The interesting thing in the US is that a lot of pickups, possibly most of them, are purchased for regular daily driving. None of the people I know with pickups have trailers.

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csto12 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I love seeing Ram 6000 Max Diesel Rampage Pros who’s sole job is going to work and Walmart.

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wlesieutre 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And when they pick up groceries they load everything onto the floor of the back seat because the bed is so high up you’d need a step ladder to use it

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Eueudhsbsj32 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think the more important reasons are to prevent the groceries from sliding around in the bed and to protect them from the sun and precipitation.

	▲	bakies 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Dang, if only someone made an everyday car with a soft weather proof enclosed cargo area, possibly you could have the tailgate open up and away as well so it's not in the way. I would think Americans would love to have something more practical than a work vehicle

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analog31 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Another reason is to avoid letting the inside of the bed get scratched. I lived in Texas for a while, and people were that fussy about their trucks.

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bloomingeek 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So true! My Ram 1500 was purchased to pull our travel trailer. It has the tow package and is factory raised up some. I'm kind of old, so I keep a three-step ladder in the bed so I can easily climb into it.

Because of the poor gas mileage, I always wonder at why people drive these gas guzzlers as their main transport. But each to his own. (BTW, some claim safety, but it's probably fashion.)

	▲	lostlogin 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The safety aspect is intersting. The driver might be safer, but they are vastly more likely to kill anything they hit. https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2025/being-hit-suv-i...

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phoghed 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Isn’t the Ram Rampage a more compact non US market 4cyl variant? Like a maverick competitor?

	▲	csto12 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I just made up a name. I know Rebel is a model that’s hilariously large. Don’t know about others.
	▲	quickthrowman 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yes, the RAM Rampage is comparable to a Ford Maverick which is a unibody vehicle with a truck bed. The massive truck they likely meant would be a RAM 3500 HD super crew cab full size bed Cummins diesel dually rear axle with a vertical dual stainless steel smokestack exhaust kit for good measure. Which is essentially the largest truck you can get with a pickup bed from RAM, GM, or Ford; and they go for over $100,000 with options. There are even larger monstrosities with pickup beds built on top of 550/5500/Class 5 truck chassis which are basically a Canyonero from He Simpsons in real life: https://www.elevationoffgrid.com/ My favorite derogatory term for a vehicle type is ‘hausfrauenpanzer’ which means ‘housewife tank’ in German, which is used for a large SUV in Germany, lol.

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SoftTalker 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's honestly not that many. That's a very expensive truck for a daily driver. Most likely they have a large Airstream camper, horse trailer, or 5th wheel trailer or similar that they pull with it.

Sure, some people just like a big diesel truck for ego reasons. But the cost of them limits most people's ability to endulge that.

	▲	cosmic_cheese 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That’s what one would expect, but in some parts of the US it’s not uncommon to see dilapidated houses with a shiny tricked out F-150 that’s never worked a day in its life sitting out in the parking lot… I think for some it’s an identity thing more than anything else.
	▲	analog31 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I grew up in a suburb of Detroit, and when I went back to visit the family home a few years ago, every street was parked up on both sides with giant vehicles. It was a sight to behold. They weren't all the most expensive trucks, and many were noticeably older. Things in our town went up and down with the cycle of the car industry.

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kylehotchkiss 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

“Compensation” and extreme loneliness (cannot find my tribe without spreading its dumb peacock wings so they know I fit in)

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stackghost 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The suburban people buying Ram 9001 Warlord Editions are not the target market for this truck.

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mothballed 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

4 trips a year picking up a heavy excavator or tractor so you dont have to pay a tradesman a gazillion dollars and it pays for itself. "But just pay someone to haul it or rent a truck" lmao good fucking luck down my dirt roads

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thegrim33 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That some people buy them and don't really need them has zero relevance on whether any people have need for them.

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analog31 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

How people use the vehicles that they buy is pretty well understood from the market research done by the car industry. In the US, the widespread use of pickup trucks a passenger vehicles is a known fact.

An odd thing is that my family visited a rural part of England last year, and we saw very few pickup trucks on the roads and in the towns. On a walking tour, you see a lot of farms up close because the paths go through farms and along fence lines. The farms had utility vehicles including light trucks, but they also had regular passenger cars.

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SoftTalker 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And a lot of people have occasional need for a truck but don't want to or can't afford to own more than one car, so they use the truck for all their driving.

	▲	convolvatron 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		some guy left a few hundred pounds of steel in the loading area of my workshop for stupid reasons. maybe about $80 worth in scrap. he kept coming by and claiming someone was going to pick up it up, and getting really threatening about us stealing the value from him. the scrap yard is 200 ft away. he drives a big jacked up truck. after a couple weeks of this I'm like 'look, I'll cut it down, and we can throw it in that truck of yours and you can roll 200ft down the road and we'll be done with it'. he was incensed, his bed liner would get all scratched up. after that I dragged it out onto the curb for the meth addicts to sell.

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skippyfish 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I find it somewhat amusing that this attracts a lot of ire, but most of us would prefer a 2,000+ sq ft suburban home with a lawn when we could live comfortably in a 500-700 sq ft apartment, like people do in most European cities.

Ultimately, life in highly developed countries is largely about the wants, not the needs, and different cultures emphasize different wants. The tech culture of the SF Bay Area doesn't glamorize big trucks, but it glamorizes making millions of dollars with no regard for privacy or social impacts of the tech we build.