90% of F-150s are daily driver grocery-getters. That was the target for the Lightning, not truck stuff.
A normal van is better in every single way. I can't figure out why someone would put their expensive tools in a pick-up's bed when this is an option: https://modulinecabinets.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/van-...
The bourgeoning Van Life movement that is picking up steam on places like TikTok and YT may do more for that, but in a lot of ways it's a statement about doing without, as opposed to being country rich and tough the way trucks are.
They have done this because big trucks are by far the most profitable segment of vehicle, and emissions regulations reward vehicles for being large.
Pickup trucks are popular in the US and the Americas broadly where they are heavily marketed. Pickup trucks are less popular in places where they are not marketed as heavily. Even outside the auto industry, there is a general consensus that marketing works. Make of that observation what you will.
If the massive cars cost what they should, people wouldn't buy them as much.
Not everyone thinks like you. Some people like trucks so they buy em
Europeans don't use pick-up trucks even for cargo that is suitable for pickup trucks, because small flatbed trucks [0] let you open the bed from the side, making pickup trucks mostly an obsolete concept for work purposes.
But I know someone that has a huge truck with a cap on his bed (google "pickup truck bed cap" or "topper"). That solves the weather problem and makes you wonder why you don't see more trucks covered up. The answer is obviously it looks less cool and doesn't fit the image. But it serves him well because he works in construction and frequently has the bed full of materials, sometimes which are longer than the bed. And he uses the truck occasionally to tow trailers.
But he's not most people. And he has another car for getting around town when he's not working.
If you are living in such an area where they can't even figure that kind of thing out, it sounds like there might be something in the water.
Things are not that way anymore; trucks got bigger.
The top of the bed rail of an F150 Lightning is around chin height for a lot of folks: https://imgur.com/ZBOBqJc
Here's a brochure for the first-year F-150 (1984): https://xr793.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/1984-Ford-F-Ser...
Have a look at some of the pictures that have people standing next to the truck.
They'd be giants if they were able to have that kind of posture next to a modern F150.
E.g. the Hilux/Tacoma vs. it's SUV sibling the 4Runner
It's one of the reasons why Honda and Hyundai are offering trucks -- they're already making the giant SUV, so just put a flat bed on it.
A modern pickup truck can fit the payload capacity of an entire Honda civic in the back of the cab. I've never seen someone put sacks of groceries in the bed of their truck. Maybe packs of water or charcoal, but no one is putting their produce and boxed goods back there.
And still have more room for stuff in the back of the cab before you even start talking about the bed.
I’m also confused how groceries in the bed would get wet in the rain… everyone around me has a tonneau on the bed. My guess is that some of these are not real anecdotes.
Maybe it makes sense, it just sounds unpleasant to me.
And food in packaging, it is usually in boxes or other containers most of the time in supply line transit. Individual items only get unpacked in the store, so I would think this practice adds considerably to their “dirtyness”.
Almost all of the produce is in nearly the exact form at the warehouse as you would find them in the store. For example, watermelons are in an open-topped, cardboard bin that just gets moved from the warehouse to the grocery floor in exactly its final state. Berries are all in their plastic clamshell boxes, no extra packing, no tape. They rack them up in flat cardboard boxes with no top, just tall enough that a single layer of berry boxes can fit in it and the next layer stacks on top.
This one time, one of the pickers had a pallet full of berry racks, six feet tall. He took a corner with his pallet jack too fast and dumped the entire load on the floor. Berries scattered everywhere. They used a snow shovel to scoop them back up and back into the boxes and back into the racks. Then out to the truck and out to the store, where they would have gotten relabeled "mixed berries."
If your observation is accurate, the more likely reason is that people just don't like going out when it's raining. Getting your shoes/pants wet sucks, getting your car (or truck) seats wet sucks, rain traffic sucks, there's more crashes - which suck, and by contrast you could just be sitting at home enjoying the relaxing sounds of rain, which doesn't suck.
Then again as I’m typing this I realize that I have a phone with a better processor than most computers on which I … browse hacker news and read email, so go figure.
It's really big back there. It holds an enormous volume of stuff.
4x8 sheets of plywood fit inside with the doors closed, and so do 10-foot lengths of pipe.
