Why do people feel the need to have a $60K+ massive behemoth? 99% of the time if I glance in the bed it is spotless. It is probably only used for commuting and carrying groceries. It might haul a load of mulch once a year. The things are so high that if they hit a car they are going to ride up over the hood and crush you. At least my state finally got its act together and banned those goddamn frontend lifted trucks that made it impossible to see anything within 50 ft and guaranteed a deadly collision. Now I know someone will say “But I need it for my building job/farm/etc”, you are the exception, the vast majority sold are not being used for that.
“reasoning that these vehicles are safer for drivers in the event of a crash” Sounds like an arms race. Soon we will be driving armored personnel carriers.
It is bad enough they make them with ridiculously loud exhausts as bad as muscle cars and fart exhausts. Electric cars and trucks quieting everything can’t come fast enough.
A big part of the problem is that they just don’t make small affordable trucks anymore.
The tiny little Ford ranger of the 90s used to be the cheapest car at a Ford dealership. The current ranger is only a couple inches smaller than the f150 and costs a couple grand less, if you can even find one.
Personally, I’m a pretty big fan of smaller everything. This trend to make everything larger and larger annoys me. There’s only one exception to this and that’s mainly in living space. You shouldn’t feel crammed into a suitcase when you’re at home. It should be a place to relax and unwind, not a claustrophobic’s nightmare.
I remember when people started to pick up old Hummers and I couldn’t understand why, for the life of me. Then they made the considerably smaller H2, which took off. The original hummer had it’s place, in extreme terrain and conditions; the Hummer doesn’t really have a place where you’re exclusively driving on roads. Military applications are exempt of course, since they don’t know when they will need the versatility, but civilian ownership is dubious at best. I’m sure there’s exceptions, but exceptions are going to be a fairly trivial amount of the population.
H2 was a glorified SUV, and it got weird after that.
But the enbiggification of things doesn’t stop there, electronics are a huge contributor as well. Massive 80+ inch TVs for your studio apartment are kind of ridiculous, you basically cover most of the useful wall surface with a single television that displays a single program at a time. Meanwhile, 30-40 inch TVs from the broadcast TV era (mid 80’s through the 90’s) usually had features like picture in picture so you could watch more than one program at a time. Such features only exist in history books.
Another big offender in my opinion is cellphones. I understand that mobile devices have become a massive link that ties us together and has supplanted many other potential technologies, acting as a catch all for a lot of devices that simply are no longer required (like calendars, calculators, planners, books, lists… Even video enabled telephone devices and such things) a phone is a general computer in your pocket that can be reconfigured for all these purposes through the use of software. The thing is that all of that doesn’t require additional space inside the phone since the technology advances at a reasonable speed relative to the software capabilities, but screens keep getting larger, batteries get bigger, but you don’t get any additional run time for your phone as a result. It takes up more room in your pocket and provides nearly no benefit for it’s increase in size beyond “mines bigger”…
And I’m not just talking about the biggest phones available, all phones are expanding, the base Nexus/pixel phone has had increasingly larger sizing over the years, same with Samsung, same with Apple, same with pretty much every other manufacturer. It is to the point of being unable to get a device with less than a 5" screen even if you try, and the devices that are 5" or even 6" are horribly outdated in technology or have so many corners cut so they can be budget devices that nobody really wants and would only buy to save money.
The argument can be made for just about everything… Except maybe boxed and canned goods at grocery stores… But that’s a different rant for a different day.
I have a simple question for people: if the truck bed can’t hold an eight foot wooden stud without half of it sticking out the back, why do you have a truck?
My dad always said that it should fit an 4x8 sheet of plywood laying down. Also that if you don’t need to haul 4x8 sheets of plywood on the regular then you probably don’t need a truck.
I’ve never owned a truck, and there honestly hasn’t been mant times when my Mazda 3 wont do. . Six drawer dresser - check. Queen size mattress-check. Hockey bags and kids- check. Visitors from the airport and luggage- check. Ikea furniture-sometimes sticks out the back.
There are a lot of uses of trucks beyond transporting construction materials. I wouldn’t want to tow a trailer loaded with round bales with a car, or try to put a big block chevy in the trunk.
