Anyone remember light pickups? I had one of the last Nissan hardbody trucks, and I loved that darned thing. I abused the heck out of it and it lasted forever. There’s nothing really like it now. Supposedly the rebooted Toyota Stout will be in this range, but I suspect it won’t really be the same kind of truck.
There’s some funky high tariff on light duty pick ups, that killed importing them.
25% - thanks lobbyists and purchased politicians.
When I was riding, I had a Chevy S10 and a fold-up trailer that I could haul up to 4 motorcycles with, looked like the small truck on the left.
I can’t even imagine trying yo use one of today’s trucks to accomplish the same thing. It would be a nightmare.
These things are marketed to carry people and stuff, and they’re bad at both.
I think that any Vic exempt form CAFE standards or protected from import competition by huge terifs, should require a commercial license to operate. Give the automakers a choice, sell the vehicle outside of their special safe space, or shrink the market that can buy it drasticaly.
or protected from import competition by huge terifs
Europe never opened their chicken market.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
The Chicken Tax is a 25 percent tariff on light trucks (and originally on potato starch, dextrin, and brandy) imposed in 1964 by the United States under President Lyndon B. Johnson in response to tariffs placed by France and West Germany on importation of U.S. chicken.[1] The period from 1961 to 1964[2] of tensions and negotiations surrounding the issue was known as the “Chicken War”, taking place at the height of Cold War politics.[3]
Eventually, the tariffs on potato starch, dextrin, and brandy were lifted,[4] but since 1964 this form of protectionism has remained in place to give US domestic automakers an advantage over imported competitors.[5] Though concern remains about its repeal,[6][7] a 2003 Cato Institute study called the tariff “a policy in search of a rationale.”[4]
Largely because of post–World War II intensive chicken farming and accompanying price reductions, chicken, once internationally synonymous with luxury, became a staple food in the U.S.[12] Prior to the early 1960s, not only had chicken remained prohibitively expensive in Europe, but it had also remained a delicacy.[13] With imports of inexpensive chicken from the U.S., chicken prices fell quickly and sharply across Europe, radically affecting European chicken consumption.[13] In 1961, per capita chicken consumption rose up to 23% in West Germany.[13] U.S. chicken captured nearly half of the imported European chicken market.[13]
Subsequently, the Dutch accused the U.S. of dumping chickens at prices below cost of production.[13] The French government banned U.S. chicken and raised concerns that hormones could affect male virility.[13] German farmers’ associations accused U.S. poultry firms of fattening chicken artificially with arsenic.[13]
Coming on the heels of a “crisis in trade relations between the U.S. and the Common Market,”[13] Europe moved ahead with tariffs, intending that they would encourage Europe’s postwar agricultural self-sufficiency.[14] European markets began setting chicken price controls.[13] France introduced the higher tariff first, persuading West Germany to join them—even while the French hoped to win a larger share of the profitable German chicken market after excluding U.S. chicken.[3] Europe adopted the Common Agricultural Policy, imposing minimum import prices on all imported chicken and nullifying prior tariff bindings and concessions.
Beginning in 1962, the U.S. accused Europe’s Common Market of unfairly restricting imports of American poultry. By August 1962, U.S. exporters had lost 25% of their European chicken sales.[13] Losses to the U.S. poultry industry were estimated at $26—$28 million[3] (equivalent to $251.53—$270.88 million in 2022).
TTIP came probably as close as things have been, but ran into opposition from European poultry farmers again.
There are way too many pavement princesses where I live.
Big ass truck
Used for one person to go to their office job and back home.
Maybe 1/100 of them actually are used for actual truck tasks and they’re not the massive ones
My sedan has seen more dirt roads than most of these trucks combined
Serious question: are people actually posting on Tumblr enough for us to make memes?
Those Ford rangers were death traps back then.
I to sometimes feel like I am cosplaying as a man too. I’m not trans, it’s just about being an “adult” whatever that means. But I am just a mushy little whiny thing inside of a robust outer shell.
Oh man I saw a pair of tiny trucks like those at the junkyard made. Made me sad, they were gutted for parts.
