I'm curious what the population size is of the place you live (order of magnitude). I fully appreciate not every place in the world has such companies with rental offerings.

If you own a boat, jetski or horse trailer etc, and live in a small metropolitan area with few rental offerings, those I think owning a car makes sense. And if it's a large enough boat (so not a jetski, which a regular car can tow), a medium/big SUV or truck is the most sensible choice.

Meanwhile only about 10% of the US population lives in a metropolitan area of less than 100k people. About 65% lives in an area with >1m people for example, where I'd be quite surprised you can't find regular rentals to tow things, my city has plenty and it's <1m people.

And only about 10% of households own boats, and only a fraction of those are stored on-land, and a fraction of those are larger boats that require a sizeable car (SUV/truck).

Meanwhile 80% of cars are either trucks, vans or SUVs.

So statistically the vast majority of people that own SUVs/trucks, do not own a boat or something equivalent that needs an SUV/truck to tow, or who live in a place where there are rentals that allow you to tow whatever you want if the car is rated for it.

And even then you get to the point where the question is still whether you need to own one, or know someone with one.

So I think the point stands: most truck/SUV owners don't own because of their use-case, but because of other reasons (mostly personal style / branding / feeling). Yes of course non-ownership of an SUV/Truck is not an option for 100% of SUV/Truck owners given their use-cases. But the vast majority of SUV/Truck owners statistically don't own something that needs an SUV/Truck to tow, or live in a place where you can find rental alternatives.

I've done this research in 4 different large metropolitan areas, including Chicago.

There are a handful a major problems:

1. They don't guarantee a specific make, model, or configuration. They guarantee a hitch receiver, but they don't guarantee minimum payload capacity, brake controllers, tow mirrors, axle ratio (important for towing), or engine configuration (also critical for towing). This alone is pretty much a breaker. Again, a truck isn't any use if it cannot legally tow your configuration.

1b. Rental trucks are almost always lowest trim levels. They're not going to have a tonneau cover, advanced safety features, or creature comforts of the truck you own/lease.

1c. They do not guarantee fuel capacities or offer extended range tanks. This can be a major problem when you're towing in the middle of nowhere or in mountainous areas.

2. They do not guarantee they will have inventory available when you need it. Everyone wants to go camping and move during major holiday weekends, so it's neigh impossible to actually rent one during peak times. This argument holds against any sort of "just rent from a niche provider". Renting doesn't work if somebody else is renting the vehicle you need during the time you need it.

3. It's wildly inconvenient to actually rent a truck. For example, Enterprise does offer truck rentals - but they come from truck-centric rental locations, geared towards business and commercial use. They basically only operate during standard business hours. That means getting a rental truck requires taking time off.

Some companies offer fleet rentals that basically solve all of the issues above - except these are really more like leasing programs. You can get a month-to-month rental, but prices are pretty absurd. Not to mention, you still have a truck sitting in your driveway for the part of the month you're not traveling.