[auiya]

Practical?! Have you ever tried loading heavy objects into a truck bed that's 4.5 feet off the ground? There's literally no utilitarian use for them at this point even in agricultural settings, much less the urban and suburban landscapes where they typically plague. What ever happened to the small truck? Much easier to load, much less of a road hazard/nuisance.

For me it's the increasingly large size of all trucks which have made them hugely inconvenient, and frankly dangerous, to circumnavigate. You know how you feel when you get boxed in by a couple tractor trailers on the freeway? That's how everyone else in reasonably sized vehicles feels driving around your truck. There are way more blind spots involving the modern truck compared to other cars which present a danger to everyone else on the road, I don't care what kind of whizz-bang "safety" cameras you have. And you also create blind spots for everyone else who can't see around your absurdly bloated truck in places like parking lots and passing lanes.

It's a safety and practicality issue which goes beyond the "you don't need that" mentality, there's legitimate reasons for people to NOT like them.

[Kerrick]

> There's literally no utilitarian use for them at this point even in agricultural settings

That... What?!

At the local MFA, when buying feed or fertilizer, you back your vehicle up to the warehouse-style loading dock, where the raised floor of the storage facility is about the height of the average truck bed off the road height. When I buy things in my sedan and load them into the trunk, I either have to drop them off from a great height, or take them down a small set of stairs. When people buy in a truck, the employees use a forklift to put the pallet directly into the truck bed.

At the farm, it's not uncommon to have a tractor with a front end loader either with a bucket to dump things into the pickup bed, or a set of pallet forks for loading/unloading solid or bagged objects.

How can you _possibly_ say that there's "literally no utilitarian use" for truck beds in agricultural settings?

[auiya]

When you have to have specialized machinery to load/unload a vehicle, that makes it wholly impractical for personal use. This is what purpose-built moving equipment is for, not personal mobility vehicles.

[jrsj]

Yes but I’m 6’3” so it’s not particularly difficult for me. And mine is from 2012 & I don’t think it’s quite that high off the ground. I see trucks that are lifted significantly far less often than I see midsize trucks (& obviously full size that are similar to the height of my own)

That being said they are generally unnecessarily large now & at this point midsize trucks are more than capable enough for most people. I think they mainly buy full size trucks for roomier cabs and more luxury features at this point

[auiya]

I don't know your age, but the fact that they're putting grab bars and foldable stair steps to get into a truck bed should tell you all you need to know about their practicality and incurrence of unnecessary back strain.