Not even. When I lived in the boonies trash service was ~$75 a quarter, the local hardware store would deliver pallets of mulch for free, and furniture stores offered free delivery above certain purchase amounts. My buddy's dad would haul your boat between the marina and your house for a flat fee. Hell, I was able to cram a full PA with floor monitors and a few guitars into my Corolla for weekend band gigs.

I started looking into getting a trailer or hitch hauler but it didn't seem to make much sense. I could usually pay somebody on-demand to move stuff around and it always worked out to be cheaper than owning and maintaining a truck. I presently work from home and don't even own a car anymore; the math is quite similar with rideshare and motorcycle maintenance coming in significantly cheaper.

These are quite expensive for what you get and are slooooooow. It's fine if you want an expensive, quirky neighborhood runabout, but you'll be made very aware that this is a product not at all designed for the US market (there's a good reason most examples do ~1000 miles a year). The ACTYs I found online were in the $7-20k range, for a ~30 year old model - more for a nice van.

The best used work truck is actually a van. They lack the coolness factor of trucks, but are far more versatile. You can pick up a <10 year old Transit with under 100k miles for like 10-15k. That price point will get you a >10 year old F150 in the 100-150k mile range.

Plus, there are good options if you want something smaller can car-based, like NV2000s and Transit connects. Which don't really exist for trucks outside of newer (maverick) or niche (Ridgeline) options.

Bonus points, a nice Transit is a great daily driver too.

Harsh did a tipper conversion for the Daihatsu Hijet, which had an 850cc triple with a lot more poke than the Acty's 660cc twin, and had a "true 4WD" variant.

In the UK, Truck and Driver Magazine featured one so equipped in a head-to-head AWD tipper test (AWD in the sense of all wheels driven regardless of number of axles, not Subaru AWD/Audi Quattro type AWD), alongside a variety of extremely large trucks. Proper trucks, not F150s, we're talking 18-tonne Scanias and stuff here.

Everyone wanted one of the little Hijets to take home.

I had a 2008 Tundra I sold when I moved to the EU not too long ago. Still miss it. It was big, but could easily tow my boat or haul anything I needed. Was a 4 door and had a full sized bed. Had 125k miles when I sold it, and still ran great.

I would have gotten a Tacoma, but I need the extra towing capacity.

Trucks don't have to see gravel to be working trucks.

If you use a truck for work purposes once a year it is likely cheaper to just drive a truck for everything than have a second car. Don't say rent a truck is an option - you probably can't rent a truck for most work purposes - most rentals have fine print against that, even if you can find a place to rent a truck the cost quickly gets to more than just owning your own truck.

I hope someone fully capitalizes on what Edison is trying to do up in Canada.

That is a fully electric drive train hybrid. That way you can charge it at home and charge it with a generator under use. Problem is our current laws are making certifications a mess.

> Oh sure, but look at the vast popularity of these monstrosities that never even see gravel.

Normal-sized pickups aren't meant for offroading.

> A reader might conclude that people who want a vehicle to pull a boat or haul mulch are misguided, or even dangerous.

How about I just conclude that while pulling a boat or hauling mulch are completely OK things to want a vehicle for (*), one does not need a F150 with a front end that reaches my chest and has gas mileage to prove it.

As many have noted, pickups like the 90s Toyotas did these things just fine for almost everyone, but most US based manufacturers have stopped making them.

Me noting that doesn't make me part of the doom of the political party I always vote for.

(*) to the extent that we live in a society where private ownership of vehicles is completely unremarkable, that is. And we do, for the foreseeable future.

A Maverick is hardly a working truck. It's got the same towing capacity of an older Kia Sportage. It's got front wheel drive (or awd). It's a car with a bed, not a truck.

Maverick has a tiny bed (4.5 foot) whereas kei trucks can have up to 7 foot beds. I really wish we did small trucks with bigger beds here in North America. Really all I want is a hilux champ.

This is a tragedy of an awful taste.

Tragedy of not having better regulations. The commons don't have anything to do with it.

Reply to the sibling comment about little to no negative externalities:

Sports cars sure do have negative externalities. I live next to a custom car mod shop in the boonies. People hoon around here like there's no one else alive. They put my life and the lives of my family at risk on the regular. That is most definitely a negative externality.

