potato3732842

>he internet loves to bash truck owners as all being the same one guy who buys a truck to drive 1.3 miles to the office every day

Because the only truck owners the people who bash trucks see are their neighbor across the street who is that guy.

The demographically comparable guy who commutes in 80mi one way from his "country estate" in his Audi isn't on the internet bashing truck owners because the guy he lives across from uses his truck.

The "peak traffic" that all the 9-5 office workers on HN see is also not when trucks that carry things move. Blue collar work usually starts at 6/7/8am.

Way than half. Average is dragged up by 100k F-550s with $100k service bodies installed on them and $200k+ exotic cars. There are no negative and zero dollar sales to drag down the average.

This is a textbook example of a case where median would be better.

The Euro vans (sprinter and transit) are very well suited to businesses who'll own new stuff, depreciate and trade in before it's out of warranty. There's a reason those things get exported to the low labor cost 3rd world from there rather than winding up on used car lots like domestic van based single rear wheel box trucks and utility body stuff.

Yeah but the same exact geniuses in here screeching about "you don't need a truck" will judge you so hard when they see you in the home depot parking lot stacking the thing floor to ceiling with building materials.

Source: own minivan

>AWD is a luxury outside of the most extreme of extreme locations.

Only in the most strictly technical "I'm not touching you" sense.

Either AWD/4wd is necessary-ish when you're going to other people's property because you can't guarantee any given property isn't an icy shithole and when you're a professional being paid by them to be there for a specific purpose the last thing you wanna do is slip out trying to do a 25-point turn on their stupid sloped driveway and put a tire in the landscaping.

Even if it's some megacorp's facility that "should" be plowed and salted, it might not be when you show up at 6am on the dot to service something.

>I grew up in Minnesota driving rear wheel drive cars to start. They worked fine even in the olden days where plows would take a couple days to clear the country backroads and even rock salt was applied sparingly due to the expense.

>Not a single one of my vehicles had winter tires - all seasons were perfectly serviceable. You’d get stuck once in a great while but that’s what the bag of sand and shovel in the trunk were for.

I completely agree but the past isn't coming back. Those standards of performance are unfortunately no longer acceptable, especially in business settings.

Fullsize vans don't offer AWD at a reasonable price point.

Either AWD/4wd is necessary when you're going to other people's property because you can't guarantee any given property isn't an icy shithole and when you're a professional being paid by them to be there for a specific purpose the last thing you wanna do is slip out trying to do a 25-point turn on their stupid sloped driveway and put a tire in the landscaping.

Surely that has nothing to do with the weight distribution and handling characteristics that result in the pickup and sports car having different ability to create traction out of whatever friction coeficient is available. /s

>And, like you said, people think that an AWD car will stop faster.

The only people I know who think this way are made up people who exist only in the minds of people seeking to validate a purchasing decision.

Snow tires don't really stand on their own merit unless you're constantly encountering the conditions the snow tire people use in the commercials to magnify the difference. The biggest reason to get snow tires is simply that then you can run a "pure" summer tire rather than an all season the rest of the year. The second biggest reason is dry road performance.

> AWD inspires more confidence

Stop and work backwards and ask yourself why that is rather than doing the Principal Skinner "no everyone else is wrong" routine. In practice, all seasons on an AWD car result in less slipping around than snow tires on a FWD car. Heck, if the difference where anywhere near close everyone rich enough to have a new car would probably have snow tires because the dealership or tire shop would be able to make that sale. The reason they can't is because in people's experience they're just not necessary.

Stupid internet circle jerks about stopping distance are not the pain point or performance bottleneck for the average user. The degree to which you can enter/exit a side street that has snow plowed in front of it, navigate a steep and poorly plowed driveway, park in an unplowed space, cross the slush between lanes on a main roads or highway, those are what "real users" care about and they're where AWD shines.

>but once you are, every car still only has 2 wheels to turn and 4 to stop, which are quite possibly more crucial in snow..

These trope needs to be taken out back and shot. Regardless of your tire type the amount of traction available in snow conditions is such that "not being stupid enough to come into a situation too hot" is the dominant factor in overall outcome in braking/turning situations. Snow tires are an incremental improvement, not a categorical one. And the difference between a wet road and a snowy one is very much a categorical one.

AWD is the right choice for the statistical average person or "casual user" who's snow experience is dominated by somewhat plowed, somewhat churned snow/slush roads and is already driving incredibly conservatively. If you're driving on a frozen lake all the time like in the tire commercials or live somewhere rural and drive on a ton of fresh snow, by all means get the snow tires. But most people aren't, in that category they're better served by some random crossover and not thinking about it. And if you are one of those people, then spend a little more and get something with studs for all the ice you're inevitably also encountering.

