I have an F250, which I drive about 2000 miles a year, almost 100% of the time it has a >30ft trailer behind it. But that one time that the stars align and I need it for a grocery trip, a bunch of people are thinking "see, that guy doesn't need a truck" and it reinforces whatever internal monologue they have going.
Meanwhile, approximately everyone here routinely drives alone in a vehicle capable of carrying 5-7 people. (and right about now, someone is about to reply with 'ride a bike, cars suck!')
I dunno, sounds like your beef is with the folks who buy the same truck as you for no reason other than the look, not the folks who are seeing and mocking that trend.
The latter seem to exist in far greater quantity, however. I live in a suburban neighborhood with plenty of trucks, and I see them doing truck things all the time. Towing boats, travel trailers, fifth wheels, or hauling stuff. I can't think of a single example within a quarter of me where someone owns a truck for looks. These are all just garden variety F150s and similar, rarely the higher trim models, and not a one of them is a bro-dozer.
I won't deny the silly bro-dozers exist, they definitely do. But at least in my area they are just a fraction of the total trucks on the road.
They are statistically not doing pickup truck things. Pickup truck owners haul stuff once per year on average. That's the difference that you're not seeing.
You think that the problem is those "bro-dozers", and everyone else just needs a truck. The reality is that most people don't need a truck, and by driving one everyone else's life gets worse.
Yes, the problem is the "imma gonna haul whatever thing to my house" instead of, you know, have it delivered by someone. They'd win time but lose the (small) psychological satisfaction
"Furthermore, the specific design trend of the massive hood sticking way out in front of the driver, with a cliff-face front grille obstructing the view several feet out in front of the wheels, is entirely a marketing gimmick. The explicit point is to create an angry, aggressive face that will intimidate others, especially pedestrians. Don't take it from me, take it from the guy who designed the latest GM Sierra HD: "The front end was always the focal point... we spent a lot of time making sure that when you stand in front of this thing it looks like it's going to come get you. It's got that pissed-off feel," he told Muscle Cars & Trucks. "The face of these trucks is where the action is," marketing expert Mark Schirmer told the Wall Street Journal's Dan Neil, "a Ford has to say Ford from head on, a Chevy must shout Chevy. Every pickup has become a rolling brand billboard and the billboards are big." And as Neil discovered when he was nearly run down in a Costco parking lot, that massive grille creates a massive blind spot."
> Meanwhile, approximately everyone here routinely drives alone in a vehicle capable of carrying 5-7 people. (and right about now, someone is about to reply with 'ride a bike, cars suck!')
I'm sorry that people are occasionally, silently, but unfairly judging your choice of vehicle, presumably.
I don't think that counters the fact that many do people drive gigantic vehicles they will never need, though.
> Meanwhile, approximately everyone here routinely drives alone in a vehicle capable of carrying 5-7 people. (and right about now, someone is about to reply with 'ride a bike, cars suck!')
You've managed to lump everyone who disagrees with you into either the "hypocrite" or "fanatic" boxes.
I drive a Mini Cooper, not that that's worth bragging about. How will you dismiss my opinion?
> You've managed to lump everyone who disagrees with you into either the "hypocrite" or "fanatic" boxes.
Not intentionally. Just the ones who loudly proclaim that most people driving a pickup don't actually need it. To everyone else who is just driving the car they feel best suits their needs, more power to them. This also includes the vast majority of pickup owners.
Software, just like so many others on HN. The trailer is an RV we take out every couple weeks during the nice weather season. It takes over 1300 pounds of payload capacity just for the trailer itself, which doesn't leave much for anything else (hitch, cargo, humans, canine). That's how I ended up trading the F150 we had for an F250. And yes, the F250 is pretty big. It's actually not a lot bigger dimensionally than an F150 (same cab, even), but it's usually taller, and it has a very stiff suspension and a live axle in the front, so it feels a lot bigger. Thus why mine rarely goes anywhere it doesn't need to go. My Model 3 is far more comfortable as a daily.
The F150's towing capacity appears to be 5,000 to 14,000 pounds (random source: https://veteransfordtampa.com/ford-f-150-towing-capacity). You could tow a 1,300 pounds trailer with a regular car, e.g. the 2023 Ioniq 5 has 2,300 pounds of towing capacity.
No, he's not towing 1,300 pounds, he's towing something that reduces carried cargo capacity by 1,300 pounds. (The impact is, IIRC, typically a bit over 10% of loaded trailer weight.)
Unless these sites use different measurement systems for towing (could be, I have no idea about these things), wouldn't a much smaller but more powerful car do?
