Comment by b40d-48b2-979e
17 hours ago
A *working* truck should be max utility.
All trucks should be working trucks. There is no reason to drive something that large and heavy that isn't better served by smaller vehicles that don't damage our shared infrastructure while being safer to drive.
Oh sure, but look at the vast popularity of these monstrosities that never even see gravel. I get how you (and I) find that abhorrent, but there's clearly LOTS of folks that find a blinged out useless luxury pretend truck to be very attractive.
I was in the market for a pickup recently. I had wanted to like the Cybertruck, but ... too damn ugly, too version 0.3, too many dweebs driving them, too many teething issues even for a first cut. Plus it's as heavy as an F-250. There's almost no actual reason to grab one besides it being electric. Since I drive so little, I'd never pay back the embedded energy it takes to make the thing - so even that isn't a selling point.
So instead I got a used Tacoma, and disappeared into the ocean of Tacomas that exist here in the PNW. It could be worse :)
Trucks don't have to see gravel to be working trucks.
If you use a truck for work purposes once a year it is likely cheaper to just drive a truck for everything than have a second car. Don't say rent a truck is an option - you probably can't rent a truck for most work purposes - most rentals have fine print against that, even if you can find a place to rent a truck the cost quickly gets to more than just owning your own truck.
Are you in the US? Most Home Depot locations will rent you one of several sizes of work truck for as low as $20 for a quick there-and-back of 75 minutes, or ~$100-200 for a day. I understand Lowe’s to do something similar. U-Haul does trucks.
And if your needs are more ambitious, there’s Sunbelt Rentals through much of the country and Enterprise’s Trucks arm as opposed to their more consumer-familiar operation.
If I’m using it once a year, I’ll splurge for a bigass 1 ton 4x4 which Enterprise Trucks is currently listing for $139 a day including 150 miles… and in 100 years, have spent the $13,900 difference between a dweeby little smarte car and owning my own pickup
Not that there’s the least thing wrong with just preferring to own one, just options that I wish I’d known about earlier in life.
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What? I regularly rent a Lowe's truck when I need one (tends to be every year or two) to move mulch, furniture, whatever. I don't understand this take.
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U-Haul rents work trucks and vans meant to be haulers and rented out specifically for hauling.
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It's a lot cheaper to rent a trailer.
I hope someone fully capitalizes on what Edison is trying to do up in Canada.
That is a fully electric drive train hybrid. That way you can charge it at home and charge it with a generator under use. Problem is our current laws are making certifications a mess.
> Oh sure, but look at the vast popularity of these monstrosities that never even see gravel.
Normal-sized pickups aren't meant for offroading.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/opinion/marie-gluesenkamp...:
> It’s all but impossible to go into any rural bar in America today, ask for thoughts on pickup trucks and not hear complaints about the size of trucks these days, about touch-screens and silly gimmicks manufacturers use to justify their ballooning prices. Our economy, awash in cheap capital, has turned quality used trucks into something like a luxury asset class.
> It’s often more affordable in the near-term to buy a new truck than a reliable used one. Manufacturers are incentivized by federal regulations, and by the basic imperatives of the thing economy, to produce ever-bigger trucks for ever-higher prices to lock people into a cycle of consumption and debt that often lasts a lifetime.
> This looks like progress, in G.D.P. figures, but we are rapidly grinding away the freedom and agency once afforded by the ability to buy a good, reasonable-size truck that you could work on yourself and own fully. You can learn a lot about why people feel so alienated in our economy if you ask around about the pickup truck market.
> Instead, the authors of “White Rural Rage” consulted data and an expert to argue that driving a pickup reflects a desire to “stay atop society’s hierarchy,” but they do not actually try to reckon much with the problem that passage raises — that consumer choices, such as buying trucks, have become a way for many Americans to express the deep attachment they have to a life rooted in the physical world. A reader might conclude that people who want a vehicle to pull a boat or haul mulch are misguided, or even dangerous. And a party led by people who believe that is doomed among rural voters, the Midwestern working class and probably American men in general.
> This approach to politics governed by data and experts is what we mean when we talk about technocracy. It’s a system that no longer really functions today because the broad societal trust that once allowed data and experts to guide political choices has broken down. Democrats, increasingly, live in a world where data and researchers convincingly show that low-wage immigration raises the economy and our gun laws are reckless and misguided.
