[toomuchtodo]

You Don't Need a Full-Size Pickup Truck, You Need a Cowboy Costume - https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-siz... - March 15th, 2019

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42638394 - January 2025

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21631704 - November 2019

Ray Delahanty | CityNerd: Rural Cosplay is, Unfortunately, A Thing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q_BE5KPp18

(Americans buy trucks out of emotion and cosplay, not realized utility and rational TCO, based on the evidence and data)

[jcgrillo]

I'm shopping for a truck atm because I need one. I am pretty routinely overloading the towing capacity of my Land Cruiser, and a decent flatbed pickup would obviate the need to hook up the trailer most of the time. Being able to tow/haul 3-4cord of firewood logs in one go would be super convenient, I'll use that capability at least once per year.

And if you're thinking "why not just rent?" I'll ask when was the last time you saw an equipment trailer rental with a winch capable of hauling logs up onto it?

Paradoxically, at least in the context of this thread, my motivation to own a truck is safety and efficiency. A 12 valve Cummins pulling the GCVWR of a 1994-1998.5 3/4 ton Dodge will get right around 10mpg and do it safely.

[toomuchtodo]

I admit there are many of you out there, and have no problem with folks who need a truck for truck use cases. That's what trucks are for. I take issue with those buying them for non rational use cases (status, etc), "Pavement Princess" vehicle duty cycles.

[Aurornis]

> Americans buy trucks out of emotion and cosplay

This is a hilarious take for anyone who has spent any time living outside of a big city.

Yes, there are some people who buy trucks because they want one but don’t actually use the truck features.

Generalizing to “Americans are cosplaying” is just trolling.

[toomuchtodo]

Study Claims That Most Pickup Truck Owners Don’t Actually Use Them For Truck Stuff - September 2023

https://www.powernationtv.com/post/most-pickup-truck-owners-...

https://www.axios.com/ford-pickup-trucks-history

[Aurornis]

You’re spamming this same study throughout the thread without realizing that is uses a different and much stricter definition of “hauling” than the average person.

[masklinn]

This demonstrating the average person is an idiot who never needed a truck because their “hauling” can be done with a sedan or even a compact car.

Which is rather the point.

[15155]

Could it be possible that while you can cram something in the backseat of a car, a truck bed might result in less damage to vehicle interiors and the object being moved?

[masklinn]

It's a tool not a baby. Are you buying vehicles several times the price and encumberance because you can't fold down the rear seats and lay down some tarp?

[kristo]

And more damage to the roads, society, the cities, and the neighborhood children you can’t see

[kortilla]

From that own study it shows more than half are using it at least “occasionally” for “hauling”.

I’d like to see the study on what percentage of people use all 4 seats in their car so you can dunk on people who buy 4 seaters next.

[master-lincoln]

You make it sound like it would be unreasonable to dunk on people wasting our society resources. Why not hit on people driving 4 seat cars when they drive alone most of the time? If it affects me it should be normal that I voice an opinion. Those cars use public space, roads, bridges that are affected more the heavier your car is. That also drives up the motor power needed which in turn increases public air pollution.

[kortilla]

Electric cars weigh far more than a gas Toyota Corolla. You don’t want to go down that path

[master-lincoln]

Why do I not want to go down that path? Of course I do. It's a trade-off.

[troupo]

> This is a hilarious take for anyone who has spent any time living outside of a big city.

People outside of big city need big trucks about as often as people in the city.

Source: lived in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina.

Living outside of big city doesn't mean you're immediately a farmer who needs to haul tons of forage or lumber. The absolute vast majority of people don't.

[giraffe_lady]

I live in a big city and two children under 10 have been killed by large pickup trucks within a half mile of my home in the last five years. Two that I know of anyway, because I'm acquainted with the families. One had been modified with a "bull bar" making it more dangerous to pedestrians.