I love comments criticizing trucks from Lemmy users who haven’t seen sunshine or touched grass in a year.
Do any kind of outdoor activity, maintain a property or mild home renovation on the regular with your sedans and we’ll see how long it takes before they look beat to shit or have mechanical issues.
I’ve had a home for 10 years and done all of these things without a truck. My cars are in great condition. Sounds like a capability issue.
Not to mention you can rent a truck from Menards if you do get . . . something . . . that you need a pick-up truck to haul for 29.95 for 90 minutes.
mY pIcKuP cAn FiT sO mUcH
Alright, so first you didn’t read the post. It’s about two trucks with the same bed size. However, one of the trucks is pointlessly large, to the point that it’s actually harder to use it to haul things since the bed height is so much higher. A truck with a lower bed is easier to load.
Second, the vast majority of trucks are never used for anything a sedan can’t do. If your bed liner doesn’t have any scratches, you could have saved a lot of money and CO2 with a sedan. Hell, if you do need the cargo capacity a van (including a mini-van) can haul more cargo than a truck. A truck’s advantage is that it can carry oversized loads, not a lot of cargo.
Third, if you do occasionally need a truck or other cargo carrying vehicle, it’s probably cheaper to rent one the few times you need it. The amount of extra you’re paying in gas and everything else will almost certainly outpace the price of a rental a few times a year it’s needed.
Obviously there’s still some use cases for a truck. The smaller one will be better though, and 99.9999% of US truck owners don’t fit this group.
Implying the majority of owners of those oversized things do any of those activities
I own a farm, and all the other farmers I know around here are so pissed with this new culture of people just buying them as a status symbol. The prices have doubled and they no longer make basic trucks for work. Almost impossible to get one that’s not got every electronic gadget on it. We don’t need heated seats and electric windows or fucking massage chairs built in. We need something that can haul stock trailers and flatbed rollers. It’s insanity. I blame all these people who pay 100k for a dually and never use it for what it’s intended for.
Farmer here as well. We use our truck. A lot. It’s the only vehicle we have and it’s 16 years old. It badly needs replacing but instead we keep repairing because of the extreme cost of a new one. It’s way beyond our reach and we won’t go into debt for it. Canada (where we live) just passed a bill that all new vehicles will be electric by 2035. That’s going to fuck us even further.
This post isn’t criticizing trucks. It’s criticizing the oversized modern one’s that aren’t any better at work than the much smaller ones of the past.
While I agree that pavement princesses are stupid, saying:
oversized modern one’s that aren’t any better at work than the much smaller ones of the past
is either very disingenuous or ignorant.
The image calls out towing and compares something like a Daihatsu Hi-Jet with a Chevrolet Silverado 1500.
In the are where I live, if you’re building a retaining wall you might bring a skid loader such as the Kubota SVL65. Weighing in at 3840kg (8465 lbs), the kei truck couldn’t pull that with its meager towing capacity of 600kg (1323 lbs). Meanwhile, the lowest 2023 Silverado 1500 has a towing capacity of 4309kg (9,500 lbs).
A popular block used for retaining walls here is 40x30x6cm (16x12x6in) & 37kg (82 lbs). The Hi-Jet can haul 9 blocks in its bed, or about 13 in a trailer. Meanwhile, the Silverado could haul 23 blocks in its bed, or over two full 48-block pallets towed on a trailer.
a 1995 1500 could tow that as well and it didn’t have to be a pedestrian crushing monstrosity to do it or have a dinky 6’ bed. Just look at the 3rd picture in the OP to see what I mean.
Do any kind of outdoor activity, maintain a property or mild home renovation on the regular with your sedans and we’ll see how long it takes before they look beat to shit or have mechanical issues.
Been using my Leaf to maintain my rural acre for 2 years now and the most beat up looking part of it is where my goats jumped on it the first time they saw it, and even that’s just a dent in the roof
Have yet to need to rent a truck to do anything major, it’s all been quite easily manageable in my little car. Should I need a bigger truck, I can rent one really easily for the time I need to use it
I bring enough ice fishing gear to over night on the lake in a hut and fit it all with room to spare in a small hatchback. The idea you need a truck to do outdoorsy things is mostly propoganda.
