority of these vehicles aren't used in these ways. This is the problem I'm talking about. I've had someone say to me they needed their pickup truck, no other vehicle could possibly be used because sometimes they have to carry their kids bicycles around and the only way that could be done effectively was in the bed of their truck. There was someone in the comment section here suggesting a truck was necessary to take a canoe someplace, as if that's something only a truck could do. The craziest thing about that canoe story, I've heard it from several other people as well, incredible this is a common idea it seems.

For the record, I totaled a Jeep towing a boat that I should have, the whole rear axle tanked

Other replies here have covered 'work truck' better than anything I'd come up with but I'll also add that some of the reasons people purchase trucks is:

- To be able to help your friends move.

- To be able to purchase supplies and move big things over long distances.

- If you raise horses, you have to have a truck to pull your trailer.

- If you own a tow behind or fifth wheel, you have to have a truck to pull it.

- If you like canoeing or camping it is a lot easier if you have a truck.

- If you live in a seriously rural area, or you enjoy hiking, you will need a truck or other vehicle in order to reach your home or many other destinations. I've gone up mountain roads in a Camry, and it's not a great experience.

- To comfortably haul a family

Ive helped my friends move many times. We just rented a uhaul and did it in way fewer trips (one, generally). If we did the same in a regular pickup it would have been a lot more work and a lot more time just to "save" $50 or so.

The vast majority of people don't have horses.

The vast majority of people don't have a fifth wheel.

I've tossed canoes on top of a focus hatchback. You don't need a truck to go canoeing. A canoe is like 50lbs, you don't need a few tons of towing capacity to carry a canoe. I've also gone camping in small cars. Get this, I've gone camping with just what I've carried in person for many miles! You don't need a few tons of towing to go camping.

I comfortably carry multiple kids and a spouse in vehicles other than a pickup truck. In fact, other vehicles have generally been comfier and easier. In the minivan the little kids can easily get in their seats and buckle up on their own. In the truck I had as a rental, there was practically no chance they had to climb in on their own, much less open the doors.

And yet trucks make up the majority of the most sold vehicles in the US.

A lot of people do where I'm from, and I've bottomed out multiple sedans on rough roads outwhere I live. I totaled a vehicle because the rear axel broke for rough roads.

I do all these things with my Camry, I'm pretty sick of having to park 5 miles down the trail, and I wish I had a truck.

So, not work then?

> Other replies here have covered 'work truck' better than anything I'd come up with but I'll also add that some of the reasons people purchase trucks is

The rest of the world does all of this without widespread truck ownership. The reason trucks are so widespread in the US is a combination of culture and regulation, not any special needs Americans have.

Trucks have been produced en masse for near a hundred years, and the majority of the world has various levels of access to a whole range of those creations, parts, modifications, blah blah blah meaning there are lots of trucks in lots of the world, widespread. Blanket statements

I just want a Hilux, man

I did about $3200 in damage to my (at the time) Challenger just going up an unpaved mountainside driveway... I definitely wouldn't take such a thing seriously offroad.

Perhaps this term is specific to americans, however to an Australian a 'work truck/ute' would be used for labour purposes and not for the family, for example hauling materials, transporting tools or as part of the business itself ?

How do you (I assume american) define it ?

Yes, American. There's other better descriptions here, but generally speaking most contractors I know have a truck, which they use for work. That's really all that I mean. I mean we just call them trucks. Nobody would say "Hey, nice work truck!"

People buy vehicles based on their needs. The F150 is sort of a hybrid between a work truck and a prestige family SUV like a Ford Explorer. If people are doing serious towing regularly, they will probably upgrade to a 250/350 class (3/4 ton or 1 ton). Plenty of people buy smaller trucks like the Ranger, which is basically like driving a crossover mini-SUV with a bed. People who are doing really serious transport may have a flatbed on an even bigger truck, but nobody uses those as family vehicles. I know people who have those little RHD mini trucks, which seems super useful to me.

I don't know Utes, which by googling, basically looks like a midsize (Ford Ranger, Toyota Tacoma) with a flatbed. We don't really use those.

Actually, it's kind of a market problem. Tons of people I know have expressed desire for a smaller truck like that little barebones Toyota Truck, but they don't make them here and we aren't allowed to import them.

