fwiw I live in a place where everyone owns a pickup (I use mine to plow snow, pull a gravel dump trailer, and to collect large items from Costco) but I never hear of anyone renting a pickup. I'm sure it's possible somehow but I doubt you can just roll into Hertz and sign out an F-250..

At the Hertz down the street from work I can rent a cherry-picker or a forklift if I want (definitely not an airport Hertz). Pretty sure a pickup wouldn’t be asking too much. I’ll check next time I walk by. Me, I just rent my trucks from Home Depot.

Hmm. Around here I can easily rent telehandlers and excavators but not pickups. Perhaps because everyone already has at least one pickup?

I rent a pickup from Uhaul when I need one.

I can jam quite a lot of lumber in/on my Mazda Protege though, so it’s rare I need an actual truck.

I'm a big fan of sticking things on the roofs of station wagons. A lot of things (sheet material and long things) are easier to haul this way than in a truck bed or minivan.

That said, having more vehicle than you need is definitely a means of social signalling and if you're regularly shoving 5 people in your 5-seat compact or regularly hauling large things on the roof of your car or regularly burying your AWD mom-mobile in the mud you will give off lower class vibes so I understand why a lot of people buy more vehicle than they strictly need.

You can rent a 26' F-650 (6.8L V10) from any Uhaul with stock. They require ~$50 on a credit card and a driver's license (standard, not CDL).

It's "technically" 1 lb shy of the GVWR requiring a CDL.

It has enough power to sheer off a 3/4" utility pole climbing spike, in reverse, with a slight tap of the gas. Don't ask me how I know.

Not sure about Hertz, but everytime I go to Home Depot I see the F250s for rent in the parking lot.

https://www.homedepot.com/tool-truck-rental/load-n-go-truck-...

You can actually. Friends of mine rented one for a group camping trip a couple years back. Worked pretty well. A quick google search shows that Enterprise and Avis will both rent you one.

> I'm sure it's possible somehow but I doubt you can just roll into Hertz and sign out an F-250.

I don't know about an F-250, but the last time I rented a car it was a walk-in at an Enterprise in Harrisburg, PA and I walked out with a Nissan pickup 30-ish minutes later.

Also, your average Home Depot or U-Haul typically has pickups for rent, specifically for this use case.

If I had to rent a pickup truck on short notice, I'd hit up U-Haul, who has a bunch of them.

Last time I had to leave my car in the body shop after it was hit, my insurance got me a rental car from Enterprise. The only rentals available at the time were F-250s, so I drove a pickup truck to work and back for a week.

Why do you think that pick up trucks are unrentable?

U-Haul and HomeDepot is where I’d go to rent one.