The Onion

Well what if I need to prove my dick is tiny tho?

Dude real shit I work in construction and I can tell you that you don’t even really need a pickup for that either.

I mean it depends what you’re doing ofc but vans are what’s actually used as work vehicles for the most part. And those are generally company vehicles so for personal use you can drive whatever vehicle you want.

Camping, hunting, dirt bike riding, moving, general utility and many other things done by most adults that don't like to rely on other people. I don't want to pay a moving company if I move, I don't want to ask someone else if I want to tow my trailer out to camp. I don't want to call some construction company everytime I need so much as a 2x4 to repair my home. Anyone who doesn't own a truck will at some point rely on someone who does. It is not dumb as shit to own a truck for everyone. Not everyone lives the same life you do. I live in a rural area, I spent 6 months at one point in my life without a truck, I will never do it again. Probably 95% of the time I don't need a truck, but when I need it, I need it. My daily driver is a beater car, most of the time, depending on logistics and weather. But if I had to only have one vehicle it would be a truck. A truck will haul 5 people, so will most cars but a truck can drive through weather and haul things when you need it. Although I am a middle aged dad in a rural area. 🤷‍♂️ I must be dumb.

What if I never transport people? WTF do I need all these extra seats for? A giant grocery cart in the back is much more useful.

I have a crew cab pickup (half ton), and yeah it has come in handy numerous times over the years. But I do agree those larger, “more rugged”, trucks are not for the people who own them.

for real. had a friend with a big relatively-new truck with a stubby bed try to have me help him move. I show up with my 2003 ford ranger, made before trucks primarily became male fashion accessories. he'd teased me about it before because it's apparently a "small truck". yet somehow barely anything fit in his toy truck and my "small" truck handled his couches and mattresses fine. teased him about his truck in return, used the ol "not the size it's how you use it" line, and have never heard him talk shit about my little truck again.

Blame CAFE, the EPA (I like most of the EPA), and the Chicken Tax. Those three have basically made it to where the US can’t get the smaller trucks the rest of the world gets, has a fuel economy loop-hole for larger vehicles, and basically makes it incentivized for companies to make boxier, bigger vehicles in order to lower their average fuel economy standards. Most people I talk to want the ford Ranger from the 2000s brought back in size, but we literally cannot. The closest we got was the maverick (still too big comparatively) and that’s because they gave us a hybrid option and based it off the escape.

I swear their beds are about as long as the one I had in my 1987 Ranger.

So I asked my aunt for help hauling things back and forth to a convention this past spring. She has an enormous Ram pickup, I have a tiny little xB. A lot of the stuff I was bringing was stored in 45 gallon totes, and I knew from past experience that I could fit three in my car with the back seats folded down, and have room for thinner containers on top.

Imagine my surprise when we go to load up the truck and find that it fit the same number of totes in the bed, and they just barely cleared the bed cover. The cavernous back seat helped make up for it thankfully, but I was floored that the cargo areas were comparable.

I've had trucks and now I have a mini cargo van.

90% of the time the van is better, but that last 10% can be a big deal.

Handymen around here drive transporters like this:

You can get them slightly lifted and with AWD, I really don't get how a pickup with an open bed is better than that.

I read somewhere that farmers have started to buy very tiny Japanese pickup-trucks, because for most of the work they have to do during their day these small ones are much more practical. But American car manufacturers only make these oversized mob atrocities anymore, so the only solution is these Japanese ones. In size they're basically these little busses where there's no space between the two front seats.

Most vans have a greater payload than a lot of 4 door duel cabs, they offer more storage, more security，a lower loading floor height, more accessibility with side access and greater resale.

But yeah gotta get my Chevy.

I used to be a tradie, most of them don't need them either, and unsurprisingly, there are always tradies around whining their tools got stolen from the back of their Ute.

The funny thing is that the biggest badasses I met don't drive these kinds of cars. In fact, I can't recall any guy here in Australia who has demonstrated an ounce of courage who does drive a larger ute, and its generally a reliable indicator imho that they need fashion accessories to impress people.

Also yeah, they always suck at parking. Not because they can't, but simply because they don't care

So does everyone else in the road.