Comment by PaulHoule
1 day ago
To be fair, a lot of farms need a big-ass pickup truck because they are always towing horses to go to shows or trailheads. We have 70 beautiful acres and a network of trails my wife built that were inspired by Het Vondelpark in Amsterdam. [1] If everything goes right we trailer in a horse once and never have to trailer it out although some horses don't fit in or have to go to the vet.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vondelpark
The Fit, however, is really genius. It's got the utility of an SUV in the body of a compact. I can't believe Honda's excuse that it wasn't selling -- in my area it is a running gag that if you have a blue Fit somebody will park another blue Fit next to you at the supermarket or that it makes a great getaway car, if somebody catches you doing donuts in their lawn you can say it musta been somebody elese.
If the grocery store parking lot is any indication, farming is the number one profession in America. All farmers can have their big trucks and still regulate out the other 99% of the 22-foot monsters used to commute to offices.
Comments like these are rooted in selection bias (willful or otherwise).
You're never gonna see trucks being used at the grocery store because people who are in the process of using said truck for truck stuff aren't usually stopping at the grocery store as they do it, and this is before you adjust for what kind of grocery stores HN shops at vs the kind that people who use the crap out of their trucks shop at. If you live the median "suburb to office and back" life you'll never see trucks doing anything. You need to be on the road and not in a cube during hours when "things" get done to see that. And the people who do things with their trucks mostly don't live and cross paths with the people who don't.
I could use the exact same faulty logic you're using here with slightly different parameters and come up with the conclusion that cars don't need a second row of seating.
And before anyone projects anything stupid at me, I own a minivan.
> You're never gonna see trucks being used at the grocery store because people who are in the process of using said truck for truck stuff aren't usually stopping at the grocery store as they do it,
I think you missed the point of the GP post. They were noting the presence of (a lot of) trucks at the grocery store parking lot. Whether they are towing/hauling isn't really the point.
1 reply →
I've found this to be very regional. There are parts of the country where there are a lot fewer trucks and most appear to actually see a meaningful amount of real-truck use. There are other parts where like 40% of the goddamn cars on the road are pristine, bloated modern trucks that are just used as commuter vehicles.
If you're towing a horse trailer you really want the biggest truck you can get or a GMC Suburban or something like that.
On the other hand in the suburbs of some New England towns that I'm sure are full of white collar workers you see nothing but trucks in the driveway and I laugh when I see a Ford F350 with a lift kit and commercial plates idling and see, a few minutes later, a few pencilneck geeks come out of a frat house and climb into it.
depending on the rurality of that part of new england, they might have a legitimate claim to need the ground clearance and 4wd in the winter.
sometimes backroads aren't plowed well. or they. are plowed well and you need to scale a giant snowbank to get into your driveway.
(although my personal preference would be for the industry to make more rally-inspired high-clearance AWD sedans/wagons to fit this niche)
Something I also only really appreciated after spending more time out plains-west in the US, it's dangerous to drive small vehicles because of the average distances and abundance of larger wildlife.
When you're regularly driving 2+ hours one way to a town and a random pronghorn appears in the middle of the road, at night, when you're doing 85 mph... you want to be in something that can take the impact.