Not surprising, since Asians & Europeans get lots of work done without using monster American trucks. They use vans, pickups with drop sides, trailers, et cetera.

The closest big city to me is 150 miles away. I don't know anything about how general contracting is done in mainland China, (I bet they use trucks!) but other than that I'm really not sure any other Asian or European countries are facing the same logistical hurdles as Americans.

Vans, drop side trucks and trailers have no problems traveling 150 miles. American trucks seem so horribly impractical since they're so crazy tall.

Imagine thinking vans can't travel 150 miles. Wild.

Truck is used for different kind of vehicles around the world. When you say truck i would bet many people imagine freight trucks, heavy machinery or medium sized "cube" freight trucks that are used for last mile deliveries to shops. They won't imagine american pickup to be a truck.

That's a van, not a pickup truck.

Yes, that's the point.

> people just love them as a symbol

This is an unfortunate trope that is oft repeated by those that live their life in constant upgrade cycles.

The regular F-150 is a pinnacle of value engineering for Ford. It's infinitely repairable for owners. Look around on the highway, you will see hundreds of 15+ year old F150s on the road, and a few times a day I will see 25+ year old trucks on the road too. There are thousands of aftermarket parts for repair or customization. Owners are happy with them, and they recognize the truck as something they buy once and keep for a long time.

If it is any kind of expression of self, its one of "I don't need to be consumeristic; I picked something simple that will last a lifetime."

Also, a truck can be used like a car. But a car cannot be used like a truck. If you need to haul 4x8 sheets of plywood or drywall, dimensional lumber, piping, ladders, etc a truck (or work van) is pretty much it. If I could only afford one car it would be a truck.

The old Dodge Grand Caravan with the fold flat sheets fits 4x8 sheets inside. The built in roofrack is also very ergonomic for ladders, canoes, etc.

We have pickups and the minivan and I often prefer to haul with the van. Better fuel efficiency and lower load floor are nice.

Yeah minivans can be quite useful. A bit of a PITA to fold or remove seats, depending on the model, and typically can't tow much or really carry much weight but for the occasional large item they can work.

I (and practically most people) are rarely to never carrying stacks of full sheets of drywall. Having that be the basis of your needs for a car is absurd for most people.

Even then, my minivan can pack some pretty long and pretty large things inside. Meanwhile it's got a better turning radius than most trucks, it has way better visibility, it's far less pedestrian unfriendly, it's got an easier loading height, sliding doors make it easier to fit the back five passengers in and out, the stuff I'm hauling doesn't have to risk getting wet or affected by the outside environment. Seems like the minivan is way superior than a bed for suburban life if one needs such a large vehicle.

I've needed to move homes requiring the need for a 24' box truck more than I've needed to haul a stack of drywall around. Should I daily drive a uhaul truck?

Those were some examples, not an exhaustive list. What about hauling a load of mulch or topsoil, you're not doing that in your nice minivan. Or a bed-load of tree limbs and cut brush? I do that a few times a year. Hauling furniture, firewood, lawn mowers, trash. An open truck bed is the most flexible configuration in my experience. Of course it's not perfect for everything.

A utility trailer could do a lot of that too, if you have a suitable tow vehicle. Sometimes the extra space taken by a trailer is inconvenient.

> What about hauling a load of mulch or topsoil, you're not doing that in your nice minivan

I've mostly just had that delivered when doing a big job, but I have just laid a tarp before. It's not that big of a deal really. And I don't even bother with a tarp for the smaller jobs, it's already bagged. Just don't grab bags with holes in it, and use the vacuum later. It's fine.

> Or a bed-load of tree limbs and cut brush?

I live in a suburb. The trash service picks up brush. If it's more than what I can fit in a few bags I just put in a bulky trash request and the send a truck with crane to pick up the pile. Welcome to living in a society, it's quite nice.

> Hauling furniture, firewood, lawn mowers, trash

Once again, large furniture moves have been easily handled with cheap rentals. One-off pieces have usually been easily partially disassembled to load even into a hatchback. I've had no issues putting my lawn mower even into my old Accord, they're not that big when you fold the bar down. Spend a couple of minutes unscrewing things and suddenly you no longer need a truck. Not that I need to move my lawn mower much, I'm not in the lawn service industry. I'm also not in the piano moving industry. But maybe most Americans do move pianos on a quarterly basis.