In Europe people regularly tow RV trailers with Volvo V60 wagons...
Having looked into RV trailers in both the US and EU, I can say that the US trailers are by and large MUCH bigger than in the EU. A quick Google search showed a trailer[0] on sale in the UK, weighing in at 3289 lb. This is a typical size that I would see being towed around where I live in southern Germany.
In the US, a typical trailer[1] size could come in at ~4500 lbs. Mind you, this weight is what we call dry, not counting the weight of a filled fresh water tank, important living items (i.e. food, dishes, clothing, etc), and any other items you might want to take camping.
Although this is (slightly) on the more extreme side, "fifth-wheels"[2] are also common to see on the road. These certainly require larger vehicles to pull.
Break the cycle how? Every time one of these threads come up I suggest buying a domestic full size 90’s truck instead and nobody gives a shit. The only things that gain traction in these threads is people shitting on their cultural enemies. Because Truck People bad!!
Maybe you can help break the cycle by looking at the huge used truck market we already have
I'm missing why this is a problem for you: TFA makes your exact point, and the author explains that they settled on a Kei truck for a combination of price and mileage reasons.
I don't care about "truck people." I thought the article was nice and, as a non-driver, I find the Kei trucks much more interesting to look at (and ride in).
One thing that I try to remind people of is that pickup trucks are the best selling vehicles in the US because the approximate definition of 'Truck People' is everyone.
There are much smaller pickups than an F150, for sure. Like a Maverick, to use an easy example. And it's a popular choice, too, though it's probably not going to unseat the F150 anytime soon.
I think most trucks nowadays (even "small" ones, which used to be considered "normal" sized) are big enough that you won't see an average sized 9 year old standing right in front of the hood.
90s trucks still had poor mileage and were less safe overall than new vehicles, they aren't gonna be many people's top choice.
My current pet theory is that an equally big problem to the "aggressive bro styling super high front grill" issues is an overall decline in relative income/living standards. Less space + money to have a family car + a utility truck, so your truck ALSO has to have a huge cabin, and do everything else the family car should do too, so it gets huge overall even if the bed is no bigger or more useful.
I had a 95 F-150 that I sold off like 20 years ago and I’m contemplating another (or possibly a 250). Like you say, it wasn’t particularly safe: It had one non-progressive airbag and no ABS. If you didn’t keep a bunch of sandbags in the back, the rear end was liable to come around right after any rain.
You too can be a proud owner of a beat up truck with 200k-300k miles for 10,000 dollars that needs another 5-10k of maintenance!
Nobody says truck people bad, you're strawmanning all over this thread. I've owned two trucks, a full sized and a compact, I'm a republican and I believe that if I want to drive a 90s Kei truck and take the risk of dying in a car accident I should have the ability to assume that risk for myself. Same as driving a car from the 60s.
Because it's cars that kill people and ours are too big, too many, and driven by every idiot.
Washington State legislature was going to reduce the number of DUIs before prison from FIVE to FOUR (not 1 like it should be), but they chose not to because it'd be "too expensive". Yup, keep feeding us into the orphan killing machine.
Some of those trucks are quite high and will kill pedestrians and even destroy other cars more in higher number.
It’s just physics. If you need it, fine, but seeing how much they are selling of those, a lot of us are starting to doubt how much of it is need vs want.
The ability to destroy other cars in an accident is a selling point in some… cultures. I remember sitting at the bar back in my very red state home town listening to a guy go on and on about how his new Dodge Ram would absolutely obliterate a “liberal’s Prius” if he crashed into it. He was not talking about the relative occupant safety difference between the two cars. He was specifically boasting about how he believed his truck can destroy other vehicles.
They legitimately are scary from an objective viewpoint. I love driving them, but they kill people for no reason and something needs to done at a systemic level to curb it. Modern vehicles have an array of cameras, sensors, and automatic braking, yet pedestrian deaths per vehicle-mile are higher than 30 years ago.
They're probably talking about the front grille being a vertical wall taller than the standing height of a 5-foot woman, which would knock you under the wheels without the driver even seeing you.
Why does it make you laugh when the automotive industry literally brags about it?
