Cash for clunkers brought an end to the "beater truck" era. All of the cheap used trucks vanished, used truck prices shot up and therefore manufacturers figured out they could raise the price of new trucks.
I still see plenty of large beater trucks on the road. However, the midsized and low frills pickups (read: cheaper) were largely killed by CAFE standards:
http://jalopnik.com/5948172/how-the-government-killed-fuel-e...