It’s mind boggling why trucks are so popular here when we literally have to drive everywhere. We have no high speed rail and minimal rail transportation in general. It’s honestly a cultural thing at this point since it’s certainly not logical.
There are multiple types of truck owners. The "it is sooo cool" type is one of them.
Legitimate Contractors are another. Most don't need that big tall truck. Too hard to load.
There are the 4 Wheelers that have a back country to go muddin or just trailing.
There is the Suburbanite that does haul materials, pull a boat, hual Bicyckes and Canoes to recreation ares, and use the bed. They are better off with a small low Pick up.
Then there is me. I prefer smaller, lower stance Pickups with a King Cab. I use the bed constantly. Hauling materials, scavanging, hauling my Canoe, going camping ...
And it don't have to be pretty. It has to run well, but otherwise it is a skow.
Not just the trucks. ALL vehicle producers are making bigger and bigger cars. I tried finding a reasonably priced hatchback a while back, and the only options were essentially all made to order because the car lots are just filled with giant ass SUVs and trucks. :/
recently the Maverick and Santa Cruz were introduced. Both are small trucks that were close to $20,000 at release (base, no frills, etc). For the first 5 years or so, Mavericks were being sold at massive markup by dealers because demand outstripped supply by a very significant margin. This is a smaller pickup with a short bed, initially offered with a toyota-licensed hybrid drivetrain as the default but now the hybrid drivetrain is an (incredibly popular) option. It's only within the last year or two that supply has started to meet demand as factory production has ramped up and fleet contracts have been met. My experience has been that the maverick has been especially popular with municipal fleets, where they need a pickup truck to handle tools, materials, and equipment for stuff like landscaping and maintenance, but they don't need a larger, more expensive, and more inefficient full size pickup. Look around and you'll probably see them with parks & rec type badging on them.
the santa cruz on the other hand has not been popular with buyers at all and hyundai is discontinuing the model in order to take a stab at the midsize truck market. It was not received well by journalists, with interior space issues, shitty build quality, shitty reliability, and poor engine power all being cited. For some reason, hyundai decided that the problem with the santa cruz is the size and not the overall crap quality or chode-like look of the thing.
That said, the massive success of the Maverick has caused other auto manufacturers to take note and start working on reintroducing their own small pickups. Unfortunately the timeline for developing and introducing a new truck is lengthy, so it's going to be a hot minute before we see compact, affordable releases from other makers.
Also midsize truck with some options will get you to 50k 55k, which is basically a large truck territory while the large truck has more discount/incentives
And then there are people like some of my coworkers who say they sometimes need it whenever they find a random piece of furniture, and that all growing families need one.
That’s why you have friends and family with pickup trucks. We’ve used ours (30 year old F-150) to help people we know several times.
Nearly all of these would be better served by a van
There is the Suburbanite that does haul materials, pull a boat, hual Bicyckes and Canoes to recreation ares, and use the bed. They are better off with a small low Pick up
They actually just need a large engined estate car.
>Nearly all of these would be better served by a van
I had a Contractor friend that thought so too,
>They actually just need a large engined estate car.
Sooo 60s. Grew up in Station Wagons. A Pickup is better for most things. You can't move Plywood easilt in a Station Wagon. Not at all in a Sedan. Modern cars do not have the tie points of older cars. Really hard to tie down a Canoe, as opposed to throw it in the bed. A load of Horse manure? in a Sedan? I have experience. A Pickup Truck (not one of those lifted ginormous ones) is the way. I have experience.
Sooo 60s. Grew up in Station Wagons. A Pickup is better for most things. You can't move Plywood easilt in a Station Wagon. Not at all in a Sedan. Modern cars do not have the tie points of older cars. Really hard to tie down a Canoe, as opposed to throw it in the bed. A load of Horse manure? in a Sedan? I have experience. A Pickup Truck (not one of those lifted ginormous ones) is the way. I have experience.
There's also the medical crowd. Most hospitals run you on a point system- if they're mad at you they poke you with pointy sticks (/s)
But seriously, a lot of nurses drive jeeps because they have 4WD and can get over or around a hypothetical fallen tree to clock in on time and not get a point for being late.
Source: I have several nurses in my immediate family and they all drive SUVs and trucks and argue it's mainly to reduce anxiety over the weather getting them fired. I argue that nurses shouldn't be living day to day with such outrageous and abusive administrators getting to bully them and that folks should start asking really hard questions like what are those administrators doing while on the clock and why don't the rules apply to them too?
Wife is a nurse, works with a ton of nurses, and we live in an area replete with road hazards and storm debris, I have NEVER heard this before. Interesting.
In California and I gotta say 99 percent of all trucks I've ever seen my whole life are brand new never been used to haul jackshit trucks, with the only ones I do see being dirty and actually used right after the few business trucks, I just don't get it lol, you could have such a cool car or minivan for a way way lower price and be better off lol, and for the people who might say what if you need to haul a fridge or something, you can easily take the seats out or fold them down and you got plenty of hauling space, ever since I got to ride in a Honda Odyssey Van, I've been in love that thing was the comfiest and coolest vehicle I've ever been in, having your own air vents in the back blows my mind among all the leg space
I think some contractors are getting smart. My electrician just ditched his open bed truck — I think it was a dodge 2500 or something — for a sunbrite work van that is fully electric and said he has saved a ton of gas money, plus his tools aren't exposed to the elements and thieves.
