I want a 15+ year old truck with this exact configuration as beater for dump and hardware/Lanscaping runs. They are virtually impossible to locate.

Yep. Their owners run them until they die because there is no replacement.

I am one such owner. 1994 toyota pickup.

Toyota used to have a pickup called "pickup" that was awesome. Small, light, but a full-sized bed. minimal with little to break - manual transmission, crank up windows, bench seat, etc.

I guess they rely on full-sized american pickup habits and creative financing to get folks to buy more expensive and bulkier trucks.

My dad bought an ‘89 Toyota Pickup in ‘93 and, between he and I, we put 270k miles on the thing

Extended cab, 5 speed manual. It was my first vehicle when I turned 16 and I loved it

I think it's what was called the Hilux elsewhere, and Top Gear did a fun part about it showing how indestructible it was (spoiler: very).

Great episode.

Set up a Craigslist alert in your earnest few cities for Toyota within the model years you want and you’ll have one for under $5k in 45 days

You can still buy those, typically ex-contractor vehicles at auction. Crank windows, cloth bench, long bed, crappy radio.

Cloth bench? Luxury! The ones I remember were vinyl. And what do you mean a mono AM radio is crappy?

I have a 2 door late 2000’s Ford Ranger I’ve been driving for the past decade. Crank windows and the vinyl seats are falling apart and it’s my favorite vehicle I’ve ever owned. Low maintenance costs: only had one actual mechanical problem, bad coil pack, since I’ve owned it and I’ve had the sway bar replaced but otherwise nothing. other than that it’s only been batteries, oil and tires and registration/insurance. I bought a $200 vinyl tonneau cover off of Amazon a few years ago and the utility of the thing is just amazing for the price (I paid around $6000 USD for it in 2012). I recently replaced the crappy radio with a $40 unit with Bluetooth.

I’ve been interested in upgrading it as it’s kind of getting old now and it would be nice to get something with CarPlay without having to do a retrofit but the main killer feature that’s just not available on consumer trucks anymore is the bed size. It’s extremely rare to find a truck with the features I want that still have a 6 ft bed size. There are so many things I haul around that fit exactly into that bed length

For brand-new trucks, both GM (Chevy/GMC) as well as Ford make half-ton trucks with a regular cab and six-foot bed, which is the closest thing to what your Ranger and can be optioned with CarPlay. Ram, unfortunately, stopped selling the regular cab 1500 Classic as of the last model year.

Used availability varies, of course, but used cars are such a silly deal at the moment compared to new car pricing that it may not make sense.

I'm a big fan of those "shorty" trucks.

All of the mid-size trucks (Tacoma, Ranger, Frontier) have 6 foot bed versions. Unfortunately they don't make the traditional pickup single row seat versions anymore, but you can still get a two door model with the little back seats.

Yeah, I've got a 2016 Tacoma TRD OR Access Cab (6' box, tiny back seat with suicide doors) and it has been absolutely fabulous. The little back seats are big enough for my nephews or my dogs... not so much our wives when we went on a couples' hiking trip.

They also don't have a max load or tow rating. People frequently tow campers with them in "FFR" mode

I will say towing with my weak 2.3L engine is pretty comical. I have a hitch but it can’t pull much more than a flatbed trailer or a small sized UHaul. I suspect as long as you never took it on the highway though you might be able to really tow something of decent size with it, with the expectation you’d never be able to get it to go over 45 MPH.

It constantly does way more than I would expect though. I took it up a few mountains in Colorado and its little 2WD was going over rocky roads that you would basically otherwise need a Jeep to handle. Maybe that’s how I broke my sway bar.

You can still buy them, but when they're gone, they're gone. After Ford stopped the Ranger, nobody has sold a US market regular cab compact pickup truck.

You can get a regular cab F-150, or similar, and you can get a smaller truck with a tiny bed and two rows of seats.

This seems unlikely to make it here, but my hope is someone bring something like it here. It will probably need to be electric to meet cafe standards, but I'd prefer hybrid.

Half a ton cargo capacity?

That’s like the weight of what, 2 fat people?

A ton is 1000 lb, right?

A ton is 1000kg which is approximately 2200lb. Half a ton never seemed much for the pickup trucks of old, but on the other hand, you could overload them by 1.5-2x and still have a bit of suspension travel left for a careful drive home, e.g. when fetching roof shingles. This was when they were cheap utility vehicles of course.

In the US, we have an imperial ton of precisely 2000lb. A metric ton is commonly heard, but always specified.

Metric tonne.

For additional confusion's sake, I got it wrong - It's not an "Imperial" ton in the US, but a "Customary" ton. There's also a British "Imperial" ton, and sometime called the "Long ton" (whereas the US Customary unit is also called the "Short ton". The Imperial Ton is 2240 pounds, which if you're dyslexic is the same as the Metric Ton's 2204.6 pounds.

Don't forget the metric fucktonne, as well.

Which, confusingly, is almost invariably spelt 'metric fuckton'

this is also different from the shit-ton or shitton, which is customary

Metric shit tonne*

My dude, In Europe elevators with capacity half a ton say they can lift 7 people.

Or 4 Americans /s

Disclaimer, am American and while said in jest, we do have an obesity problem.

A ton has always meant 1000 lb to me and my Texas education - ya'll are dreaming when you mention 2200 lbs or whatever.

Are you for real or just joshin’?

A ton is 2000lb.

So...five 400lb people

Every year car models get bigger and heavier. If you compare the original Tacoma to a 2023 Tacoma they look like totally different trucks. A new Tacoma looks bigger than the original Tundra.

I think vehicles should be taxed by weight, length, width, and height. The bigger the vehicle the more likely to cause an accident and the heavier the more likely for the accident to be severe.

> I think vehicles should be taxed by weight, length, width, and height

Roughly speaking, they are. Unfortunately, the system didn't quite get the memo, so there are two classes of vehicles based on size here; car, and truck. small trucks, like we are discussing here would fit into the car category. unfortunately, because they fit into the car category, they have to follow the car rules, which they can't, which means they don't exist. all the bigger vehicles fit into the truck category, which has more lax standards about certain things, and which is why we have such big SUVs.

> In other words, a pickup truck!

I know you and everyone is salivating over it, mostly due to price, but this is NOT a pickup truck. This is an upscaled UTV. You can already buy similar in the US for offroad purpose (farm) for 1x - 2x the price of the Toyota/hilux.

This vehicle does not meet any safety standards whatsoever and is not roadworthy. I doubt it even has the rollover protection of a forklift.

Forklifts are designed to take alot of top impact force. But i do get your meaning.