[PpEY4fu85hkQpn]

Most Pickup Truck Owners Don’t Actually Do Any Truck Stuff.

> Only 7.0% of truck buyers frequently use their trucks to tow. About 2% of people use their trucks to tow occasionally, while 63% of owners rarely or never tow.

> But at least 28% of owners frequently use their trucks for personal hauling, while 47% of owners occasionally haul. Nearly 32% of owners rarely or never haul personal items.

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/most-pickup-truck-owners-dont-a...

[coderenegade]

These types of stats aren't much good without some measure of criticality. Even if you only rarely use the full functionality of a truck, if it's critical those times you do, it's probably worth owning. It's the same logic used to justify car ownership in areas with good public transportation; you're paying for a capability on demand, even if you're not always using it.

Also, not all trucks are good for towing. Pick-ups/utes are notorious for yielding where the cab meets the chassis, right in front of the bed, because they're designed to take a load in the bed, not at the rear of the vehicle. We don't tow with our truck for that very reason.

[verdverm]

One thing that happens when you own a truck, you get called on to help friends and family move, or pick up an oversized item. I do this a few times a year. Multiple people benefit from my truck ownership.

[SrslyJosh]

U-haul rents pickup trucks for $20 a day plus mileage, and if you want something bigger, they've got it. Your friends and family would get along just fine without your truck ownership.

[verdverm]

That's not really the point

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

For sure. Just having one when you own a home is very handy. Being able to just toss long boards or pipes or large pieces of furniture in the back is great. I really only use my truck for truck related stuff (things I wouldn’t otherwise be able to use a sedan or suv for) perhaps 2-3x a month. But that’s enough to justify owning one. I think even if it was only once every 3 months it would still be justified, since it doesn’t get radically worse mileage than a sedan and I don’t otherwise drive much.

[acdha]

Oh, sure, but that’s a hefty premium to pay if you don’t need it frequently - the $20+k extra people pay for commuter trucks would pay for thousands of truck rental hours, and that’s before you factor in the higher operating costs and insurance.

[sciurus]

Why do you say it's $20k extra? You can get a well-specced new mid-size truck for $35-40k. That's about the same as you'd pay for a mid-size SUV.

[acdha]

Both SUVs and trucks are heavily promoted by the manufacturers due to their higher margins - convincing Americans to pay 10-20% more margin is literally what saved Detroit around the turn of the century. The average midsize truck hit $42k and full size is over $60k, but the median buyer doesn’t need anything a sub-$30k sedan could do at more than a couple of times a year, if that - we didn’t add millions of contractors in the last couple of years and the best selling configurations are designed for luxury and image, not utility.

[rascul]

The numbers are interesting:

> Only 7.0% of truck buyers frequently use their trucks to tow. About 2% of people use their trucks to tow occasionally, while 63% of owners rarely or never tow.

So that's 72% not 100%.

> But at least 28% of owners frequently use their trucks for personal hauling, while 47% of owners occasionally haul. Nearly 32% of owners rarely or never haul personal items.

That accounts for 107% of truck owners.

The rest of the numbers seem to add up well enough though. Not sure if maybe I'm missing something or the author is.