A truck costs tens of thousands of dollars. Even assuming half the cost would otherwise be put towards an alternative vehicle, you'd still need to move stuff uniquely suited to a truck literally hundreds of times to make it worthwhile.

You can get a truck, in CA, for less then $10K (including initial repairs). Why does everything need to be new?

The truck I got about 9 months ago has already paid for itself by saving me from having to hire people to do things that I could have done myself if only I had a truck.

Renting is fine once in a while, but if you're hauling base rock or lumber every few weekends, I cannot imaging having to deal with rentals every time. It doesn't make sense, and would be such an enormous waste of time.

> if you're hauling base rock or lumber every few weekends

Yes, exactly. If you've actually got a use for it, great! The comment I was replying to was suggesting that realizing you need to get one more bulky item would happen frequently enough to make up the difference for someone who would otherwise rent, which is ridiculous.

Even used, the marginal cost of a truck in maintenance and higher gas bills really adds up. Comparing a used F-150 to a used Prius, mile-per-mile, the truck is going to be more than twice as expensive.

Yes, it does all depend. I guess where I'm coming from is people have skewed ideas of the thresholds that define "need" here, and often say "why do you even need a truck??" in an almost shaming way, and ignore your reasons when you list them off (you're not doing that here, but in general I'm sensing an ideological stigma against trucks).

> Even used, the marginal cost of a truck in maintenance and higher gas bills really adds up. Comparing a used F-150 to a used Prius, mile-per-mile, the truck is going to be more than twice as expensive.

Again, depends! For me, the cost of a truck in maintenance and gas is much cheaper than a Prius, because the Prius can't do most of the things I'd want a truck for to begin with. Gas included: I don't take the truck on long road trips. But I'm lucky and have a honda and a truck. If you only have budget for once vehicle, then yes, weigh the pros and cons much more carefully. If you have a used car and a used truck though, you can pay about as much as you'd pay new for either of them (less, even), and have much more utility.

Lastly, I'd wager that an F150 from the 90s is going to be a lot cheaper to maintain than a Prius in the long run due to the Prius' overall complexity. I wouldn't make that same bet on any truck built after 2005, though.

> A truck costs tens of thousands of dollars.

Only if you insist on buying new, you'll pay a lot. My pickup is about as big as it gets (4 door, 8ft bed, diesel dually) and it didn't cost tens of thousands since I bought an older one.

Diesels don't depreciate that much, so I'll probably get most of it back whenever I sell.

I'm not sure why you'd assume if I can afford and am willing to buy a $50k truck that I wouldn't buy a $50k car or SUV. So now renting is in addition to that, and it's not as convenient.

Like a boat?

Sure. That's a reasonable use case. Needing to get lumber home from Home Depot isn't, for most people, because of low frequency.

Meh. I'd argue more people need to tow their boat than haul lumber, but I live in Florida where that's visually true.

I think people are taking my comment to read "don't get a truck" when it was really just responding to the suggestion that "return your rental and come back home and realize you need to buy more of some heavy large item" would be such a common occurrence that ownership makes more sense than renting even without some other use.

Large items are pretty easy to predict. You aren't going to buy a bathroom vanity, then rent a truck to take it home and then realize you needed two vanities.

If you are buying wood you can measure the size of the wall. Estimate the studs you need based on 16" gaps. Buy that much plus a few extras.

The constant trips back and forth to home depot is generally smaller items that you forget. You need a special socket size, you need a different type of nail, etc.