It's easy to access stuff at the front or the back. It's all contained under a roof in a locking, conditioned space (3 zones of HVAC) and is easy to get to from either sliding door or the back tailgate.
Works great for hauling stuff like sports equipment, outdoors gear, or photography equipment. Mine is full of tools, ladders, and boxes of wire right now, but it's been awesome for taking a mountain of camping gear and a PA system across the country. (Or, you know: Groceries. It does groceries very well indeed.)
(It's not so great at hauling stuff like bulk stone or mulch, but that stuff is usually pretty cheap to get delivered.)
3500 pounds is what Honda lists for towing capacity (same as a 2WD Honda Pilot, even though an AWD Honda Pilot with exactly the same engine and transmission is more like 5000).
If towing capacity is defined as "what people can expect a thing to reliably do for many thousands of miles, in a row, over and over again" then I think a bone-stock Odyssey would roll over and die with 6000 pounds behind it.
Slow trip to the dump that's right over there across flat terrain? Sure, probably OK if it's rather heavy. Through the Appalachians? No; that's sounding like a bad day.
And the usual variables can be wiggled: A better transmission cooler can be added without too much difficulty (and Honda used to sell kits for this, themselves). There's seemingly-reputable companies that sell air suspension (read: adjustable) helper-springs for many years of Odyssey, and reports are that they're not particularly hard to install (as a DIY, in the driveway). Weight-distributing hitches help a ton (literally), but IIRC Honda doesn't list a separate capacity for that.
There's other vans with similar interior volume and features that are stated on the door sill sticker to tow trailers better.
And there's certainly some things that trucks like an F150 can get very right. Towing is one of them.
If a person wants to occasionally haul a decent-sized camper around or something, then owning a pickup truck may be exactly the right solution.
And ideally, the trailer should have its own brakes and (mostly!) stop itself.
I've never found the brakes on an Odyssey to be particularly lacking on their own, even when loaded heavy in mountains. They're fine. 2-pistol calipers, decent-sized rotors. Nothing fancy, but also nothing lacking. The ABS behaves sanely.
The only thing I see people complain about is warping, but the causes of that are very varied (and may have nothing to do with anything actually being warped).
Like many vehicles, they get a lot better with good rotors that have cooling improvements, and well-selected not-ceramic pads.
It goes from "yeah, those are fine" to "Holy Toledo. My sunglasses just flew off of my face, and I think the seatbelt hurt my shoulder (but there was no crash, so it's fine)"
But I would also trade this truck for an all electric or mostly electric Maverick as long as it had enough cabin space for my needs (children).
parent poster is loaded af
Isn't this the entire pitch of the cybertruck?
You lose about half your range towing so you’re still going to drive two hours, stop for 30-45 minutes, repeat.
So it’s still far from compelling for anyone towing or doing truck stuff.
it's my impression that electric vehicles are 90% grocery getters, unless the drivers are young in which case it's takeout. what else would you use an electric for, commuting? when you commute, on the way home, you shop.
correct, but it's in the context of the their misimpression that "truck stuff" would be the reason to buy electrics. and I'm pushing back on that saying that the people who buy groceries are the people who are buying electrics. people who "have a commercial job to do" are less likely to experiment with a new technology: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it, especially if your income depends on it"
Objectively a Ford F-150 is the wrong vehicle for what 90% of its buyers need. But it’s an aspirational purchase. It can go off-road. It can haul a boat. It can haul a bed full of gravel. It doesn’t matter for these purchasers that they rarely if ever actually do any of this.
Being "economically efficient" with laptop purchases saves you a few hundred to a thousand dollars.
Being just reasonable with a car purchase saves you $25k.
These are not at all comparable to the average american.
The average new car price is $50k. Almost zero people need that. The Toyota Corolla, which is overpriced, still starts at under $25k. Considering inflation it's about 30% more expensive than the base model from the 90s, but the modern Corolla is more comparable IMO to the old Camry, who's price point it exactly matches.
For that money you get a safer car than the 90s, dramatically so. You get modern infotainment, like CarPlay and AndroidAuto. You get a backup camera and bluetooth connectivity. Aircon, power windows, central locking. You get 170HP from a 2.0L 4cyl that is rather silly for a commuter car. Only 32 mpg City. This is a small family car.
