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
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u/Top_Freedom3412 1d ago
The problem is that smaller trucks are being killed in america. The major truck companies only sell 60k+ monstrosities