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Who else buys pick up trucks?
by readhn 6y ago
Who else buys pick up trucks?
- mdszy 6y agoSuburbanites who want to have a truck because they think it makes them look cool.
- blakesterz 6y agoI don't know exactly who or why, but the answer is certainly A LOT of people are buying them. "Cox Automotive data shows Middle America, with household incomes of $50,000 to $99,000, was the segment of buyers who stayed in-market mostly for new pickup trucks and SUVs, while upper- and lower-income buyers shied away," https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a32380257/first-month-ever-more-pickup-trucks-than-cars/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a32380257/first-month-ever... For the First Month Ever, More People Bought Pickups Than Cars (That was May of this month)
- protomyth 6y agoWell, when the truly bad weather hits, its very nice to have an actual 4x4 truck. They are very useful vehicles. I would have killed in high school (well, in college too) for a truck with a generator. So many times helping a buddy would have gone a whole lot easier. Never mind pulling people out of the ditch. Going to rent one is not a realistic option in many parts of the country.
- ianai 6y agoMany people buy trucks. I imagine for some it’s the ground clearance, others the actual utility, others the looks, etc. There’s the fleet buyers too. They do make sense, too, if you live anywhere rural or with roads that aren’t paved or get weather and aren’t well maintained. Near me, trucks possibly outnumber cars for as far as the eye can see. They fit a niche. I saw plenty of trucks and other big vehicles driving around a city of greater than 2 million people.
- dx87 6y agoIt's probably because if you're low income, you likely can't afford the lower MPG or expensive things like tire replacements, and if you're upper income, you just hire people to do work that requires a pickup. I think middle-income people are in the sweet spot for trucks and SUVs where they can afford the extra costs, but can't afford someone to do manual labor for them, so they actually use the truck to haul things so they can do the work themselves.
- JKCalhoun 6y agoI don't know why the downvotes. Maybe a snarky reply but I live in suburbia and I am quite sure they are not using them to haul gravel to a job site. Perhaps a couple bags of grass fertilizer. Perhaps hauling the kids stuff to/from college. That's about it. The rest of the time they struggle to park them in strip mall parking lots.
- mdszy 6y agoRight? People arguing about home ownership is hilarious. I have hauled multiple loads of mulch, other landscaping stuff and animal feed when helping my parents at their home/small farm in the summer. I have moved in and out of college dorms/houses with all of my belongings (including my TV, kitchen equipment, lots of electronics lab equipment that I purchased to resell as a side-gig in college...) All using a 2005 Buick LeSabre.
- beervirus 6y agoNot everyone wants to shit up their sedan hauling dirt and animal feed.
- mdszy 6y agoAh right, I forgot that there's no animal feed or landscaping supplies that come in bags conveniently packaged for light usage relevant to homeowners. If you need literal truckloads of bulk supplies often enough to justify owning a truck then congratulations you're probably running a landscaping company or something so you might need a truck. And that's clearly not what I'm talking about at all in this thread.
- ausbin 6y agoI used to own a Chevy Prizm and packed it with all sorts of stuff – including carrying a huge whiteboard on the roof – so I agree that strategy works. But what's nice about having a truck now is that I don't really have to try. I can just plop most things in the bed and go. You're right that it's not 100% necessary, but it's a great tool when you need it. That's one of the reasons they're so popular where I'm from (Georgia).
- TulliusCicero 6y agoI'm not sure why you're being downvoted. If you've lived anywhere in the states where pick-ups are very common, it's pretty obvious that few people actually need a pick-up truck very often. It's definitely a status/lifestyle thing for many.
- RosanaAnaDana 6y agoI would agree with this for 'new' trucks but going into my 4th year of home ownership, I bought a 3k light duty pickup. If I own it for ~2 years, it will have paid for its self in dump runs and material deliveries alone (not to mention the convenience of being able to do so on my own time).
- TulliusCicero 6y agoThere are definitely some homeowners who actually need a pickup. But there are tons who have a pickup, but would be better served by a van/SUV, or don't need a large vehicle at all. I used to live in Alabama, a common enough thing was that a guy who recently graduated high school, if they got a halfway decent paying job somehow (e.g. a local factory), they'd rush out and buy an F-150 or similar. They had no real use for it yet, but it made them look and feel more adult.
- ghaff 6y agoI vaguely thought about pickups when I bought my current SUV about 10 years ago. A pickup would be handy now and then but I've never actually needed to rent one and, for weekend getaways, I prefer having the interior space.
