Unfortunately, to Americans, that really doesn't matter. Even if they're not as fit for purpose, they prefer pickup trucks to minivans. It's a cultural thing.
(I realize you're probably being responsive to the word "need" - it's more what they claim they need than actually need. They could use a Japanese kei truck.)
I was hearing elsenet from someone who was planning to buy a Japanese kei truck until he borrowed one. Apparently with more than about 300 lb in the bed they feel dangerous to drive- combination of instability and poor braking performance.
Am American. Need work vehicle that can move some stuff that might be fairly big. Minivan is solution. It does the job very well.
If I needed to move more stuff, then the best answer still isn't a pickup truck. It is instead a full-size van (Transit/Express/Sprinter/ProMaster).
Kei trucks seem cool, but they're still trucks. Whatever's in the back is open to the elements, looky-loos, and thieves. Those concerns are greatly diminished with vans.
(A pickup truck with a cap on it that never comes off is a lot like a minivan is, but with more steps.)
Depends on what you're hauling also. I'm not interested in doing my regular trash or recycling runs with a minivan, for example, but most of what I do haul would be fine with a minivan.
The recycling is in inexpensive stacking totes that have lids; the same kind of totes I sometimes pack in tight for cross-country jaunts. They stay stacked and they don't leak.
Food waste gets composted outside ("it's old, get rid of it"), or goes down the garbage disposal ("i'm just trying to prep dinner here, not save the world"), or frozen in a grocery bag for later trash runs (meat and grease that doesn't want to go down the drain or be composted).
The bagged trash that accumulates here is essentially just non-recyclable plastics that are dry, and an occasional small bag of frozen food waste. This stuff does not leak between home and the dumpster at the shop.
And, I mean: Why not? It's just a car, and before being in the car these things were inside of my house (which is a far more valuable and permanent thing to me).
The venn diagram overlap between people who say "but minivans" and who hand wring hard enough to start a fire when someone has the gall to actually put 2000lb of stuff in a minivan or put a butt in every seat is too close to a circle for my liking.
Also minivan owner. In terms of weight, it's pretty similar to a RAM 1500 in its ability to handle the gravity of its contents. I regularly move about a thousand pounds of stuff across the country without any issues.
I wouldn't expect it to work with 8 full-sized American adults over that kind of distance: The adults would kill eachother, removing load as it happens. But it seems fine for quick trips in town.
Being enclosed, as it is, does suck for moving things like sofas, but: On the rare occasion that I have needed to move a sofa, truck owners have always lined up to demonstrate the superiority of their road-going machines.
(And that's all fine. I didn't want to move the sofa by myself, anyway.)
(I realize you're probably being responsive to the word "need" - it's more what they claim they need than actually need. They could use a Japanese kei truck.)