You clearly don't live thirty minutes from the nearest Wal-Mart and 45 minutes from the nearest big box hardware store.

A lot of folks live places with absolutely no delivery options. Not even pizza. If you don't have access to a truck, you don't buy certain things.

You're probably right he doesn't, and consequently his post was not about what you're describing. I live in the suburbs, < 5 minutes from almost every conceivable material good, with all delivery options, and I'm frequently the lone sedan stopped at the light, surrounded by F-150s, Escalades, Land Rover's that have never left the pavement, and every other sort of towering, vanity vehicle with a single occupant. It's not uncommon to drive past large homes, with 3 and 4 SUVs/trucks out front, maybe a lone Tesla.

I have zero problems with the situation you describe, which is a household having a truck or SUV out of practical need.

Some people need smaller and fewer cars, yes. I think more nuance is useful here is all. Especially because the folks that need trucks the most are working class on average, not folks with a driveway full of Range Rovers. And, yeah, with inflation being bad lately, they can complain about gas prices. IMO anyway. They're not getting just desserts.

Mr. Range Rover Number Three can just trade in for a Tesla anyway. Our ire doesn't do much here. Maybe it's therapeutic?

Theres a big difference between access to a cheap truck for specific needs, and driving around in lifted gas guzzlers for random trips because muh neck.

I'm an European who lives in the conditions you described and I'm doing just fine with a small hatchback.

Sounds like you're not a plumber and you don't do any landscaping on the side to pay the bills.

Right now I live in an apartment built in the last 2 months with most of the apartments around me still in various stages of being built. This is in Denmark. During the 8-16 time window the road is filled with plumbers, electricians, and other construction workers. There are regularly big cranes and huge belt-driven machines rattling everything in my apartment. The only pickup truck I've seen was not used for construction work, but rather was driven by an inspector wearing a suit under the high-viz vest and hardhat.

Instead, the electricians, plumbers, etc. drive vans. They're smaller in footprint and easier to get things in and out of. Some have a covered and insulated shop inside (mostly the electricians) while others are purely for transportation. The materials and machinery that don't fit are too large be transported by a pickup too. Instead, lorries arrive with two or three pieces of machinery on a flatbed, or a single piece of machinery and a bunch of big pieces of material in a closed trailer. I can't tell where a pickup truck would ever be more useful in the construction landscape I'm seeing literally outside my window.

Again, the lower the density of life, the more pickup trucks are useful. Dense residential construction is one situation, but there are many others. I brought up plowing snow in another comment in this conversation.

That being said, I don't really care to litigate the pros and cons between work vans and work trucks. I was mostly trying to make the point that there are legitimate uses of work trucks. It's very easy for the HN crowd to be in a kind of bubble where they wouldn't understand that, so I thought I'd add some nuance to the conversation.

The serious plumbers have finally realized that vans, now more easily available in the USA, are much more appropriate for them than pickup trucks (with or without the usual work-truck mods).

At least half of the serious landscapers that I see tow a trailer with their tools, bins and stuff on it. Wouldn't matter much what was pulling it, as long as it could pull it.

That's correct, but it's a totally different argument.

I was just coming up with examples. I wasn't trying for an exhaustive list of situations where a truck is a reasonable lifestyle choice.

How big are pizzas nowadays in US? But seriously, most shops offer delivery for large items, no?

It depends. There is a spectrum of options. I was mostly saying there's a lot more nuance than folks seem to appreciate.

Station wagon and a trailer could solve most of these issues. Likely for less than a truck costs. There really is lot of alternatives or a van if you regularly need more stuff transported. I see rather few things that you actually need a truck for.

I was arguing for nuance, not arguing that everyone needs a truck. Rural folks, blue collar folks, and folks that need to build and fix things themselves get comparatively more utility from a truck. In some cases, it's a practical necessity.

Someone has to plow the neighborhood. Someone has to drive the power washer to the worksite. And so on.

And the farther you live from a city, the more likely that someone is either you or someone who trusts you enough to borrow their truck.

I get what you are saying, but I don't like the way you are conflating personal use of these vehicles with commercial use.

Some people have a good reason to own heavier vehicles for private use, but even in a rural setting, those are few and far between. There are many more good reasons to own such vehicles for a trades person or a farmer. Commercial use of those vehicles is completely justified.

Maybe it is an American thing I don't get, but there seems to be a confusion between private lives and the work people are doing? Someone does have to cart the tools and materials to the worksite, but that person should be using a work vehicle. There doesn't seem to be a need for that person to own their own truck and pay for their own gas?

The issue is perhaps that in the rural parts of the US, the boundary between these things becomes pretty fuzzy. You may need to plough the snow off your own driveway. Your job may sometimes involve the need for a truck even though it generally does not. You may be doing your own water heater replacement, and hauling that in a regular sedan is tricky (though not impossible).