- RosanaAnaDana 6y agoOr you know, to do the regular and never ending series of tasks result from owning a home, and which can only be completed (or far more conveniently so) by use of a truck. In 2019 I spent 1400$ on deliveries and truck rentals. If you own a property, not having to set a 60$ delivery on a 30$ load of bark becomes a major convenience.
- mdszy 6y agoGood for you. I personally know plenty of people who buy trucks who have never put anything in the bed that couldn't have been put in the trunk of a hatchback.
- teej 6y agoThe Ford F-150 has been America’s top selling car (not just truck) for a long time. So lots and lots and lots of Americans buy pickup trucks.
- cosmodisk 6y agoI'm not sure why that's the case.I'm having hard time imagining that most buyers really use it as a truck: transport tools, equipment,and so on. They probably don't look so bad on American roads,as they are much wider, however every time I see one in Europe, it's almost 100% that some brash jackass is behind the wheel. Even those who buy them for work tend to follow the rule.
- agloeregrets 6y agoThat’s all kinda the story. Many don’t fully use them but they like the idea that they can. However, and this is important, one common misconception about America is that it’s all like NYC or suburbs. The country is positively huge and generally very sparsely populated in the middle. Many people own trucks because they have a farm or an ATV or do their own yard-work or construction or the like. Plus historically, pickups used to be the only AWD vehicles in the past and much of America involves harsh winters or off-road driving. But yeah, the other half of the market just buys them because they like them.
- beervirus 6y agoGas is cheap, and trucks are useful. I don't often need to move a bunch of lumber or whatever, but when I do, it's nice not to have to go rent a truck from Home Depot. And when I'm not doing that, it's basically a spacious luxury vehicle on the inside. What's not to like?
- scrose 6y ago> What’s not to like? The deaths and injuries caused from allowing any average person to drive a vehicle with a 6’ high hood with massive blind spots on crowded public roads.
- ceejayoz 6y agoIf you drive through suburbia, you'll probably find one in every other driveway. Very few of them are being used regularly for anything that requires a truck.
- jeffdavis 6y agoHaving one truck for an extended family to share is really convenient. (EDIT: E.g. one truck per 4-6 households.) And let's face it -- cars in general are completely unused at least 95% of the time (EDIT: probably an exaggeration). And you could just as easily say that most of the seats in a car go unused most of the time, even when in use. So it's really about the gas milage rather than the fact that it has an open bed. Sports cars and SUVs fall into the same category. It's just that a bunch of empty truck beds on the road are more visible than empty seats or over-powered engines.
- stefan_ 6y ago"If it's all unused, we might as well make it twice the size, three times the weight, whats the harm"
- jeffdavis 6y agoIsn't that what I said: that it's a gas milage problem and not a truck problem? Also, I advocated sharing a truck rather than owning one truck per household. So if we disagree about something, I don't understand what.
- stefan_ 6y agoIt kills people, lots of them small, most of them not in the actual truck. It is a gigantic moral hazard.
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- hourislate 6y agoA lot of folks. Anyone who is in construction and has to work on a house being built usually relies on a gas powered generator or shares plugs with the rest of the trades off the post in the yard. It's why cordless tools became popular, but unlike corded tools they sometimes lack the power required for the job. Can you imagine having this vehicle in an emergency where there is no power. It could power a refrigerator or a small space heater if necessary. It could help out camping for sure. Pickup trucks are no longer just work or farmer trucks. They are as luxurious as a high end Lexus with just as much room or more. My brother has an F150 and it is just as comfortable as my wife's Lexus ES350 with a better view out the windshield. The gas mileage is pretty good these days also.
- ajmurmann 6y agoIs there a good explanation why pick up trucks are so popular in the US, but no in Europe? Coming from Europe I've always wondered this and only ever have gotten reasons that would be valid in Europe as well. Uses cases of farmers and construction workers should be largely identical. Yet in Europe these get covered by tractors and vans. For farmers I wonder if the larger areas in the US make the difference.
- stephenhuey 6y agoAs I just alluded to in another comment, a lot of it is marketing of a macho image, e.g. commercials in Texas are customized to tell guys how the pickup being marketed is tough enough for Texans. So plenty of people I've known buy them because they associate them as being the most appropriate thing for a man to drive, whether they ever use the truck bed or not.
- cosmodisk 6y agoThis sums it all really: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yAuu3xOsorQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yAuu3xOsorQ
- ceejayoz 6y agoThere's a big tax benefit to them, if you can swing it. A lot of folks are being... loose with the definition of "business use". https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-to-make-a-tax-saving-double-play-with-a-pickup-truck-and-a-home-office-2018-08-20 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-to-make-a-tax-saving-d...
