I’ve got an ancient 1987 Ram 50. I use it to occasionally haul stuff. It certainly isn’t about image; I drive it maybe 500 miles a year these days. But when I need a truck, it’s there. Like plnnr, I want one vehicle that I can toss a 4x8 sheet of plywood into.
You haven’t been driving in my corner of NJ. If you had, you would have seen me tooling down the highway in my white Ford Ranger, loaded with one of: building supplies, tools, people’s luggage going to the airport, boxes heading for Goodwill, among other things.
I use it sparingly: around 6,000mi/yr. But it’s great to have when I need it.
I do have to admit that I miss driving a full-sized pickup. I really liked sitting tall and being able to see around everything in front of me.
85 Chevy C10, V8 at least 180,000miles, beater of all beater trucks.
No air, no radio, no muffler, no power anything except steering and brakes. Would I trade it for anything but another truck? Never. I actually bought it well used, when I was building a new house about a year and a half ago. I’ve hauled all kinds of things from the lumber yards and home stores.
Just hauled a load of decking for the new deck last night. Load of mulch for the yard, no problem. 10ft copper tubing, I got it. You say you need a ton of concrete mix, sure. Paying for delivery of building supplies is a thing of the past. The cost of the truck has already paid for itself in utility.
I have a sporty little car that is in better shape, and goes a lot faster on a lot less gas, but I like to drive my truck. It’s like a big blue friend to me.
Shark
I use mine mostly for plowing snow. I have an SUV and a 16’ trailer so I can haul pretty much with those (except the trailer doesn’t go anywhere in the winter). The truck is a real beater.
It’s a '76 Chevy shortbed. Perfect for plowing snow. Just had a new tranny put in it, so at least in the summer (when I can take the chains off) I will start using it more for hauling (I’m doing an addition to my house).
For myself, I can’t imagine having at least an SUV.
My truck is no-frills. Sort of. We had air conditioning added to it when we bought it. And we bought a cap for it. Much better than an open bed (for our purposes.) I love my little truck.
Ain’t that the truth! (Have you noticed that SUV’s are starting to outnumber trucks in Texas, though?) :eek:
We own one, in addition to a SUV and a sedan - the truck was most definitely a utilitarian choice.
I hauled 13 loads of rock to the landfill and then a lot of building materials to build on two more bedrooms. Now that’s done and my son was given an old truck by his scoutmaster, my wife says my next vehicle will be a mini-van.
This is gonna play hell with my image.
I drive an old truck that I’ve had for about four years. I rarely leave the city, but I love the truck. I like the way it handles, I get good mileage, and it’s utterly reliable. Plus I used to move a lot; the truck has gotten me through five complete moves that would have been logistical nightmares without it.
Now, I haven’t moved in the last two years, which is nice, but I’m probably going to next summer. And once again I’ll be glad I have a truck.
Oh yeah, and you get lots of free beer/food for helping friends move their stuff around.
The only thing I usually haul is children. So I have a full size passenger van. Most trucks I see are for image. Great gas-guzzling death-star size things that are so clean and devoid of dents that it’s obvious they never see anything but pavement.
The key word is “apparent.” The use may not be apparent to you, but that does not mean that the person driving it does not need the capacity. There is usually no way to tell what a truck is used for just by casually looking at it. Besides, a lot of the trucks that you are assuming are driven by “regular” people may in fact be work trucks. Not all work trucks are labeled.
And I’m not exactly sure what “image” driving a pickup conveys, other than “person who hauls a lot of crap around.”
Anyway, I live in central New Jersey, and we have a truck. 1994 Toyota T-100, extended cab with a cap. We keep hearing rumblings about Toyota coming out with a long-bed extended-cab Tundra sometime in the future. That would be great. Og knows we could use the extra space.
Who’s family? Your family, maybe. My family, no.
Well, you could lash it to the roof with jumper cables…(don’t ask!)
Can you even put a trailer hitch on the average station wagon? My parents bought a Chevy Celebrity station wagon in 1986, and were kind of surprised to read in the owners’ manual that it was recommended that you not try to tow anything with the Celebrity. It wasn’t a big deal to them, of course, because if they needed to tow anything, they still had…you guessed it, the pickup truck!