I do hear what you are saying and it is important to try and maintain multiple perspectives.

Station wagon won’t pull 10,000+ lbs.

And how often does your average person need to pull 5 tons of stuff?

Some average people own cows. Others camp in fifth wheels. So it depends?

I'm in my van right now, out on some BLM land with others parked in most directions. The fifth wheelers can ONLY be hauled by a truck because of the way they are designed. Regular hitch-pulled trailers come in all sorts of sizes, and over the weekend we were parked next to two that got pulled by SUVs.

But sure, I take your point, there are legitimate, "ordinary" needs to pull a lot of weight sometimes. The question is whether the frequency of these really justifies this sort vehicle being someone's daily driver.

I know a man who retired into a fifth wheel. He doesn't move it much, but it's definitely smaller footprint housing, so more responsible than most when optimizing for environmental impact. You'd definitely want a truck if that was your lifestyle.

Fifth wheels are just a specific type of pull-along vehicle that connects to the mount in the bed of a pickup truck.

There are many pull-along vehicles ("campers", "trailers") that offer precisely the same space and features as any particular fifth wheel, but connect to a regular ball hitch instead.

At least that is how I've learned the meaning of this term.

Well, this guy has a fifth wheel, so he needs a truck to move it.

Who said my truck was my daily?

OK, so the adjacent question is about the sustainability of everyone (or a lot of people) having a 10k lb-hauling vehicle sitting around in addition to their daily driver.

Once or twice a year offsets the inability to do so.

That's not a unique issue to living in a place far from stores. Do what the rest of us do and go an rent a truck or van when you need to pick up an extra large purchase

Good idea. Prices aren't bad: (last I checked)

Home Depot rental truck prices start at $19 for the first 75 minutes, and then $5 for every 15 minutes thereafter.

So 3 hours would only be $59... assuming it's unlimited mileage.

Comparing to U-haul, which charges $1/mile, for $59, you could drive 40 miles, for the whole day.

Either way, doing this once a month costs under $1000/yr. Saving on gas, loan payments, and maybe insurance.

>assuming it's unlimited mileage

It's not. Add $.70-$1.09 per mile for mileage.

Maybe that's regional? HomeDepot.com shows this for me:

> Unlimited mileage on all vehicles

Right. So drive thirty minutes in one direction, rent a truck, drive home, pick up the lawnmower, take it to the shop (for instance), then take the truck back, then drive home. Then do it again in a week when the lawnmower is fixed.

Or have a truck.

How big is your lawnmower? Mine fits in the boot of my car.

Let's not get hung up on details. That was an example. Replace "fix lawnmower" with "pick up sheet rock" or "take broken water heater to the dump" or "buy a recliner" if you'd prefer.

Sure, but rural or not, most people don't do that sort of thing most of the time. Saying "I need a big vehicle" for the odd large load is just a smokescreen.

I don’t understand the logic of having a vehicle dedicated to a once per year at most use in your example.

I recently worked out the cost of owning a truck (including insurance, maintenance, and expected depreciation, but excluding the cost of the truck itself) versus renting from U-haul/Penske. I found that for more than 4-6 trips per year, owning is probably more economical. And that's assuming the truck is sitting in the driveway unused for the rest of the year; if your family also requires a secondary passenger vehicle, then owning a sedan and a truck almost certainly makes more sense than owning two sedans and occasionally renting a truck.

> but excluding the cost of the truck itself

Why would you exclude this on a cost analysis comparison?

When you make the purchase, you're exchanging $x for resalable equipment that's presumably worth $x. Your bank account balance goes down quite a lot, but the only decrease to your net worth is from the taxes and title transfer fees. Your net worth goes down as the vehicle depreciates. Even if you drive it to the very end of its operable life, you'll still get a bit of money from the junkyard you sell the vehicle's corpse to.

This does ignore the time that needs to be spent buying the vehicle, transferring the title, obtaining insurance, etc, which is significant. But procuring a rental truck is also time-consuming; on a typical Spring/Summer/Fall weekend where I live, you're lucky if you're able to get one at all. The local hardware stores are first-come/first-served, and can't guarantee over the phone that they'll have a rental truck available by the time you arrive.

It ignores and simplifies a lot of options for that money to be parked somewhere else instead of having a huge passive.

A truck will cost you what, US$ 50k? What are the opportunity costs of having this money parked on an ever depreciating passive? The depreciation only shows the net result of the purchase but completely disregards that you could use this money for investing somewhere else with a better return. Not only assets or financial instruments, I'm considering even quality life improvements such as home improvements, etc.