Here's an article covering how pickups are becoming more deadly to others in crashes, becoming more common on the road, and being purposefully styled to look aggressive:
"Furthermore, the specific design trend of the massive hood sticking way out in front of the driver, with a cliff-face front grille obstructing the view several feet out in front of the wheels, is entirely a marketing gimmick. The explicit point is to create an angry, aggressive face that will intimidate others, especially pedestrians. Don't take it from me, take it from the guy who designed the latest GM Sierra HD: "The front end was always the focal point... we spent a lot of time making sure that when you stand in front of this thing it looks like it's going to come get you. It's got that pissed-off feel," he told Muscle Cars & Trucks. "The face of these trucks is where the action is," marketing expert Mark Schirmer told the Wall Street Journal's Dan Neil, "a Ford has to say Ford from head on, a Chevy must shout Chevy. Every pickup has become a rolling brand billboard and the billboards are big." And as Neil discovered when he was nearly run down in a Costco parking lot, that massive grille creates a massive blind spot."
The article continues, discussing how actual commercial work vehicles (sprinter vans and cab-over box trucks for example) don't show the same styling trends.
These make me chuckle. Those people have never done home improvement projects or just projects that require picking up 8ft sheets of plywood or 20 bags of mulch.
Home Depot rents a big truck for $20-$40 for the 2 hours I'd need it. I could rent this truck every weekend for 30 years for the same price as a giant truck. And I wouldn't have to worry about its maintenance either.
Once you do this math it becomes very difficult to justify truck ownership without also being responsible for something that needs hauling/towing on a regular basis. The truth is that in 2023 a truck is a lifestyle purchase for many people as evidenced by the average cost of a new F-150 and the inability to buy buy a no-frills Regular Cab pickup outside of fleet sales.
If you'd have told me 15 years ago that people would be buying pickup trucks brand new for $60k with regularity I wouldn't have believed you but here we are...
...and so many dealers don't stock them. I honestly don't remember the last time that I saw a new one on a lot, let alone the road. Of course n=1 and all of that but I used to own one and live in a rural area so I don't think I'm far off.
Depends on use case. I do more than what I originally posted. I do pull a trailer with a small tractor on it frequently and move a lot more stuff than normal people do. Renting a truck would be more of a hassle for this type of work than for me to just pay the premium and own the thing out right.
> I could rent this truck every weekend for 30 years for the same price as a giant truck.
That assumes the price never increases for 30 years.
My wife and I completely gutted and renovated a 2 bedroom home built in 1905 with a used 2007 Dodge Magnum and a roof rack. We initially bought it for a road trip around the US because it saved us thousands of dollars in fuel economy (it was a 3.5l V6) over the month-long trip compared to any van or truck. I initially bought it with the intent of selling it right after the road trip, but it ended up being a really well-rounded vehicle.
I grew up in south central Pennsylvania, and while we still have a fair amount of farmers in that region, most people buy trucks because they're marketed to, not because they're the right vehicle to own.
I clicked through here because I've seen a couple of Kei trucks in Philadelphia lately.
Usually cars of this class can only support about 100lbs on the roof. We have Prius and RAV4 Hybrid with that limitation. The roof racks are still very useful, but I wouldn’t put 4x8 sheets of anything on them.
I moved a bunch of sheet goods with my Civic coupe, by which I mean I moved sheet goods on a bunch of occasions, one or two each time. The problem comes out to be weight, and ease of loading/driving.
The real solution for moving larger things is a trailer. UHaul rents trailers for the occasional use ~$20/day, no mileage charge. I say occasional use because it takes effort to go and get it, and UHaul builds them like brick shithouses. So you can get a lighter one that's nicer to tow if you buy one for a few kilobucks.
I inherited a light crossover SUV that's more than capable of towing a 5x10 trailer with a modest amount of weight around town. It does highways too, but keeping ~65 rather than ~80. If I were still limited to the Civic and needed to move stuff on the regular, I'd buy an even lighter trailer.
And a trailer has very little maintenance compared to getting another motor vehicle. I've started bringing a pallet or two and putting them down under whatever I get so I can just fork stuff off at home (and then in the case of stuff from big box stores, fork the rejects right back on to get returned).
These Kei trucks look neat, but I don't think they would actually solve many problems I have. A dump bed would be fantastic, but if I really needed that I could just bite the supply shortage bullet and get a dump trailer.
That's the expensive route if you do it too often. I can buy 2 yards of mulch scooped into the back of my truck for quite a bit less than the cost of 20 bags. And then there's things like gravel, which you really don't want to try and get in bags at all. I could probably get by with a smaller truck if I didn't tow a big trailer with it, but I'd still choose an actual open-bed truck over an SUV or minivan.
Different strokes for different folks. It's going to depend a lot on what you routinely haul.
Sure. To your point above: do you think that trucks are the best-selling car in the US because Americans are routinely hauling loose gravel, or could it be something else? I suspect it's something else.
I suspect it's because a modern crew cab half-ton pickup is pretty close to the perfect vehicle for a big swath of Americans. Huge interior room for the family, enough bed & payload to be useful for everything from hauling appliances to gravel, dirt, lumber, whatever.