And once again, a small tarp and I've carried plenty of firewood for my fireplace. But once again like the majority of Americans I live in an "urban" area and don't rely on multiple chords of firewood to make it through a winter. But the family I had that did live in a rural area that did mostly heat by firewood just had it delivered. You might as well argue one needs a trailer rated to carry fuel oil or large quantities of liquid propane.

You know what's inconvenient? Navigating urban spaces every day with a giant oversized monstrosity that my kids can't even easily climb into on their own. A vehicle where I can barely open the doors on an average parking spot. A vehicle that gets less than 20mpg compared to 35+ (or even way more than that with my EV). A vehicle where each tire costs $200+ compared to $100. A vehicle where a brake job costs way more than it needs to.

Perhaps a truck isn’t the ideal vehicle for someone who lives in a city and has easy access to rental vehicles, but a lot of people don’t live in those conditions.

Most Americans do. The vast majority of Americans live like me in terms of housing and transit. And yet pickups are still the most popular vehicles. In the parking garages of the urban apartments around me, they're filled with pickups. In the offices filled with accountants and salespeople the lots and garages are filled with pickups.

Don't get me wrong, some people definitely have a legit need for a truck. I've eyed them as I've been contemplating the pros/cons of a camper trailer vs. an RV. Some people own businesses that actually need it. But most people don't have a camper trailer or horses or work a small construction company out of their home and yet trucks are most vehicles bought these days.

A family sedan is a suitable tow vehicle for the large flat bed twin axle + four seven tonne truck spring configured trailer we built 35+ years ago for hauling across broken land in the Pilbara.

It's a good idea to use anti-sway bars on, say, a Hayman-Reese hitch when things get technical and loads want to skid sideways.

Rig your trailer right and you can have a removable gull wing hutch for sleeping in / tool security, etc.

IMHO there's more room on a dedicated heavy load trailer than an SUV "truck" bed and there's usually better tie down with a custom trailer as the rope rails run full length for hitching.

> A family sedan is a suitable tow vehicle for the large flat bed twin axle

You may get away with it but it is not suitable. It doesn't have the brakes or the weight to safely pull a large trailer, and you'll likely burn up the transmission as well. Now, if you're talking about a body-on-frame GM sedan from the 1970s, with a 350 or larger V8 engine, maybe. A 4-cylinder typical family sedan of 2025? Not a chance.

What nonsense.

We work in agricultural and mining and have done, in my fathers case, since 1935.

Admittedly he started with horses, bullocks, and kerosene fueled tractors, but hey, we understand engines, how to keep them running, and a host of tangential factors that roll alongside; recovery, survival, first aid, fire fighting, bush mechanics, etc.

Vehicles are maintained, used within their limits, regularly checked before long trips, and routinely clock up 750,000 - 1,300,000 km before being replaced.

To date no transmissions have been burnt out. Multiple long distance trips on sealed and unsealed roads have been taken across the length and breadth of Western Australia - it's reasonably tough country.

As a pro-tip, if you're burning out transmissions pulling loads on a regular basis, I'd suggest parking up to take load facing downhill (and chock the wheels to be safe). That way, when you start up under load you have the advantage of a downhill rolling start. That'll help to prevent spinning tyres, getting bogged, and undue strain on the transmission. If you're not doing it already consider starting off in a low gear rather than relying on an automatic transmission to select for you.

You do understand, I trust, that there's a perfectly usable 6-cylinder class between a stupidly oversized rarely needed V-8 and the woefully under powered 4 cylinder?

We have trucks, we've just spent the last month on district harvest, and we're dropping a modular house in place later this afternoon (GMT+8) - by trucks we mean prime movers + trailer trains (usually two, sometimes three), nine tonne tippers, ex-military scrabblers that can carry 5-tonne of water up bush tracks (fire control) and the like.

And if you live in an apartment, where do you park your trailer? Most apartments won't let you keep/store such a thing... are you going to pay for a storage unit large enough for a trailer to use occasionally?

If you live in an apartment, what are you regularly doing that needs a giant truck or a trailer? It's not like you're doing woodworking in your one bedroom apartment or doing lots of gardening.