You are moving the goalposts with new issues such as availability of rentals, these might even be caused by you and everyone else buying a truck instead of renting when needed. More demand for rentals, more trucks for rentals.

It works quite well here in European cities to depend on rentals for DIY stuff, no one is buying a truck just do their own renovations or construction...

Considering just the depreciation is very simplistic, it doesn't capture all the other stresses and time-consuming processes of buying, selling, as you mentioned. I'd prefer to rent a truck once every two months instead of dealing with all the paperwork, insurance, maintenance and so on. This is wasted time.

> A truck will cost you what, US$ 50k?

I paid $600 for my first truck back in high school, drove it for a couple years, and received something in the ballpark of $100 from the scrapyard I sold it to in the end. In the current market where I live, ~$3k can get you a truck with no mechanical deficiencies and a few years of life remaining. Financially, I wouldn't advise anyone to shell out $50k for a new F-250, but some people enjoy saving money and others enjoy shiny new vehicles.

There's nothing wrong with buying $3k worth of VYM instead, and using the dividends to subsidize your rental truck costs. It's probably the better decision if you move things only 1-5 times per year, no maintenance obligations, and more free space in your driveway. If you move things more frequently than that, you enjoy the buying process, and you dislike the complexity of renting, then the calculus reverses.

Difference in lifetime-cost of vehicle should absolutely be part of calculation. It really makes no sense not to include it on all options.

That is not the point. Energy prices are a massive input to systemic inflation. We are setting ourselves up for a 70s style stagflation environment. The 70s environment was practically defined by energy price shocks.

Even if you own an EV yourself these gas prices could hurt you. Converting from hydrocarbons is going to take decades.

Pretending the economy doesn't run on oil and gas is just counter productive in general. Basically, we will pretend until things have gone too far and then we will do what we would have done anyway.

Morally, I don't think judgement can be passed on drivers until there are EV models that undercut budget unleaded models.

"Just learn to code and buy a Tesla" is not an answer to our problems.

Smug elitist drivel that provides nothing to the discussion. This is simply misdirected hatred based upon stereotypes.

High gas prices disproportionately affect the poor. Even if that weren't the case, lowering oil prices right now would have a strong negative effect on Russias ability to fund its war in Ukraine. We can push to lower oil prices AND keep pushing into renewables. We should invest in both at this moment.

American's addiction to large, gaz guzzling status vehicles is part of the discussion

It might surprise you that the overwhelming majority who buy trucks do so because they work a blue collar occupation such as construction, electrician, etc. not because they want to "roll coal" on your overpriced Tesla. These folks generally don't have a 500k/year WFH FAANG gig and yes filling up your truck so you can work makes the difference in how much food you can put on the table.

"Let them drive EVs" has turned into a modern day SV version of the Marie Antoinette (mis)quote.

Where do you suppose they plug these EVs in at the jobsite? The elephant in the room that no one addresses being the complete lack of EV infrastructure.

I do not believe this anecdote. The top selling vehicles each year are full size pickup trucks, last year alone they accounted for 10% of sales (1). The F series has been America's most popular car for 40 years (2).

Are they really being bought in the "overwhelming" majority by trades people? The numbers suggest they're just popular cars.

Americans are in love with pickup trucks, it's an entire subculture.

And at least where I live, which has some nasty weather conditions, the trades people I've worked with over the last few years all drive vans. Landscapers and garbage pickers are some of the exceptions.

(1) https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/08/pickup-trucks-dominate-ameri....

(2) https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/02/ford-pickup-remains-americas...

I'd really like to see some statistics on this. The majority of people that I see driving around in trucks have bed covers on them, which leads me to believe they're not being used for their intended purpose. They seem to be more status symbol rather than utilitarian.

> It might surprise you that the overwhelming majority who buy trucks do so because they work a blue collar occupation

And yet so many new trucks have a single driver hauling a trailer with stuff while the bed is empty because the bed is too short to carry anything useful.

The extra cab area, of course, isn't useful because there's only one person. The bed area isn't useful because the cab area has shortened the bed.

So, that driver has to expend the space and weight for a trailer because he bought a truck that isn't useful as a damn truck.

As an American of the “live too far away to get a pizza delivered” variety, you can go F yourself.

You absolutely do not understand what it’s like living rural, please go try it for a bit and then come back to talk about how we should “F “ ourselves.

More power to you. I specifically mentioned "soccer Mom" which implies suburban areas like mine and how I see enough large gas guzzling status vehicles to get mad about it, but hey, if you want to feel attacked, be my guest.

What does that matter though? You chose to live rural, it's not like the ever increasing price of petrol has been a closely guarded secret.

What do you expect to do when the price of petrol inevitably doubles or triples?

> What do you expect to do when the price of petrol inevitably doubles or triples?