I rarely see a car towing anything these days. I think that most people who tow trailers get pickups or SUV’s.
Hee, hee… this is like Monthy SUV Rant Lite®.
A good point. You could look at all the people driving alone in five passenger vehicles and ask why they did not buy two seaters. Still, I myself have never owned a truck and never felt the need for one, and I very rarely see people lugging anything that would not fit in the trunk or back seat. (Although, I have owned a big old station wagon for some time, so it could be that I’ve been accustomed to extra space that way).
Well there certainly seems to be some image involved. Other posters to this thread have referenced it as well. Probably some sort of macho “truck” thing. Certainly I would think the people who give their trucks names like “Bad Boy” and emblazon them on the front of their hoods are after some sort of image, don’t you think?.
Actually the immediate impetus for this thread was when, in the course of researching the purchase of a van, I came across this forum. A lot of these guys know a lot about the mechanics of Ford vehicles which makes it a useful forum, but their primary focus is on things like getting maximum power out of their engines so that they can beat other truck drivers in drag races. Also in dolling up their trucks with all sorts of accessories.
There was a good article on the concept in the Onion a bit back: “Local man Wants Only the Best for His Truck”. (It does not seem to have been archived).
But of course, these people are a subset of the population, and I was wondering how big or small of a subset they are, or how much currency the image thing has among the larger population.
I’ve never noticed a real attitude among truck people, compared with the definite cliques like the ricers and hardcore SUV drivers. Most of em just have it to haul stuff around, as far as I know.
I love my Tacoma. It’s been pretty handy when I had to move suddenly. But then, when you have a truck, everyone asks you to haul something.
I don’t like to haul anything. I just think it’s cool. It’s a 4 cyl, so it’s not for towing much, plus I declined the tow package. But if I need to haul something, I can. It’s a good feeling.
I put my surfing stuff in it, but then again ocean water has a lot of salt & it eats metal…
I like sitting higher than other cars that way I can look down into them.
Also, curbs are easier to drive upon.
I Got an extra cab so the kids can be in back.
I have a crappy little Mits. Pick up truck. I don’t own it for image. It was given to me. The benefits I see though are I can only fit 2 other passengers and even then its uncomfortable. People don’t see me as a taxi then and are less willing to squeeze in. I also like to throw all sorts of crap in the bed.
I’m a 5’2" female, and I drive a big honkin’ 4x4 pickup truck - brush guard, nerf bars, and offroad tires. Yee-haw! Everyone made fun of me when I bought it. But then it starts… “Can you help us get some mulch?” “Can you help me move?”
It gets used. I moved the contents of my house with it. I’ve hauled horses, dirt, the dreaded mulch, enough wood to build a fence, railroad ties, plants and even a tree. And when it’s cold outside, I just turn on the heated leather seats, and it warms my bum - gotta have some luxuries! 
It’s so useful I can’t imagine not having it.
handy, you ever think about getting one of those sprayed-in bed liners? My husband just got that done, and it looks very nice. One of his friends at work recommended it–he said that he had not even been able to scratch his at all (it’s like thick, black, gritty paint). That would keep your bed from rusting!
When I was in college, my dad let me use his big old Chevy Silverado in the summer to get to the park-and-ride so that I could take the bus to work. I thought that it would be kind of conspicuous to be driving such a big vehicle just to get to the bus stop…but it turns out that just about every vehicle there was an SUV! It wasn’t until then that I realized how popular those things were getting. So, the truck wasn’t unusually big there, just unusually old.
Oh, and IzzyR, I’ve seen forums like that discussing Dodge Neons. Now, do Neons have any sort of macho image? I think that any vehicle has its tinkerers.
All the trucks in my neighborhood are virgins. I’ve never seen a single thing in the bed of any of them (I noticed this phenom a while back and have been keeping an eye on them). The guys just think they’re more macho than a sedan, but a bit more down to earth than an SUV. Me, I lived on a ranch and used that little red truck to haul things and pull stuff till it was just a husk. I loved that little truck.