But Americans do not want that. Americans want to put down $50k for 80 months for a MANLY man truck for MANLY MAN things. Or the same money for a stupid box on the same frame as an """SUV"""
This is not "avocado toast" or "Just get a roommate". Americans are spending absurd money on absurd vehicles for absurd reasons.
Advances in the reliability of modern cars made the car market weird. If you have any financial sense at all, new cars almost never make sense, because the 5 year old model is still excellent. That means the only people left in that market are not making decisions on financial merits. But that also means the entire market is controlled by the whims of the easily persuadeable and financially illiterate.
Most people buying F-150s are spending way more than $50k.
But the hate big trucks get isn’t because they are expensive. I don’t care if someone spends 25, 50, or 100 thousand on their vehicle and I doubt most others do either. Trucks get hate because they are more dangerous to everyone else. A collision with a truck is 2.5x more likely to kill the driver of a car than a collision with another car. [1]
But the attacks on the “manliness” and ridiculous cost of modern trucks are more emotionally satisfying than discussions about their safety profile.
As an aside the base Corolla engine for the current gen was formerly the 139HP 1.8L 2ZR-FAE and the 2L was limited to the "sporty" models but this was dropped at some point. The power figures are somewhat deceptive, it does a very good impression of a v6 under 3000RPM or so, but if you need to wind it out to merge on the highway there's not much there unlike a early 00s VTEC Honda or something.
I’ve driven a Corolla in the last year. Despite not being particularly tall, my head is jammed against the roof. I have to put the driver’s seat all the way back, into the knees of any rear passengers.
The owner’s manual states the car should not be used to tow anything, eliminating the claim throughout this thread of “just buy a trailer when you need to move something big.
Why is it so hard to just admit that trucks and SUVs do in fact offer greater utility and convenience in most situations than small sedans? And that this utility and convenience, even if not needed all the time, is the main reason people are buying them?
I mean, your contention is that the average American, no doubt hard up for money, is so dumb they are willing to pay a 25k+ premium to feel “manly”. Does this really make sense? Economics are not people’s primary motive but they do have an impact.
Despite driving and loving the Honda Fit for 15 years, I bought a large SUV. Can you imagine no other reason for this than I am a madman?
In general I agree that they do offer a lot of comfort. This is actually a common criticism of these trucks, that they are “pavement princesses” that never haul anything more than groceries. Ironically, a lot of trucks have gotten so tall that they need a step for short people to get into, though, putting the claims of comfort into question.
Personally I think a lot of the justifications about big trucks are true but also not why people buy them. They see more convenient (sometimes; they are a bitch to park in cities). They are more comfortable. They can haul. They can go off-road. But these being true doesn’t mean that’s why most people actually buy them.
Marketing folks understand that. That’s why truck ads show manly shit like rocks being dumped into the back of the truck and off-roading around a mountain even though that’s not how they get used. Consumers are buying the feeling. Just like BMW sells sports cars but showing them whip around mountain roads rather than sitting in traffic.
It’s very much like guns. People who buy guns justify the purchases by saying they need them for self defense or home defense. But the reality is that most guns are never used for any of that and most people who buy guns would move somewhere else if there actually thought they needed them. They are bought because people like guns and find them fun to own. These are of course not mutually exclusive reasons. A gun can be fun and also quell feelings of fear about hypothetical home invasion.
> I mean, your contention is that the average American, no doubt hard up for money, is so dumb they are willing to pay a 25k+ premium to feel “manly”.
Is that actually hard to believe? Americans are notoriously terrible with money and many buy dumb stuff as status symbols when they are missing rent payments.
Again, marketers don’t seem to have any trouble grasping that most money is spent on feelings.
I might not move furniture regularly, but it’s reeeeal nice to be able to do so when I need to. My dishwasher broke on Christmas Eve when I was hosting so I went to the store and got another and installed it within an hour. Not doing that with my Subaru.
A small car cannot safely transport much of a trailer, and a pickup can tow a much larger trailer.
There's no way my piece of shit Samsung dishwasher would fit in your car. It's huge.