Not GP, but that's an easy one: vote for people who would increase production.

Ok, so you'll delay it a bit. But what happens when it inevitably doubles or triples? You can't delay forever.

I am a New Zealander that lives rurally and I drive a Suzuki Swift. Do you not have roads where you live?

If you need the truck for a farm or other job, well that's a bit different. But you will have to get used to the rest of society increasingly wanting to put a price on the externalities your work generates. Owning a truck _is_ going to keep getting more expensive and you should be planning for that now.

They’ll just get an electric truck. One will be available soon at a car lot nearby. Then we can stop this petty, nosy criticism.

Have you seen the rivian reviews? The range while towing went from 300mi to 60.

Not an option if you actually use your truck.

60 miles is pretty good, considering most trucks aren’t usually towing a trailer. Obviously, if you are towing long distances, an electric truck does not make sense … yet. Diesel is the way to go.

Again, most trucks aren’t towing long distances so towing range is not critical to electric trucks making sense for most uses.

Towing a few times per year completely trashes the utility of an all-electric truck. I do have a big diesel (1T) bought just to be able to tow heavy things.

What I'd really like, no one makes: namely an electrically driven, so GOBS of low end torque, but with a diesel powered generator to keep the batteries charged. Give me 150mi of electric range (unloaded), and then a fuel tank big enough to pull a heavy load 500mi. Oh, and the ability to keep it plugged in at night so 80% of the time I'm not needing to use the diesel motor.

I don't think you are the target of OP's ire. There is definitely a need for SUV's in rural areas. The issues I have (and I think OP as well) is with people who drive them in the city, never going off road or towing anything. It's a huge waste and in fact ends up making your gas bills higher than they need to be.

I grew up on a farm, you're not winning any points for being this clueless.

Its not that hard to have a $500 old shitbox for when you actually need to haul things, and drive something efficient the rest of the time.

Are there any more stereotypes you can cram in here?

I liked the “f u I got mine” implied in the “if you’re too poor to own a Tesla why not starve?” at the end there.

A hummer is too small, I have a deuce.5 instead, it runs on the distilled tears of small children.

Not only do I drive low MPG vehicles, my emissions exempt vehicle more than makes up for your Tesla. You can sneer down your chai mocha latte at me from your Tesla all you want.

You're making broad assumptions and then insulting people, from NorCal of all places, how do them farts smell?

I know this will seem like a troll, but please take this as a genuine attempt at a meeting of minds. I am not an American and I would like to understand some things.

Do you believe climate change is real? Or even putting aside that, what are your thoughts on air pollution and the early deaths caused by cancer and other diseases that can, at least partly, be linked back to the burning of hydrocarbons next to peoples every day lives?

I get that there is an element of Red state vs Blue state, and all the goes along with that. But do you agree that there are downsides to internal combustion? Those down sides might be environmental, health, or even national security, but at least some of them exist right?

And those downsides are worse the larger a vehicle is right?

So isn't less ICE vehicles, and smaller versions of the ones that can't be replaced, a good thing?

I agree that some of the emotive language used by both sides here isn't helpful to actually action any change, but to an outsider it looks a little like cutting off your nose to spite the lib-tards.

You might have a good reason to drive a low MPG vehicle, but why celebrate that when doing so negatively impacts all the people around you?

It was more of a tongue in cheek response. I believe in the need to pollute less, my opinion on that is fairly strong. I do drive a modified vehicle that is emissions testing exempt under state law, but my other two vehicles are more fuel efficient and retain all original emissions equipment.

This is a hostile take (I grew up in the south). A lot of people unnecessarily buy trucks but a lot of people also have legitimate uses for them. Everytime I go on the country side in US, they are being used almost always.

I live in Oakland the current atmosphere is to reduce the quality of life to bare minimum and suffer. Not have kids. Depopulate.

Not only is this arrogant and self-serving, but also incredibly ironic. Progresssive cities have some of the highest income inequality.

I would vote for 1) Increase nuclear energy production and crank it up to 11. 2) Make electricity cheaper than it is worth metering 3) I agree with your EV take.

But for fucks sake, please be nice to fellow humans. I see no difference between toxic liberals attacking conservatives and vice versa. You're doing a disservice to the rest of us.

Saying that people that don't need trucks shouldn't buy them is not attacking anyone. Stop seeing things that aren't there.

Saying "F you" to an entire geographic region in US is not attacking anyone?

All well and good but your food is transported by gas and diesel also. You'll pay for the soon-coming $8/gallon fuel, one way or another.

My food's transportation gas costs are a tiny fraction of my overall expenses.

Increases in rent, tuition, or medical costs, or even my personal transportation expenses absolutely dwarf them. A semi moves food way more gas-efficiently than my car moves me.