They're substantially larger in all around size. Like comparable to a Dodge Dakota. A Maverick or Santa Cruz is comparable to a historical Ranger or S10, with the caveat that they're only available in one cab and bed configuration.

It's not even "stuff I bring home". There's just never ending amount of shit that needs to be schlepped around. Sometimes I wish I lived in a condo, leased a Prius and golfed for a hobby.

The sprinter is massively over-hyped by people who've never owned one.

Yeah, everything about it is generally "solid" and well done but at it's roots it's a very german car. The longblock will theoretically go a million miles but realistically you're gonna replace every part around it several times over to get it there. I'm sure they're fine when new but as they age it's basically the same "replacing way too much BS because while nice it's over engineered" as the rest of german car ownership. Like c'mon man, an asian or american car would "just" require simpler less invasive things and generally be less of a headahce in old age.

Source: semi responsible for keeping one running

>A pickup truck should just be max utility, especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one

How do you even define that? Give it a heavy duty bed and you're wasting weight that could be put toward hauling/towing capacities (and lord knows how people here would feel about ignoring those). A big engine for "reasonable driving" when fully loaded guzzles fuel.

I drive a wagon, among other vehicles. I live in a "tech area" of the country.

Last weekend I hauled ~700lb of rebar on the roof (because they come in 20ft sticks so the wagon is the best choice). The number of dirty looks I got was off the charts. The same exact demographics that are in here shitting on pickups were judging me for not using one. Good thing I don't give a shit what anyone else thinks.

Ford had a terrible but well packaging rear suspension design in those cars. It was designed to not have strut towers so he gets the full width which is probably around 4ft.

No way does the length check out though. I haul lumber in a similar size car and 8ft is basically trunk to dash so there's no way he's hauling an 8ft by 4ft sheet without it conflicting with the driver's seat if not torso.

Individual boards should fit in just about anything though.

You don't have to flag stuff under 4ft of overhang in most states.

>Sure, you can. Two kids up front and your wife in the bed.

Quieter than the other way around.

>Heartbreaking but true. The most popular pickups today are not the most useful pickups. There are no more basic utilitarian pickups any longer, at least in the US.

Any OEM will happily sell you a white vinyl floor half ton with your preferred cab/bed/engine/drivetrain configuration.

The GMC 4cyl 1500s were stupid cheap for awhile, because they shat out a bunch for CAFE and weren't selling so they were going for like 25-30k going into the new model year. I wanna say this was 2024 into 25, maybe 23 into 24, idk.

Ford Maverick seems to fit the bill for compact stuff though I suspect it may make the goalposts zip to "single cab option" and "body on frame"

This. Where I live the suburban dads wouldn't be caught dead projecting the "fullsize truck owner" image. They buy a Tacoma. Or they did until the Maverick came out.

I own a station wagon, a van and a pickup (none of which are nice or new) vehicle and three trailers (to be fair one is special purpose) and I'll put up to ~1000lb on the roof of the car before I drag a trailer around.

Trailer is kind of obnoxious pain in the ass and has a bunch more shit to go wrong with it's use compared to a vehicle that "just does what you need".

It might not be the literal cheapest but a truck with the desired cab to bed ratio is the right call for the casual user who just wants to do homeowner things and doesn't wanna think about it.

The venn diagram between people who say what you just said (which to be clear, I'm not disagreeing with) and people who screech about safety if they see a pickup being anywhere near full utilized is way too close to a circle for me to take either seriously.

I think your assessment is accurate and realistic.

But ICE is behaving pretty sloppy. I'm not sure it could get to that point without (just due to risk multiplied by sheer number of interactions) ICE accidentally escalating something via sloppiness, crossing something that they don't value but is a hard line to their local PD security detail, refusing to stop and getting smoked that way, either by their own security or by a passer by while their security shrugs.

A fed might not care about literally doing a George Floyd, but your security force might just walk off rather than be party to that.

He's saying his friend and his friend's coworkers who somehow work for Newsom wants Newsom to do that. Not that Newsome wants to do that.

I'm gonna say the same thing I said the last time you trotted out this opinion (which is far more excusable now that you've outed yourself as a brit BTW). At a societal level the LARPers don't matter. They are a rounding error compared to all the people who have a single daily carry piece or purse gun or whatever. And those people affect the numbers and the risk calculations happening in offices far away.