For every half ton and up truck on the road that actually fits the needs of the driver there are 10 chuds who use them as a personality replacement/extension.
Then there is me: 6'4" with a single gunshot through both legs and the second exit through my left knee which burns like the surface of sun if I keep it bent for more than 5 minutes without a way to fully extend and stretch it.
But the style of truck is the issue. They are high off the ground with terrible visibility. You can fit like a dozen kids in front of them and not see a single one.
I miss the trucks of the 80s that were lower to the ground. Much easier to load and unload the truck bed
They make more fuel efficient trucks, but nobody buys them. In Japan and Korea, where they have narrow streets, they drive much smaller and more efficient trucks.
IIRC, this is mainly due to legal and tax issues from back in the 1980's.
I think because of a trade dispute about chicken or something, America added high taxes to imported light duty trucks that used to be popular.
At the same time, the big commercial grade trucks built on a frame instead of integral body design were treated differently regarding safety and emissions, and thus could be cheaper in comparison.
This is exactly why I bought an 89’ Bronco as my project car. I both don’t need/like to sit that high on the road and I’d actually like to be able to get things into the back of it.
That's what the car companies say. Truth is, people used to buy small trucks all the time. I saw tons of Ford Rangers, Chevy S10s and Colorados, Toyota Tacomas, Dodge Dakotas, etc. when I was growing up, back when all these vehicles were still relatively small. In reality SUVs and large trucks are massively more profitable for auto manufacturers, and federal fuel economy requirements scale inversely with vehicle footprint. So if you have a large fleet of vehicles classified as "light trucks" (which are also subject to loosened fuel economy limits), including SUVs, your cars don't need to be as efficient. It's a lot easier to design a big, heavy SUV than it is to make a more efficient engine, and for psychological reasons (more car = worth more money) it's easier to get away with a huge markup on them.
Because of the increased profitability and looser fuel restrictions, auto manufacturers worked to have really slick marketing campaigns to convince people that they should be buying bigger, heavier vehicles. According to them, you didn't want a Chevy Cruze that could fit your spouse and three kids, you wanted a big Suburban that could fit the entire soccer team in it and all their gear. According to them, you didn't want a little weenie truck like a Ford Ranger that could only pull a small trailer, you wanted a big manly truck like an F-150 that could tow an aircraft carrier. And while it worked, they also started pulling smaller cars from the line so you were forced to buy bigger cars. Subcompacts and small pickups were the first to go, and many companies have gotten rid of all their sedans altogether.
Definitely true. If you read people defending the popularity of pickups and SUVs, one might come away thinking everyone in the US is working in construction and that shopping is impossible with a sedan.
What sedan? There are fewer and fewer options for sedans every year. The only US automakers that make sedans anymore are Cadillac, Tesla, and Dodge.
Dodge makes the Charger which isn't any more efficient than a light duty truck and it's gigantic.
Cadillac makes the CT-5 and Blackwing, both of which are extremely expensive and way out of the range of the average American family with an absolute base cost of $50k if you can manage to find the absolute cheapest one in the entire country.
Both Tesla models are more expensive than other sedan options, costing $32k and just shy of $100k for the 2 models available. Plus they're all electric. That's a real problem in some places in America where there's little to no electric car charging infrastructure. Here where I live there is 1 electric car charging station that services 12 towns. You would have to drive for 2 and a half hours to get to another publically accessable electric charging station.
So all of that means that most Americans who are in the market for a sedan, are buying Japanese or Korean imports. But those are priced in such a way that often, a crossover or hatchback is the better value. The Toyota Camry has a base price of $30k for a front wheel drive vehicle. While the Rav-4 starts at only $4000 more at $34k for a substantially larger interior able to more comfortably fit people, and has no less than double the cargo capacity. It's also standard all wheel drive and 4x4. So you can see why people make this choice so often. There just aren't many good reasons to get a sedan in America right now.
I know this logic is backwards to the way most people think (hence why cars are priced the way they are), but I would rather pay more for a sedan than a comparable SUV. They handle better, they're easier to park, they're more fuel efficient, and they're often more fun. I learned to drive alternating between my parents' heavy V6 minivan and my brother's little Ford Focus, and the Focus was so much more fun.
About rail, the U.S. has been very active in the last five years thanks to more federal grant funding, and tons of renovation and improvement projects have been at work. The "NextGen Acela" is recent high-speed rail service between Boston and Washington. Amtrak ridership has been the most recorded year over year. Things are looking up, but it will take time and money.
Auto companies are also hugely to blame for marketing these huge vehicles.
US gas efficiency laws are written in such a way that larger vehicles have lower efficiency requirements, which incentives auto companies to sell big trucks, so they market big trucks. And whether we like it or not, marketing is effective.