And if you are ok, with having trunk open, and tied down, you can transport fridges (I used reno clio, that is slightly bigger). Done that myself (not two door wide ones, one door fridge).
That's said I just found out you can hire van for 35EUR 20min away from where I live, so nowdays I just do that.
It's important to note that American appliances are generally larger than European ones.
I drive a small very useful car almost every day I have moved a ton of stuff in (including a DRESSER) but it's inarguable that trucks simply have greater utility for this sort of thing. And any time I do need to move something...I just use the cheap pickup I bought so I don't even have to worry about it or spend ages trying to squeeze it in.
Most recent purchase: Christmas tree. Yeah, that wouldn't have fit in my car.
An artificial tree that can’t fit in a car would be a big tree.
1. Let the Christmas tree farmer toss a 8’ tree in the back of my truck, tying the base to the anchors behind the cab. Very little overhang with the tailgate down. Drive away. This is what most people do.
2. Spend 15 minutes balancing the the 8’ Christmas tree on the roof of my Honda Fit with substantial overhang, precariously tying it, I guess leaving the windows down in the cold weather and praying the Highway Patrol doesn’t pull me over. This is not what most people do but I’m sure it can be done.
Lots of things “can” be done but people value convenience.
Is it more convenient in the back of the truck, though? Sure. I didn’t say otherwise.
I will say that buying a giant truck with poor visibility and 2.5x the kill rate of a sedan so that you can haul a tree once a year is nonsense. It’s a shitty tradeoff and a much smaller truck would do exactly the same job. But little trucks don’t sell like giant trucks because people are not actually buying them for their utility.
With that said, you admitted with your first comment that buying these trucks is based on feelings and not rational.
“Consumers buy what they like and feel like they need and can afford. They place an almost absurdly high value on convenience and not having to think about things like "oh I need to move this thing I need to go rent a truck because I only ever need to do this once every two years, making it irrational to buy one."
In terms of pure annoyance, the McMansion is also not using 3 parking spots at the grocery store.
Personally I have a mid-size SUV but if you regularly need to transport around a lot of people, minivans seem more practical in general than a lot of the big SUVs.
I don’t think smaller trucks get the same level of hate.
You pick a reasonable compromise and arguably a full-size truck is overkill for many but a Mazda Miata is probably too small for a lot of people even if it largely works for a lot of day to day stuff.
So, sure, I could pay for a delivery or rent something from Lowe's if I needed to for a specific purpose but I routinely use my mid-size SUV for weekend trips, transporting a canoe, picking up construction supplies, and the like. I need a vehicle in any case and it makes sense to own a somewhat larger one than I really need day to day to run to the grocery store, especially given that parking isn't an issue and my gas mileage really isn't bad.
If one actually lives in a city (which I don't), renting a vehicle can actually be something of a hassle on a weekend based on what I saw people go through when I was in a ski house after school.
I did also have a smaller car as well when I did more shorter regular local drives but I really don't do those much any longer other than very local drives to the grocery store or nearby hiking trails.
Lots of imported Delicas but also a fair few of those Mercedes Sprinter 4x4s.
It’s a great vehicle for most practical cases, though it is not very fuel efficient.
> The current Toyota Sienna … gas mileage.
Better mileage and optional all wheel drive were the only things I preferred about the Sienna. But while I don’t like the mileage the Odyssey gets, I also don’t actually drive far very often so it doesn’t matter much. I put less than 10k miles on my car every year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42BmZ6Rgqkc
Also most people I know who use F-150s in the way you describe also typically have two children or more. It's not as if this was a segment that was particularly hard to pin down.
They just completely wiffed.
You may perceive that there's "enough" but the market has clearly decided that you are wrong.
the market is for people who buy cars, not for people who need cars. most new cars shipping today are a stack of regulations, like road and parking subsidies, safety features, emissions standards, and most of all import quotas, decorated with marketing, financing and post-sale monetization scheme shapes. if you really wanted to innovate in the car "product" for the audience that actually buys cars, imo you should focus on figuring out how to sell parking up front and affordably, whatever that means. if you are only focusing on stuff for people who buy cars - i don't think people who buy cars really care that much about today's USPs and things that hacker news cares about like energy.