> A reader might conclude that people who want a vehicle to pull a boat or haul mulch are misguided, or even dangerous.
How about I just conclude that while pulling a boat or hauling mulch are completely OK things to want a vehicle for (*), one does not need a F150 with a front end that reaches my chest and has gas mileage to prove it.
As many have noted, pickups like the 90s Toyotas did these things just fine for almost everyone, but most US based manufacturers have stopped making them.
Me noting that doesn't make me part of the doom of the political party I always vote for.
(*) to the extent that we live in a society where private ownership of vehicles is completely unremarkable, that is. And we do, for the foreseeable future.
The Tacoma is the modern equivalent of the 90s Toyota, and while it is certainly bigger, it is not that much bigger.
Also, there are a lot of boats, RVs and trailers which my 2019 Tacoma absolutely would not have towed successfully.
> How about I just conclude that while pulling a boat or hauling mulch are completely OK things to want a vehicle for (*), one does not need a F150 with a front end that reaches my chest and has gas mileage to prove it.
Did you miss like the entire first half of the quoted passage? Because it kinda sounds like you're judging the people buying the trucks.
One buys from the options the market gives them, and the market often does not optimize for what consumers want. It optimizes for barely tolerable products that maximize profit.
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The Santa Cruz is about the same size as a Santa Fe and weighs less.
The Ford Maverick is a smaller vehicle but also a truck. It is a working truck for some, and a rec/handyman vehicle for others.
A Maverick is hardly a working truck. It's got the same towing capacity of an older Kia Sportage. It's got front wheel drive (or awd). It's a car with a bed, not a truck.
I don't get this attitude. Everyone criticizes auto companies for not making a small truck anymore, and then Ford comes out with the Maverick and then you say it doesn't have enough towing capacity. It can tow 4000 lbs. That covers a whole lot of use cases. It also has a payload capacity of 1500 lbs which is quite respectable for a small truck. As for FWD vs. RWD, who cares? How does that affect your ability to move things around?
Really the only thing I think you can ding it for is the small bed. It used to be that trucks this size would have a regular cab or an extended cab with the two tiny side facing seats, and they would have a longer bed. With the tailgate down you can still move sheet goods with a Maverick though.
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A BMW i3 is a body-on-frame rear-wheel-drive vehicle, but I don't think anyone would call it a "truck without a bed, not a car".
Ford calls it a truck. Ask a random person on the street, and they'll say it is a small truck.
I've seen plenty of people in working clothes driving them, carrying working tools and such.
Also called a Ute, which is fine! It avoids the weight and height that makes trucks dangerous vehicles to operate in a society.
> It's got the same towing capacity of an older Kia Sportage.
How often do you need to pull 2000kg?
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There are different sized trucks for different purposes. A Maverick or Kei truck is lighter and safer than a lot of cars on the road while being way more useful.
Maverick has a tiny bed (4.5 foot) whereas kei trucks can have up to 7 foot beds. I really wish we did small trucks with bigger beds here in North America. Really all I want is a hilux champ.
Tragedy of the commons.
This is a tragedy of an awful taste.
Tragedy of not having better regulations. The commons don't have anything to do with it.
Some of the motivations to get vehicles like that, like being up higher than everyone and having more mass in a collision, are solidly tragedy of the commons.
The reason is personal preference. Same reason people buy sports cars. I also wish their preferences were different
Reply to the sibling comment about little to no negative externalities:
Sports cars sure do have negative externalities. I live next to a custom car mod shop in the boonies. People hoon around here like there's no one else alive. They put my life and the lives of my family at risk on the regular. That is most definitely a negative externality.
Sports cars largely don't have any of the negative externalities of trucks.
Their fuel consumption is about the same, what externalities are you referring to?
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No, you just don’t dislike them enough to find them.
HN has hated Trucks and American cars, except when Tesla came out, for as long as I’ve been here. Same with Reddit.
It's pretty funny how much truck rage there is here.
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In the same line of thinking we wouldn't be able to do anything for fun at all, since our very presence increases the living cost for everyone else. When we stand in the same line for ice cream, you're making it take longer to get mine, especially if you also have kids. Should kids be allowed in line for ice cream? They've made our shared line take longer and our shared source of ice cream more expensive.
This is a modern society in which we must live and let live. That core value of tolerance, which preserves our personal freedoms, deserves to be weighed as much and more than our shared infrastructure, imo.