Just about the only thing it doesn't do well is fuel economy and driving in downtown urban areas. A large number of people rank those issues low on the list.
I mostly do outdoor activities that benefit from more interior space. I'd probably buy a trailer if mulch, gravel, etc. hauling became an issue. You're right that it depends on what you need space that's more than a sedan or a hatchback for.
As someone who lives in an old house on a fair bit of land, I sort of agree. A sedan wouldn't really work for me but an SUV with a roof rack is mostly just as good as a truck. (And I suppose I could always buy a trailer if it were really an issue.) The enclosed space is more generally useful than a truck bed.
I think vans are a great choice, but from what I can find they’re not any cheaper than trucks. ie, getting one for less than 40k seems to be out of the question.
To be fair to those people, they also don’t think you need your plywood and mulch because you should live in a nice little apartment with a surely altruistic landlord who takes care of every need that the plywood and mulch could satisfy.
Someone who does home improvements probably own a house. Shouldn't they be able to, you know, buy an apartment, if "the mising middle" apartments were available in the US and not banned by a million laws (freedom! :-) ).
They already have the form factor, it’s called a Toyota Tacoma and Ford Ranger. They are bigger than Kei trucks because they have actual safety features.
Cars nowadays are larger for improved comfort, not because of safety features. Larger cars aren't inherently safer. Modern safety features, such as airbags, crumple zones, etc., have been around for over twenty years now, but cars have gotten larger.
Regardless, the comparison was between Kei trucks and pickup trucks.
Cars are in fact larger partially due to advanced safety features, in particular doors, pillars etc. have gotten a lot thicker over the last 25 years.
> Larger cars aren't inherently safer.
Yes they are, you're probably better off in a crash without a seatbelt in a bus than in the highly safety rated mini the bus crashes into. Newton matters.
> Cars are in fact larger partially due to advanced safety features, in particular doors, pillars etc. have gotten a lot thicker over the last 25 years.
I would like to see a citation on this. Car doors have gotten larger partly because there is so much more stuff going on there than 20-30 years ago, mostly a bunch of new electronics. They are also larger because, well, the cars are larger.
> ... you're probably better off in a crash without a seatbelt in a bus than in the highly safety rated mini the bus crashes into.
This is obviously not a fair comparison. I would be safer in a tank as well. Fact is, a current generation Toyota Camry is effectively safer than an early 2000s F-150.
E.g. [1] has a decent overview of the side impact saga for the Euro NCAP since 1997. I'm less familiar with how the American version has kept up.
In any case most mass market American cars target the Euro NCAP's safety tests, so it affects car design across the pond too.
> [...]mostly a bunch of new electronics.
I can't think of any electronics in doors than weren't there in 1995.
Powered windows have gotten more common, but if it weren't for safety considerations the thickness of doors should have reduced since then, as all the electronics involved are smaller now.
> Fact is, a current generation Toyota Camry is effectively safer than an early 2000s F-150.
Probably, but some quick internet searching reveals that if you add the weight of one person to the modern Camry it's probably heavier than the 2000s F-150, or thereabouts.
What I was referring to is that crash safety tests don't account for crashes between differently sized vehicles.
That's probably intentional, as regulators don't want to cause an arms race towards ever bigger cars.
> I can't think of any electronics in doors than weren't there in 1995.
Electronic locks, speakers, electronic bits of heated mirrors, airbags, etc. were absolutely not that common in the average 90s car.
Also, car dimensions are generally larger because we ourselves have become larger and taller. This becomes exceedingly obvious when comparing European cars in the past 40 years. If we look at the last 15 years, the trend is to make larger, more spacious cars, to the point where most firms are betting on SUVs over sedans.
> What I was referring to is that crash safety tests don't account for crashes between differently sized vehicles.
They do, though. What would be the point of testing a car safety measures only against cars of its size? In fact, there are plenty of videos out there of crash tests between sedans and trucks.
> That's probably intentional, as regulators don't want to cause an arms race towards ever bigger cars.
Uh? Manufacturers have been steadily increasing the size of cars in the past 20 years. Each Camry generation is larger than the previous one, and has nothing to do with regulators, it’s just that buyers want spacious cars.
If you wanted to make a car with the same outside dimensions today you could barely cram two people in it, due to all the mandatory crumple zones etc.
Of course consumer demand is also part of it, but in some cases car manufacturers are still making 1980s design cars today (e.g. the 79 series Toyota land cruiser), they're just outlawed in Europe due to safety, pollution etc. regulations.
