You Don't Need a Full-Size Pickup Truck, You Need a Cowboy Costume
Preachiness and statistical weasel-language aside, the author is correct. I have a beat-up longbed ram 1500, and my usage statistics look pretty close to the ones cited. I bought this truck because I work on cars, and a handful of times I&#x27;ll do something that no smaller vehicle could do (towing, hauling many tons of metal, etc). But mostly, it chugs gas like it&#x27;s going out of style and forces me to avoid even attempting to park in downtown seattle.<p>That said, my favorite parts of the truck have less to do with raw power or hauling, and more to do with the &quot;always on&quot; parts of the truck owner costume. (The author&#x27;s point about &quot;all cars are drag&quot; really resonates with me).<p>1) Cabin room. The bench seat in my truck is effectively a couch. I&#x27;m a heavy guy, and while I have no trouble fitting in something compact like a VW Golf, the truck is a different experience. It&#x27;s the only class of vehicle where I feel that I have room to stretch my legs a little, literally. The bench seat doubles as a cargo space and lets me haul more fragile things with my arm around them, which I do considerably more often. The Dashboard shape and UI is straightforward and uncluttered, there&#x27;s no bulky center console or strange contours the way you&#x27;d find in a modern vehicle. It&#x27;s roomy in a way that goes beyond utility, and into more of a mental feeling of unrestrictedness that I really enjoy. It&#x27;s more like a living room than a cockpit. I have found no other class of vehicle that does this. If I could get a BMW 3 series with the interior proportions of a 2008 pickup, I would be <i>very</i> interested.<p>2) Similar to that cognitive effect, I find that one of my favorite parts of owning a truck is the idea of &quot;the answer&#x27;s always yes&quot;.<p>It&#x27;s a constant surplus of optionality. If I find a cool piece of furniture, someone&#x27;s giving away something interesting at the office or on the side of the road, there are various &quot;once in a lifetime&quot; or just &quot;right place right time&quot; things I&#x27;m always allowed to consider. I say no to most of these anyway, because they&#x27;re silly regardless of whether you can actually pull off the logistics. But the times I&#x27;ve said yes have come close to paying for the truck with just the cash value of what I&#x27;ve picked up. When this is good, it&#x27;s really good. Having a crappier truck helps too. I beat the hell out of it with no remorse. Scratched the paint loading a grill the other day. Glanced to assess the damage, moved on. That&#x27;s what I bought it for. This isn&#x27;t truck exclusive, but it&#x27;s peaceful.<p>3) Being &quot;that friend with a truck&quot; is kinda nice. Sure it&#x27;s a pain in the ass to be asked, and worse, expected, to help with so-and-so&#x27;s move by some coworker you&#x27;ve hardly ever spoken to. But many of my more urban friends are really kind and generous to me in ways that better suit their ways of life – inviting me to events or consulting on hipster things that are out of my wheelhouse. I feel like a bit of a misfit sometimes, since my hobbies and ambitions are decidedly more redneck than most of my friends. So I appreciate that I have something from the other side that I can offer in return. Junk removal especially – random crap piling up seems to be a legitimate stressor on a lot of my friends and their relationships. Pulling off a dump run is a big feat for them, and it&#x27;s simple for me to do for free. I&#x27;m amused by how grateful some of these people are. You&#x27;d think I paid for their kid&#x27;s college when all I did was make a chair disappear. This dynamic probably disappears in rural america, but it&#x27;s nice in a big city.<p>---<p>If I had to do it over, I&#x27;d buy a smaller truck, like a vintage tacoma or raptor. If this size of truck comes back, electric or otherwise, I think there&#x27;s a lot of demand.<p>As car sharing gets really good, this might get easier. Sure I can rent a pickup from home depot for $20&#x2F;hr, but that requires getting to home depot, filling out a bunch of paperwork, it&#x27;s a whole affair that feels very constraining. As this friction is innovated away, I definitely see &quot;truck on demand&quot; as a function of the gig economy, and I look forward to feeling like this this is a thing I don&#x27;t need to own full time.