IME most tradespeople tend to actually use vans. I'm in the US and a house is being built across the street from my home office window, and there are more picku

IME most tradespeople tend to actually use vans. I'm in the US and a house is being built across the street from my home office window, and there are more pickup trucks (most with 'manly' modifications) parked as vanity items for the employees of the welding supply shop down the street than there have been carpenters, plumbers, concrete layers, roofers, and so on here building something. It's all been Transit/Promasters and larger Ford E-XXX type vans. Of course, not a massive sample size, but spending time both in a large American metro as well as in the rural, farming hinterlands of my state, I rarely meet people with pickups who could honestly say they need it. One cattle farmer I'm friends with has a Ford F-250 but it's like 20 years old. 63% of American truck buyers never hook anything up to the trailer hitch. It is a costume, or most charitably, a somewhat reasonable consequence of our whacked out emissions laws, our terrible safety regulations and traffic engineering standards (which are imo criminal), and a simple calculus of "what do I buy if I want the most car for the least amount of money". The last point is of no consequence if it that choice doesn't affect anyone else, but that simply isn't the case. The most optimal personal choice is rarely the most optimal societal choice, but the consequences of the bad societal choice are not felt as acutely even if they're far worse. More barely utilized pickups is bad for everyone.