Comment by abawany

From my anecdotal experience, here are the main purposes:

* Hauling stuff from the home improvement and warehouse stores. Single family houses are a bit of work depending on age and when they are not, HGTV is the devil's workshop that invents the work.

* Safety: the feeling that regardless of who is at fault, you will live in a car crash. I have seen plenty of sad news reports where in a truck+car collision, the people in the car paid for it with their lives while the truck driver walked away.

* Status: possible - just don't have enough social understanding to know whether this is still a thing. I can imagine a jacked-up F350 or Silverado may be a status symbol.