And if your answer is "well you'd go to the workshop and do that"...well there's your answer on where to park the trailer.

A lot of people do construction work and use a pickup truck while living in an apartment. They aren't working at a "workshop" the jobsite is residential neighborhoods.

What a joke. I know several people who work in residential construction. All of them bought their large trucks associated with their small businesses for the tax write-offs. None of them actually use their trucks as trucks. When they really need a truck, they drive their fancy $80-100k pickup trucks to the warehouse, where they hop in their International trucks to actually go carry loads places.

My neighbors are doing extensive renovations to their home. Half the people show up in pretty fancy trucks most days. Nothing in the bed, the trucks look pristine with their company branding. Most of the actual people working hard in the house show up in beater Corollas or Civics. When material shows up, it comes in the back of a flatbed truck by the distributor dropping off pallets of drywall or mud or whatever or in some box van. These people driving trucks to their construction jobs rarely actually need pickup trucks for their construction work. Its like arguing chefs need to carry their own gas ranges to the kitchen. The real work often gets done with the company's equipment, not their own personal luxury toys.

When roofers came to redo the roof on my home a few years ago it was the same story. All the sales people drove big fancy pickup trucks to talk and show off proposals on an iPad. I didn't realize a pickup was absolutely necessary for an iPad, but hey I guess that's what it takes. After all others in this comment area think you need a few tons of towing capacity to move a 50lb canoe. A big box truck came to drop off the pallets of shingles and decking to my roof. The workers showed up in beater cars, the supervisors showed up in pristine fancy pickup trucks. Once again, they can easily write off that big truck cost immediately, but a passenger car would take years to write off the depreciation. I wonder why they chose the big pickup instead of the smaller car.

I've got family working commercial construction as well. He also drives a fancy big truck. When asked if he uses it for work, his words were "fuck no, why would I fuck up my truck for them?" He uses it to drive to job sites on well-paved roads, goes to Twin Peaks for UFC nights, and sometimes get groceries.

Residential construction jobs also existed in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, and yet pickup trucks weren't the top sellers in any of those decades. Meanwhile in the 2000s onwards pickups and large SUVs hold a good chunk of the top selling spots. I guess we just all work in residential construction?

Seems like a specious hypothetical, as a peer comment pointed out most people in light residential construction don't need US style "trucks" (oversized cars), in my experience there are a number of people that have trailers who live in apartments - alongside other two car / two bay families.

Ultimately if you're serious about contracting work of any kind, or even just craft glass blowing / wood working, etc, you get a workshop in a light industrial area or a rural block with space for sheds, drive ways, loading ramps, car sized LNG tanks, etc.

Those are good examples, I've hauled most of that on a trailer attached to a cheap family sedan. With the upside of the trailer receiving the brunt of the abuse, having probably 4x the capacity of your truck and the car being super convenient to use on a daily basis to say, commute.

And is the trailer convenient to store in an apartment?

Hey, you can fit 4x8 in a Maverick, and that's barely a truck.

a car cannot be used like a truck.

I think that’s more down to choice than possibility. I’ve hauled all those things home from the diy store in my boring Volvo with its roof rack. Had 600-odd pounds of sand in the back just last week.

4x8 plywood isn’t particularly heavy, and little consumer “150 pounds max” roof racks can hold a lot more than they claim.

As European. If you do that stuff semi-regularly just get a trailer. Couple thousand and they last decades.

And sure, for the exact target demographic of carpenters and such that's... false.

What you do is get a regular car that's great for everyday stuff and buy a trailer. You get a flatbed that's what, 4x the size of the one on your truck? And it's cheap, at knee-level, and detachable, so you only pay the cost of inconvenience and extra fuel when you use it, not all the time.

You won't use it much anyway, because a regular car fits more than you think.

Millions of people in the US do their own carpentry. In fact, there are orders of magnitude more DIY carpenters than there are professionals.

> And it's cheap, at knee-level, and detachable, so you only pay the cost of inconvenience and extra fuel when you use it, not all the time.

You can also hook a trailer up to a truck, giving yourself even more capacity. Many people do this. However, people in urban or suburban areas may not have trailer storage areas.