> In fact, there are plenty of videos out there of crash tests between sedans and trucks.
I'm talking about official safety ratings, e.g. this in the Euro NCAP:
Although as that page explains the particular bias I had in mind was "fixed" in 2020, now it's a 1400 kg mobile trolley, so heavier cars are tested somewhat more realistically.
> ... we're not talking about what's more common, but about how recent regulatory changes affected car design.
Well, no. You said that cars are larger because of safety regulations.
But the obvious rebuttal to this is that larger cars have been trending upward for decades, and the most obvious proof of this is the decline of the sedan in favor of the SUV.
> You can look up luxury models of mid or late 90s cars, and they had all those features. Now look at the same models today.
These were larger cars than the average as well. The 90s Mercedes E-Class doors were significantly larger and heavier than the ones in a Toyota Camry.
A current generation Mercedes E-Class is also larger than the one from 30 years ago, mostly because it has gone through a significant increase in interior space. Again, this is not something only Mercedes has done to their line, all automakers have gone down the same route.
> If you wanted to make a car with the same outside dimensions today you could barely cram two people in it, due to all the mandatory crumple zones etc.
That car is roughly the same size of a Volkswagen Polo, which fits 4 people, and holds pretty much the same volume in the trunk. The Polo has an five star EURONCAP rating. Hell, even the SMART Fortwo is a pretty safe car, and it's mostly plastic.
Yes, small cars exist and are safe too, but people just like larger cars better.
For what the average person uses their $50k pickup for, you most certainly can. Do you really imagine most pickup trucks in the US are hauling bricks on a dirt road up the side of mountains?
You think a Kei truck can't make it up a mountain with a load of bricks? It may not be the fastest, and the biggest load of bricks it can haul is gonna be smaller, but let's not pretend a Kei truck can't go to Home Depot and back again with a decent amount of stuff. Like smaller trucks in the US, like the Ford Ranger or Chevy S10, they do just fine if you don't abuse them. If you do, giant 2-ton trucks don't last either.
No, I imagine the average person in the U.S. is using their truck to drive to and from their office job and taking their kids to and from school. And for that these tiny trucks obviously would not work.
You said it yourself. People aren’t buying trucks for their function. They aren’t hauling bricks up mountain roads. So if it’s not about function, then it’s about something else and a Kei truck might not fill that role.
It’s like people who spend thousands of dollars on a wristwatch. They don’t do that because they need to know what time it is.
The author mentions not wanting a Ranger or Tacoma, but I still think those are better options especially considering the drivers position…
Even better is a 80’s/90’s full size 2 door pickup. Same size as a modern Tacoma/Ranger, but with payloads comparable to todays F250’s. Throw in working AC, airbags, and a wealth of cheap replacement parts and it’s a no-brainer
Threads was on the front page for an entire day or two. A sizable percentage of the entire lifetime of the App.
Twitter and Musks other ill-adventures will continue to dominate HN though. Zuckerberg is not part of the HN in-crowd and will draw about as much water as his other services.
Lemme modify the writers words for you to more accurately describe the phenomena : “I suspect it’s easier to teach a good waitress to be a writer than an intellectual to be a good waiter.”
Being excellent at balancing a stressful, fast paced, work environment applies to many jobs. But being excellent at being an “intellectual” whatever the hell that even means (writers? Programmers?), does not really apply to very many jobs.
To me this seems overexaggerated. Most people I went to university with already struggled to understand async code, without having done web development before. And for those with web development background it was pretty easy to adjust.
I also don't know any school, college or university that starts their programming courses in a webbrowser. Typical languages in Germany for a first semester algorithms/data structures class are either Java or C++.
By entire industry I mean web developers, which is a cohort that usually has more non-traditional educations and tends to think in a async mental model.
What you explained happens in Germany is pretty par for the course in the US as well for CS degrees. But even then, why the hell are we throwing a book of data structures at students? You don’t give an apprentice framer a nail gun and say “go at it!”. They’ll destroy everything. You give them a hammer and educate them when they start to complain of smashed thumbs
Otherwise known as “your CS degree has shockingly little to do with this god forsaken login page we’re designing”
I’ve had so many long conversations with early-mid career developers that the stupid code being written will have a shelf life about as long as a head of lettuce. And that the “best” solution is typically the simplest, shortest, and can be written the quickest.
* Kei trucks are the coolest. Big gubment is making it so we can’t register them due to protectionism!
* Chicken tax chicken tax chicken tax
* Big trucks cause more crashes because reasons!
* Trucks are just lifestyle vehicles and nobody actually needs or uses them
Over and over and over again