And 80% of americans live in urban areas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullbar

[Ray20]

>based on the evidence and data >Evidence and data show that cake taste better than bread, why are they starving? Let them eat cake

I really wonder what kind of world people live in who write such articles and what kind of world people live in who seriously read them. It's hard to believe that they live among us, there must be some separate island in the ocean or something like that where they can write their articles in complete isolation from the rest of the world.

[toomuchtodo]

Ehh, vehicle affordability rapidly accelerating away as the middle class evaporates solves the problem if people can’t make financially rational choices themselves. As of this comment, the average price of a new full-size pickup truck is around $64,000, while the average price of a new mid-size pickup truck is about $42,690. This is before tariff impacts are baked in. Doesn’t include operating costs (fuel, insurance, maintenance), putting monthly payments around $1k/month (at least). Let them drive studio apartments around I suppose, if they can get financed and not repo’d in the near term.

Would you cry for me if I wanted a Lambo but couldn’t afford it? You would not. This is different? Everyone is entitled to wildly conspicuous consumption? I argue no.

[Ray20]

>affordability rapidly accelerating away as the middle class evaporates solves the problem

But that complete bs. Vehicle affordability is not in any danger, average price of a new pickus trucks depends on the amount of money the population has. Even if the middle class completely disappears, people will just drive cheaper pickups.

>Would you cry for me if I wanted a Lambo but couldn’t afford it?

But they could. And that the reason why "the average price of a new full-size pickup truck is around $64,000"

[toomuchtodo]

> But they could. And that the reason why "the average price of a new full-size pickup truck is around $64,000"

Car Repos Hit Levels Unseen Since 2008 Financial Crisis - https://www.pymnts.com/transportation/2025/car-repos-hit-lev... - March 27th, 2025

Late Car Payments Hit Highest Rate in More Than 30 Years - https://www.pymnts.com/loans/2025/late-car-payments-hit-high... - March 6th, 2025

St Louis Fed FRED: Average Amount Financed for New Car Loans at Finance Companies - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DTCTLVENANM

I’ll see if I have access to the Cox Automotive pickup truck specific repo stats as soon as I’m not mobile. Based on the auto loan delinquency and repo rates, the evidence is fairly robust that people cannot afford these price levels. They get off the lot with the vehicle, certainly, that’s super easy due to easy credit, but then the clock starts ticking on when the car gets repo’d.

(~100M Americans are sub 700 FICO subprime, 33-40% of consumers depending on credit reporting agency providing the data)

[monkeyelite]

> Americans buy trucks out of emotion and cosplay,

You don't need anything besides tent and food!

Every person buys almost everything for emotion.

[jakelazaroff]

Sure, but large trucks come with a ton of very negative externalities.

[monkeyelite]

The original comment is just about how "irrational" it is.

And truck owners pay more - for the vehicle, for tires, for registration, for gas, etc which are all taxed by the public to reflect their greater usage of public roads.

You would need to argue that trucks have a disproportionate impac. For example, if I commute 2 hours to work in an Accord, is that a greater negative externality than owning a Truck a commuting 15 minutes?

I suspect the answer is no - a truck is some small multiple of a smaller vehicle.

What I see in this thread is that the narrow demographic here is merely expressing a preference - they don't like trucks, and they wish that could be imposed on others. Ultimately, you need to convince your fellow men in an election.

[amarshall]

Small multiplier, I think not.

Pickup trucks weigh about 1.5x as much as a sedan (comparing Camry to F150). Due to the fourth power law, they should be taxed about 5 times higher than a sedan simply for road maintainence. I don’t have the numbers, but I doubt that is so. Toll roads typically charge per axle, and as below, gas tax is probably only about 2x. Ironically, EVs should pay more tax for maintenance since they are usually quite a bit heavier—though the OP truck is still ~600 lb lighter than an F150.

Fuel economy is about half in a pickup vs. a sedan, so they pollute that much more. Gas tax obviously scales here, but do the other taxes? Does gas tax go towards remedying the pollution impact at all? I don’t know.