'99 F-150 with >250k on original engine and transmission here. Going to pick up 900 lbs of rock tomorrow. Suspension is pretty poor, but it still pulls hard under load. I'd like to upgrade to a newer model, but the '99 refuses to die.

> Going to pick up 900 lbs of rock tomorrow

Is there any car that can't do that though? That's just the weight of 5 adults.

I don’t think I could get 900lbs of rock in most cars.

I had no trouble fitting 800 lbs of gravel in my little kei car

It feels heavier than that, so I looked it up and my memory was wrong, it's ~1400 lbs per scoop.

Anyway, my point is that it's been a surprisingly good vehicle that just keeps going. Throw some lumber on the rack after loading gravel, it doesn't care until the suspension starts bottoming out. It's not my first truck, and I'm not tied to any brand, but the overall experience has been so solid at high mileage, that it sets a bar for any future trucks.

I'm just a single data point, and I'm sure there are folks who've had poor experiences, but having owned many vehicles over the years, the F-150 feels particularly robust to me. Honda engines give me a similar feeling. As one commenter described "using in anger", there are some things that will take repeated abuse and just love it. Maybe I've been lucky, but in my limited experience, the F-150 has a well-deserved reputation.

Fair. Look I think the big difference in perception is that in most countries outside US these trucks are just a symbol. Like if you see some F-150 or RAM it is always used by some angry MAGA and gun supporters. It makes no sense to use these in Europe. They are not road legal so they are imported under special licenses, they are so oversized they can't park anywhere. There restrictions on loading pickups so people don't even use the truck bed. Always one guy driving them. They are for showing off your opinions.

This is just social media and your news outlets of choice feeding you what you'd like to see.

No, it is also reality in the US.

In northern maine, the "Manly men" have a road pickup, with a giant cab and all the luxury features and a 7L engine, and an entirely separate "Work" truck that actually has normal work truck features like no infotainment and is easy to clean and is not a luxury vehicle.

They only ever drive the work truck into the muddy farm. They might go "Mudding" in their pavement princess and then take it through a drive through car wash.

Then in the winter, when they need to plow the snow, they have yet another truck, usually an old work truck, that they slap a plow on.

Trucks are a lifestyle brand.

They don't tow things other than once a year, and that thing is a giant RV for the yearly camp trip, because they don't actually like camping. They don't need to tow their Skiddoo in the winter because they just drive it all over the state from their back yard, which is great fun.

My dad bought an F350 for "work" that is full of all the luxury options of course, and is usually towing an oversized box trailer full of tools as a work space, but normal people that don't have free rent and have to work for a living just take the damn tools out of the back of the truck before doing the work. But it doesn't matter because that $80k status symbol is "owned" by his company and is treated as a depreciating asset for tax purposes, so he buys a brand new one every 5 years.

Ironically, he actually does tow multiple times a week, but 90% of his usage WOULD be covered by an electric truck.

No this is my personal experience from occasionally meeting some nonsense oversized car.

The F-150 is valued because it is utilitarian and the platform is engineered for a pretty abusive duty cycle. Ford understands this. If you use trucks in anger, you start to appreciate this.

The entry of Japanese automakers into the F-150 market is instructive. While the Japanese trucks looked similar, the early versions had a bad reputation for slowly coming apart under the typical workload and stresses people put on the F-150, which Ford had been refining for many decades. Those trucks often get used hard, and because people know an F-150 can take it they aren't afraid to use them hard. The median abuse significantly exceeded what the Japanese engineers anticipated. Japanese trucks are much better now but the attention to survivability is a big part of the F-150's enduring reputation.

I've taken the Ford platform through situations where I've seen many other vehicles get destroyed. That's where the loyalty comes from and why it is a default choice for many. Most people aren't using them as hard as I have but it does provide a safety blanket.

Not just emissions taxes, small businesses are incentivized to overbuy and get a bigger truck. GWVR>6,000lbs and a full bed gets a better first year tax benefit.

From my limited checks (CA and AZ) pickup trucks aren't exempt from emissions testing or taxes. There are some partial exemptions in CA apparently, but that's a state with massively high taxes all around.

Also, the most green vehicle is the one you keep operating over any new vehicle, electric or not. Truck owners tend to measure their ownership in decades.

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