Sports cars largely don't have any of the negative externalities of trucks.

HN has hated Trucks and American cars, except when Tesla came out, for as long as I’ve been here. Same with Reddit.

The only question is range when those rural folks go to the big city (if less than an hour they do this once a week because groceries in the suburbs of a big city are so much cheaper. If farther than that they still go once a month because of things they can't get. Though I don't know anyone who lives so far out that they can't get to a city and back in a long day.

Otherwise rural folks often have something to fix on the other side of their property that needs tools. Cordless tools do a lot but sometimes are not enough.

it's a few hundred bucks, an extra thing to remember, takes up bed space, requires bringing gas, and is loud and annoying to use. It's not the biggest thing, but it's a pretty nice value add.

Easily stolen.

Your argument hinges on any level of maintenance being enough to maintain our current level of investment. The truth is always more complicated.

Take for example DVD rental. The market completely evaporated, while there is still a small lingering community that could be serviced by rentals. My local library is proof that there is a market. But there are, bar some weird exceptions, no remaining DVD rental stores.

If an EV needs 50% of the maintenance, then it stands to reason that you need 50% of the staff. That's the easy part. But what about all the other staff? Can you afford as many staff in front of house when your main profit centre shrank massively? Can you keep the same amount of cars in the lot if you don't have the cash to pay the manufacturer fees?

There are a lot more uses of a truck than towing a boat.

Normal cars vs the fever dreams of a ketamine addict.

>If you really need something bigger renting a trailer or truck is dirt cheap

It’s neither convenient nor cheap to rent a trailer in much of the US. Major cities have options, rural areas less so. Full disclosure I have a mid-sized pickup, but I recently looked into renting a trailer for a landscaping project that was above the weight limit for my truck. First issue I ran into was that there were not any trailers available for rent anywhere near my location. Second issue was that after factoring in driving distance + rental cost + dump fees, it was ~ the same price just to pay a junk company to haul the materials…and it was not cheap. Anecdotally, my pickup was cheaper than most other vehicle options at the time I bought it, my commute is short (so fuel economy is less an issue), and as a homeowner I use the bed to haul something at least once/month (Unfortunately kei trucks weren’t available at the time). So the cost/benefit/convenience factor of owning a truck over renting a trailer works for me. YMMV.

I found out a couple of years ago that you cannot rent a vehicle and use it to tow. This is a major barrier to the argument "when you need to tow <X> just rent a vehicle that can do that" (an argument I would like to support).

Except most people also use trucks as daily driver vehicles. You can't exactly fit the wife and kids in a kei. Sure you could also own a car for that but now I need to own/store 2 vehicles instead of one.

I decide if a truck is utilitarian by whether I have to flag a 2x4x8 in the bed or not.

A F-150 from the previous century is much utilitarian than today's F-150's. The bed height and rail height are much more reasonable heights -- you can reach into the bed from the side.

Manual gearbox, triangle vent windows, engine bay room, repairability, bench seats.

I wish it had even fewer features, but I take your point.

You may underestimate how much consumption some people in the US have and why a Camry wouldn't work. Hell, for the amount of hobby project stuff I bring home on a bi-weekly basis a car just doesn't cut it. Then again, I'm not sure where I fit in the average population.

More like a 2001 Renault Clio. Camrys are already bloatware.

safety standards, gas milage, and a bunch of other factors have improved dramatically since 2008.

buy yourself a gently used 2019 Camry

> and renting a chainsaw or other appropriate tool when necessary,

I don't think most people realize how expensive and time consuming tool rental is.

This is where things also get kind of messy in the US. In manicured suburbs you probably don't need a chainsaw. But in older growth and places with larger lots you really do need one. If you wait till you need one after a big storm, you may travel 100 miles out of the storm damage to find one to rent or have to wait for weeks as your driveway is blocked and contractors are booked up.

For me the utility function is somewhere in between a car and a truck, hence why I have an SUV. I can carry the large boxes/items I seem to have at a regular basis. When I need something bigger I can rent a trailer to hook to it. Trucks themselves are way too expensive now, and I don't need that much capacity. A car would have me constantly renting or borrowing one from someone else (which I did when I owned a car and it was a pain in the ass).