ICE is thuggishly and sloppily prowling places like Minneapolis because statistically they can get away with it without causing too many bodies. Up the potential body number and their tactics are forced to change for the better.

If the statistical average door they kick in in Minneapolis had the same likelihood of "shit I ain't going back to prison <bang> <bang> <bang> <dives out bathroom window and hops neighbors fence>" behind it as the statistical average door in St. Louis ICE wouldn't be behaving the way they are in MN. They would have specific targets, specific places and times to pick them up, etc, etc. (i.e. operating like the local professional police do) because the risk calculation with even a tiny change you might get shot back at, even if only ineffectively, makes that (much higher) resource expenditure pencil out, with consequences in terms of how much they can get done.

Personal ability to credibly threaten lethal violence if cornered (note: I did not say "firearms") acts much like an ATGM or MANPADS for an infantry squad. You're not gonna take a squad with TOWs on the offensive against a bunch of tanks, but if attacked you've at least got a prayer. The same math holds on the individual level. Making any potential target substantially more prickly to a potentially superior force and doing so for little cost is a huge boon for the little guy. A firearm is a force multiplier same as a bomb carrying drone or a cell phone that records things the government does not like or a media platform that puts those things in front of the eyes of the masses. It forces the superior force to still be much more careful and expend far more resources when engaging. When it comes to domestic policing what this means is that ICE would be under more pressure to "be careful and professional" in every city like the DEA did during the war on drugs we wouldn't even be having this discussion because they wouldn't be employing the tactics that everyone hates.

This math is a large part of why drugs won the war on drugs. There were enough glawk fawtys wit da switch kicking around on the "wrong" side of the law that the cops needed to adopt militarized tactics, the public didn't wanna pay for that shit (monetarily or politically) over weed, and thus drugs won the war on drugs. If they could've rolled up on just about anyone "cheaply" with just a few cheaply (poorly) trained cops, minimal equipment and support, minimal planning and surveillance, etc. it would've gone on way longer (but they couldn't, because that would have yielded too many bodies and cost too much political capital).

>Not all bad things are the same.

Who said they were?

>Raiding a reporter's house is very much an abnormal act to have taken place.

Only by invoking the most numerical slight of hand sort of "a DV is abnormal because we hand out a thousand traffic tickets a day and make only one or two DV arrests" logic is it abnormal.

For the past 5+yr the FBI has raided the home of about one journalist per year. Every time the allegation has been about investigating the source of some leak.

They didn't do one in 2024/2025 I don't think. Time Burke and the Kanye thing, Project Veritas in 2022 and 2023 and the ABC news guy the year before are recent ones that come to mind. I'm not gonna say they get a pass, but this is "the normal amount" for them.

Once again, that doesn't make it right and I shouldn't have to say this but this comment should not be construed as an endorsement of the FBI or any specific activities they engage in.

>Can you point to other instances of the FBI raiding homes of journalists to investigate leaks?

James Burke, the Veritas guy, the ABC News guy, etc.

>, this is absolutely not normal

On what grounds? Just repeating a BS assertion doesn't make it true.

The feds have been abusing journalists like this as long as I've been alive. It's not a lot, it's a trickle of them, maybe one a year or so in recent years. But one raid on one person isn't unprecedented or abnormal in any way. Now if you want to talk about frequency or the minimum size of thorn in side they'll go after it might be a different story. But nobody is saying that.

I might think the behavior is despicable and probably also unlawful, and their "they had classified info" excuse is flimsy BS, but it is unfortunately somewhat normal.

The problem is way, way, way worse, way longer running and way more institutionally entrenched than flabbergastingly moronic "these specific people right here right now did misdeeds" surface level assessment may comfortingly imply.

Of course there's business happening and it will be publicized in the normal ways. This is completely tangential to all the business not happening and all the other sharing of information that's not set in stone enough to be creating a paper trail over.

Like you can't just schedule a conference call with a bunch of important people at your competitors for the purpose of bitching about suppliers or something. You can do that at a conference.

> It's just a way to get people all in one place at one time, so that there is an efficient gathering to do deals.

It's not efficient. It's plausibly deniable.

People want to be able to meet and gauge interest in the most speculative stuff, discuss the far out future of industry, and discuss all manner of other things with other industry people, etc, etc, without a bunch of talking heads and twitter comment section screeching about "OMG the C-whatever-O of X met with the C-whatever-O of Y" and it being reported on and markets moving.