No, it is. I used a Honda Odyssey when I was contracting. Way more room in the back to haul stuff around than a standard pick-up bed.
Yes, because everyone has the exact same use case as you. There can be no other outdoor activities which require more space than a hatchback. /s
There definitely are legitimate use cases for those gigantic trucks, but 90% of people who have those trucks don’t use them for those use cases.
I second the others telling you to go fuck yourself. Go touch some grass instead of trolling on lemmy, or go back to Reddit.
No one hates work trucks. We hate pavement princess. Trucks that are a status symbol, not work vehicles. Notice how the OPs image includes things like “same bed size” - realistically the only different work feature of the original two trucks pictured. Troll better.
Not to bust anyone’s bubble, but you can thank the EPA and their MPG guidelines for all these stupidly huge trucks. Why we can’t have small trucks
I mean, this is a factor I’m sure, but the reality is people want the big trucks. The big trucks sell. That’s the major factor. If this were the real reason the EV trucks would be small, right? Well they’re not, they’re gigantic. You can hava long and wide wheelbase without a 5 person cab, you can have an extended bed. You can have a long and wide wheelbase without a giant front end you can’t see over. The footprint doesn’t mandate a tall, luxurious cab.
Do people want big trucks or have they been manipulated through clever marketing to want big trucks because they’re more profitable for the manufacturers (marketing included)?
So I’ve used huge stupid trucks for work a lot. Bush work. So shitty roads in the middle of nowhere, heavy loads.
Here is what I’ve learned:
The beds are undersized proportionate to their size, so it’s pretty common to put canopies on them, which raises the center of gravity even further than it already is (which is pretty goddamn high). Rollovers are common, and loading the things is in itself hazardous. I’ve loaded a lot of shit in and out of these things, and had a bunch of close calls. It’s a long way to fall, and you’re more likely to fall than in a shorter vehicle.
The build quality is overall pretty bad, so the pillars are huge. Stupid large, which creates really big blindspots where there just don’t need to be.
These trucks aren’t really designed to go off road, so things like traction control tend to really get in the way. That whole system is built off of ABS (which doesn’t work in situations where your traction is limited), and this will effectively kill your power when your tires start to spin. You have to override the default settings of these trucks to get them to work as advertised. It will make you stuck when you don’t need to be.
The high hood is dumb. You have to look far ahead to maintain safety, because the blind spot in front of your truck is huge. Do you know what happens when you’re on a steep climb around sharp corners? You straight up can’t see. The only safe way to go is to get out of the truck and drive from memory. It’s legit fucking stupid.
The blind spots in the rear of the truck is enormous. I’ve driven trucks with empty beds where I can see out the rear view mirror, and I’ve driven trucks with canopies that cover up the rear window. There’s basically no difference in visibility.
“Status symbol”
Every time I see a bro dozer I automatically assume dude’s absolutely drowning in debt and either being propped up by his poor wife or living in a trailer park and 4 months behind on rent.
In my experience, everyone I know that lived in trailers were doing actual work and drove actual work trucks. Everyone I know that lived off parents money and drove to an office and never did a lick of manual work drove the big truck.
This is my observation as well. Most people driving these abominations fairly well-off people from the suburbs, in my experience.
As a European living in a big city I never quite understood just how huge these things are until I finally saw one stuck in traffic in a tiny Parisian street. These things are massive!
i’ve only ever seen VW amaroks, these are already pointlessly huge.
Dude these things struggle to fit in American cities! My mother in law was taking my wife and I to a concert in Chicago and last second we had to change plans and drive our car because hers was too big to park in our reserved parking space. My small crossover which is tiny by rural farming community standards was a tight squeeze. Her truck also took up literally half of our 3.5 car wide driveway (my house is a former rental)
The bed of that stupid thing is about twice as high as the useful one, so you have to lift the cargo twice as high.
You would have to, if you ever used it for work.
bold of you to assume they’re using it for more than their weekly groceries
Aaaaaaah yes, the pavement princess. Drive like they own the streets, but never done a day’s work in their lives