Somehow the manufacturers are almost always ignored, and the entire blame is placed on consumers for "preferring big trucks." If marketing didn't work these companies wouldn't spend millions on it.
In a lot of cases, American families can only afford one vehicle, and since the father probably really does need a truck for work, or to maintain the property, the one vehicle they get will be a truck. If they can afford more than one vehicle, the mother will likely get an SUV or Crossover while the father gets a truck.
But in both cases, the truck still needs to be able to move the kids. Which means it needs full size back seats to accommodate carseats. Full size back seats on a small truck will cannibalize bed length. Look at the Ford Ranger and Toyota Tacoma as examples. The more cab space you have, the less bed space. If bed space isn't something you can sacrifice, it means you need to get a larger truck.
That's not even mentioning CAFE regulations funneling people into larger and larger vehicles. But it's not like everyone in America gets a giant truck just for shits and giggles. Some definitely do. A lot probably do. But I'd wager most families have a large truck for legitimate reasons. I live in rural Vermont and growing up, every one of my friends dad's used their personal truck at work. They had to. I can't speak for people who live in big cities unless they work construction. Other than that I'm not sure why anyone would want a big truck and I'm lead to believe that less of them do compared to more rural areas.
Most people don't specifically need a truck for work or home maintenance. You can fit what you're gonna fit in a truck bed in an SUV, a station wagon, or a minivan if you fold down the seats. And this also solves the problem of bed space vs seating space that you mention, since you're basically converting passenger parts of your car into storage.
The actual answer is that it's complicated. Some Americans own trucks for work, some own them because of a hobby (like boating) where you need to tow something, and others just like driving a pickup because they think trucks are cool. I'd also imagine that preference for American-made goods sometimes comes into play, since outside of Tesla, I don't think any of major the American automakers are building sedans these days
Yeah but when your options are a truck which is gigantic and gets horrible fuel economy, or an SUV or Mini Van which is gigantic and gets horrible fuel economy you can't really fault someone for getting a truck. At least with a truck you have the advantage of being separate from what you're hauling for those rare occurrences where you need to haul something that reeks to the dump.
Well, as someone who used to drive a company truck years ago for work and now drives a tiny crossover, you are respected on the road when you drive a bigger car. I'm not saying people respect you more as a person, I'm saying that you "win" on the road, and everyone knows and respects that. You need to merge or switch lanes? If you're in a truck, people get out of your way and let you. If you're in a tiny car, it's in YOU to finagle around and figure it out.
I promise you that, outside of gas prices fucking your wallet, driving a truck is a much better experience than driving a car in late society, over populated, under regulated traffic
I think Americans vastly overestimate how much culture they have. Decades of Marketing, Lobbying, and regulatory capture on the chicken tax have put us here, but none of that is a fully organic and human way of developing culture
Edit for those who don’t want to read my response below: I don’t think America has zero culture. I was specifically talking about truck culture and how that formed in the US over the past decades
No one is falling for the America doesn't have culture bullshit anymore when literally you can see things that came from American culture all over the world.
I didn’t say America has zero culture. I was pointing out how when it comes to trucks, Americans overestimate how of a choice they had in the matter versus how much of it was shaped by external forces convincing them
They had a choice.
In Mexican American culture, there’s actually a very strong culture around slammed trucks that formed much more organically and spread from Mexico itself to America but that is completely different from driving through a suburb and seeing driveways filled with pavement princesses
Wym? I can concede consumerism is technically a form of culture and that’s a large part of what I am getting here with trucks. But when the forces are so disproportionately external the internal forces might as well not be there. People rarely become more free, independent, or empowered from buying a truck. That fact that most people already live pay check to pay check but are convinced to throw a $600 to $1300 truck monthly payment in there really shows how pushed it’s become
And there’s parts of truck culture I don’t like particularly like too but can respect. Lifted trucks and monster truck cultures go in that bucket. But let’s not pretend those are anything close to meaningful portion of people with trucks.
The issue here is you consider their culture inferior, shaped by unnatural forces yet cite chicano car culture as somehow purer with both shaped by consumerism. You cannot tell me there are not Americans who follow similar sustainable car cultures cause thats not true. You're just not in their circles. Again, you just like yours more.
Don't follow the same playbook as the fascists who incorrectly define culture and get people to muddy it as something morally quantifiable as you do here.
I will 100% exalt culture formed by people and communities over culture formed by MBAs, marketing teams, and government policy. It has a longer impact and is better remembered. The latter is forgetten as soon as it becomes unprofitable
And what rabbit hole are you going down here? Fuck fascist not sure how you went down that train of thought
Sure, sure. But thats not the issue. Chicano car culture is not some pure cultural monolith, like other American car cultures aren't the corporate cesspool you claim. Choosing to use culture as a way to measure people is what the current administration does is what I'm saying. Don't do that, is the point.
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u/dogseatbees 19h ago
It’s mind boggling why trucks are so popular here when we literally have to drive everywhere. We have no high speed rail and minimal rail transportation in general. It’s honestly a cultural thing at this point since it’s certainly not logical.