Then there’s the safety impact on pedestrians and other vehicles. I don’t have numbers here, sorry.

[jakelazaroff]

Also, if you consider the externalities of cars in general, there's the additional issue of designing our communities around them rather than around the people who live there.

This quote is kinda a meme by now but here's SimCity lead designer Stone Librande on how the team had to make parking lots unrealistically small for the game to be enjoyable [1]:

> When I started measuring out our local grocery store, which I don't think of as being that big, I was blown away by how much more space was parking lot rather than actual store. That was kind of a problem, because we were originally just going to model real cities, but we quickly realized there were way too many parking lots in the real world and that our game was going to be really boring if it was proportional in terms of parking lots.

[1] https://archive.ph/z7hZG#selection-753.65-753.506

[wyre]

If you spend any time looking at parking lots on satellite maps you quickly realize parking lots are nearly always at least twice as large as the building they are for.

[monkeyelite]

> Due to the fourth power law, they should be taxed about 5 times higher than a sedan simply for road maintainence.

In this model wouldn’t 18 wheelers dominate and it doesn’t matter what personal vehicles do?

[amarshall]

Indeed a max-load trailer truck is equivalent to 10,000 cars in road wear. However the benefit of them (since they transport goods for many) is somewhat outweighed. Regardless, that doesn’t obviate taxing personal vehicles at all, nor heavier vehicles more than lighter ones. Some quick searching shows there are about 60x more personal vehicles than trailer trucks in the U.S.

[toomuchtodo]

Right, carbon emissions, excess deaths incurred on others, etc.

[kortilla]

This is one of the dumbest takes I’ve seen on trucks. It attacks a straw man.

If you buy something for one of its features and don’t use the others, it doesn’t have anything to do with cosplay.

This is like saying people who buy electric cars should just buy race car driver costumes instead. Unbridled ignorance.

[jakelazaroff]

Most race cars aren't electric though? That analogy makes no sense.

If you buy a product that comes with a ton of negative externalities and then don't use the single feature that distinguishes it from other products, people will rightly judge you.

[modernpacifist]

> Most race cars aren't electric though? That analogy makes no sense.

No, they aren't. I attend a significant amount of track events as a driver and I will see maybe 1 electic car every few events. Besides the lack of charging infrastrucutre at most race tracks, the one positive of instant torque/power is significantly outweighed by their overall mass and significant heat generation.

The latter tends to result in a Tesla S being unable to last more than 20 minutes at Laguna Seca or Sonoma before the battery pack overheats and reduces power output requiring the car to exit the track.

[kortilla]

Electric cars have great acceleration. According to this thread that’s just pointless cosplay.

[modernpacifist]

The comparison breaks down since, in race car terms, the great acceleration isn’t enough to offset the negatives that make electric cars poor race cars. So in a sense it is pointless cosplay. Even the acceleration might be working against itself since the great acceleration comes at the cost of the battery pack expending more energy, contributing to heat build up.

This isn’t to say the heat problem couldn’t be managed, but one of the biggest issues with race cars generally is heat management so starting from a platform with a unique and significant heat problem isn’t ideal. Then the weight and overall longevity of the battery pack comes into play.

To tout the acceleration without discussing the drawbacks involved in delivering it or the practicalities of leveraging it suggests that it’s such a great feature that the drawbacks either don’t exist or don’t matter.

[jakelazaroff]

They also produce no tailpipe emissions and tend to have a lower carbon footprint, more storage space, a quieter cabin, no "hump" for the driveshaft, etc. There are lots of reasons you might choose an electric car other than the acceleration.

On the other hand, a truck's single distinguishing feature is the bed.

[pixelpoet]

> Unbridled ignorance.

Ironically, I don't think ignorance means what you think it means. It simply means not knowing something; it's not, for example, an attitude in itself.

[kortilla]

It means exactly what I think. This dunk on truck drivers based on seeing them in the city is ignorance. Trucks are multimodal. Seeing them in one mode does not mean they aren’t used for another.