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoWe are starting to see more of them in the U.K. even though they are impractical on our roads and with our higher fuel prices.
- TulliusCicero 6y agoImage/status. In the US, pick-ups are macho. A cargo van may be equally practical, if not moreso, but a van isn't manly.
- stephenhuey 6y agoThere are only a couple million farmers in the United States, and yet the top 5 manufacturers of pickups sell a couple million trucks every year, and the F-Series is nearly a million of those sales. I guarantee farmers are not buying a new pickup every year! (And yes, in my part of Texas a lot of people just say "pickup" instead of "pickup truck"). I'm a city dweller and there are plenty of pickups around, but I can tell you know tons of Texans in both cities and smaller towns who wouldn't even consider buying anything other than a pickup for their daily driver (and no, they're not farmers). A lot of people around the country don't realize that lots of commercials are tailored for Texas. A big part of those are pickup commercials, saying they're built "Texas tough" or whatever.
- cosmodisk 6y agoWe used to have this mentality back home: Normal cars- only German made , if you can't afford normal car- buy Japanese,as a second best option,which really is the worst option. And the rest of the brands? Nobody really buys them unless they are crazy.
- protomyth 6y agoFunny, I guess we the low-rent version growing up: Chevy cars and Ford Trucks. Oh, the comments when the redesigned Dodge RAM showed up and some folks bought it. Now if I had to choose, I would probably buy a taco (Toyota Tacoma).
- unethical_ban 6y agoFor sedans, perhaps. The quality and reliability (and looks) of American trucks vs. cars can be a bit different. I stand by my Mazda, though. 2014, 110k and it has only needed a replacement alternator.
- ajuc 6y agoThat sounds completely crazy from european POV. I've seen probably less than 50 pickup trucks in my life. How do you drive that thing in a city? Where do you park it?
- rootusrootus 6y agoPeople who need pickups? I daily drive a Tesla, but my wife daily drives our F150. It's a great do-everything truck. Hauls the kids and sometimes their friends. Fits their bikes in the back. Hauls bark dust, gravel, big things, etc, whenver we need. Tows our travel trailer a couple times a month. And it does all of this very comfortably. It's really a great all around vehicle for a lot of families.
- driverdan 6y agoMost people who drive pickups don't actually need them. Financially they'd be better off renting one on the rare occasion they actually use the bed or towing capacity.
- rootusrootus 6y ago> Most people who drive pickups don't actually need them. On threads like this, that gets repeated often. There are probably dozens of nearly identical posts here already. It's just about as common as insinuating the people who drive trucks must have small genitalia. Awful lot of projection going on. So, can you back that up with something other than your intuition? All of my neighbors have pickups. and we all use them routinely for things only pickups can do. Please don't suggest that it would be financially better for me to rent a pickup every two weeks to tow my RV. I've already done the math.
- scrose 6y ago“ 75 percent of truck owners use their truck for towing one time a year or less (meaning, never). Nearly 70 percent of truck owners go off-road one time a year or less. And a full 35 percent of truck owners use their truck for hauling—putting something in the bed, its ostensible raison d’être—once a year or less.” Data from an automotive research consulting firm. Article is below. https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-size-pickup-truck-you-need-a-cowboy-costume https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-siz...
- function_seven 6y ago
- dghughes 6y agoPeople self-employed like appliance repairmen, plumbers, fishermen, farmers, carpenters, roofers, grass cutting, snow removal. Here in Canada it's a great vehicle due to snow and rugged terrain. Even in small towns snow is on the ground 25% of the year but in some places nearly half the year. I don't care if the truck is gas or diesel as long as it moves. But electric would be preferable for efficiency as long as it can haul a trailer or carry a load.
- tmh79 6y agoThere are lots of self employed people that own nice trucks, but the primary sales target of the F150 is a wealthy office worker who lives in the suburbs. By far their biggest customer base is people who like the aesthetics of the truck but do not need a truck, and do not use the features of the truck beyond its size.
- centimeter 6y agoI have lots of outdoor hobbies that require the transport of large and heavy gear. Scuba tanks, gun cases, power tools, skis, mountain bikes, etc. The options for me are a big SUV or a pickup truck. Right now it’s an SUV, but an F150 is looking pretty attractive.
- wmeredith 6y agoThe F-150 is the best selling vehicle of any kind in North America and has been for years. So lots and lots of people.