Eh, there are applications. A pickup truck mostly becomes necessary when you need to do both "heavy" and "far", when your alternatives are a car and a tractor.

Eh, there are applications. A pickup truck mostly becomes necessary when you need to do both "heavy" and "far", when your alternatives are a car and a tractor. There are some loads, eg, towing a livestock trailer to market, where it is too heavy for a car (or even too small of a truck) to tow, and a tractor would be infeasible from a "speed" perspective. (But yeah, you definitely don't need to be using your 4x4 pickup as a people-mover most of the time, and even most hauling applications a truck performs can be handled by a car with a rather modest trailer.)