Why do people feel the need to have a $60K+ massive behemoth? 99% of the time if I glance in the bed it is spotless. It is probably only used for commuting and carrying groceries. It might haul a load of mulch once a year. The things are so high that if they hit a car they are going to ride up over the hood and crush you. At least my state finally got its act together and banned those goddamn frontend lifted trucks that made it impossible to see anything within 50 ft and guaranteed a deadly collision. Now I know someone will say “But I need it for my building job/farm/etc”, you are the exception, the vast majority sold are not being used for that.
“reasoning that these vehicles are safer for drivers in the event of a crash” Sounds like an arms race. Soon we will be driving armored personnel carriers.
It is bad enough they make them with ridiculously loud exhausts as bad as muscle cars and fart exhausts. Electric cars and trucks quieting everything can’t come fast enough.
A big part of the problem is that they just don’t make small affordable trucks anymore.
The tiny little Ford ranger of the 90s used to be the cheapest car at a Ford dealership. The current ranger is only a couple inches smaller than the f150 and costs a couple grand less, if you can even find one.
There’s clearly some demand for small trucks, too. I’ve been seeing an increasing number of imported kei trucks around me.
I had a 1986 Mazda B2000 for a while. Very useful, tough little thing, even though it only had like 75hp.
Personally, I’m a pretty big fan of smaller everything. This trend to make everything larger and larger annoys me. There’s only one exception to this and that’s mainly in living space. You shouldn’t feel crammed into a suitcase when you’re at home. It should be a place to relax and unwind, not a claustrophobic’s nightmare.
I remember when people started to pick up old Hummers and I couldn’t understand why, for the life of me. Then they made the considerably smaller H2, which took off. The original hummer had it’s place, in extreme terrain and conditions; the Hummer doesn’t really have a place where you’re exclusively driving on roads. Military applications are exempt of course, since they don’t know when they will need the versatility, but civilian ownership is dubious at best. I’m sure there’s exceptions, but exceptions are going to be a fairly trivial amount of the population.
H2 was a glorified SUV, and it got weird after that.
But the enbiggification of things doesn’t stop there, electronics are a huge contributor as well. Massive 80+ inch TVs for your studio apartment are kind of ridiculous, you basically cover most of the useful wall surface with a single television that displays a single program at a time. Meanwhile, 30-40 inch TVs from the broadcast TV era (mid 80’s through the 90’s) usually had features like picture in picture so you could watch more than one program at a time. Such features only exist in history books.
Another big offender in my opinion is cellphones. I understand that mobile devices have become a massive link that ties us together and has supplanted many other potential technologies, acting as a catch all for a lot of devices that simply are no longer required (like calendars, calculators, planners, books, lists… Even video enabled telephone devices and such things) a phone is a general computer in your pocket that can be reconfigured for all these purposes through the use of software. The thing is that all of that doesn’t require additional space inside the phone since the technology advances at a reasonable speed relative to the software capabilities, but screens keep getting larger, batteries get bigger, but you don’t get any additional run time for your phone as a result. It takes up more room in your pocket and provides nearly no benefit for it’s increase in size beyond “mines bigger”…
And I’m not just talking about the biggest phones available, all phones are expanding, the base Nexus/pixel phone has had increasingly larger sizing over the years, same with Samsung, same with Apple, same with pretty much every other manufacturer. It is to the point of being unable to get a device with less than a 5" screen even if you try, and the devices that are 5" or even 6" are horribly outdated in technology or have so many corners cut so they can be budget devices that nobody really wants and would only buy to save money.
The argument can be made for just about everything… Except maybe boxed and canned goods at grocery stores… But that’s a different rant for a different day.
You know the answer. It’s insecure man children.
I have a simple question for people: if the truck bed can’t hold an eight foot wooden stud without half of it sticking out the back, why do you have a truck?
My dad always said that it should fit an 4x8 sheet of plywood laying down. Also that if you don’t need to haul 4x8 sheets of plywood on the regular then you probably don’t need a truck.
I’ve never owned a truck, and there honestly hasn’t been mant times when my Mazda 3 wont do. . Six drawer dresser - check. Queen size mattress-check. Hockey bags and kids- check. Visitors from the airport and luggage- check. Ikea furniture-sometimes sticks out the back.
There are a lot of uses of trucks beyond transporting construction materials. I wouldn’t want to tow a trailer loaded with round bales with a car, or try to put a big block chevy in the trunk.