In memory of my 95 extended cab
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Having a tiny bed is totally OK because the people that drive these silly things dont put anything back there anyway. They even have locking hard covers on them.
These aren’t trucks, they are lifestyle accessory vehicles for people who feel the need to prove that they are a big boy.
People that work in trades, construction or other manual work drive a van or they rock an old Chevy cruze to the jobsite. Why would they waste their own money on a truck when it doesn’t make them any more money?
Gender affirming care mobiles for small, weak men
As someone who has an extended bed standard cab 2001 Tacoma I can assure you I do many things with my truck bed. Just as the 4 metal Jerry cans from the 1960s! They are doing something called looking cool, also the bed has gotten used for the most random crap because my life is just that way, I smuggled a couple trees from Idaho through Death Valley with it.
Extended bed is the only bed.
Is it ok to wiggle your little finger at men with tiny beds
Lmfao
2 things:
- The new truck has 4 doors. That’s a crew cab.
- Part of the reason for today’s massive trucks is a change in CAFE regs starting in 2012 that bases fuel economy standards on vehicle footprint. It’s easier to make a larger footprint than a more efficient vehicle.
It’s
easiermore profitable to makea larger footprintthe consumer buy a larger vehicle than a more efficient vehicle.Minor fixes, spot on otherwise.
I can see how 2 can be gamed by car makers, but I don’t know how I would fix it. Seems intuitive larger cars will use more fuel, e.g. can’t use the same standards on 18 wheelers and sedans.
Are there good alternatives? Is my intuition dead wrong
The issue is they used to base it on vehicle classification AND size, but the manufacturers just classified everything as a light truck to getbaround hlthe regulations. So they got rid of that loophole, but now a Toyota Corolla has less-strict fuel economy standards than an old-style Ford Ranger. So they essentially outlawed small trucks.
It’s not just trucks, either. The small cargo van no longer exists. The Ford Transit Connect, Ram Promaster City, and Nissan NV200 were all discontinued around 2021 because they can no longer meet CAFE regulations at that size.
The Gord Maverick is a small truck, but it comes standard as a hybrid and has very little towing or hauling capacity as a result.
This is all a result of the absurdly idiotic chicken tax + American automobile companies refusing to build small trucks
98 Ranger XLT extended cab. I’ve added trailer brake control for livestock hauling and a modern stereo with bluetooth, handsfree calling, and a sealed 10" sub cause I’m a metalhead.
It’s got the pushrod V6 that will last forever, in 99 they switched over to those awful self-destructing cassette timed V6s.
It throws no codes. Redid intake manifold and valve gaskets about 18 months ago, but I’ve got increased Idle RPM and minor oil leak again. So, I have to redo it, looking for a more permanent fix.
My truck does 10x the work most of those oversized pavement princess trucks do. It’s a little truck for our little play farm.
I see F350 work trucks all the time but they rarely have stock beds, most of them run a full dedicated tool box usually with ladder racks or a custom bed made of diamond sheet. Same deal for the 550 and 650 if they aren’t box trucks.
Your truck reminds me of the garage kept spare cars I see on farms. Sometimes they just live outside near the house but they get driven. Often to pull the bigger trucks out of mud somehow
Yup. I have a play farm, not a real farm. Real farming is an industrial process that requires duallys and such. However, those are also real trucks. Beat to shit, tools in the bed, not lifted so much you can’t load them, etc. They look the part. I do also have a 98 Chevy 3500 box truck. Drinks way too much gas to use it for anything other than its purpose, don’t even have it registered right now, bad cats.
I know some play farmers with dualies. One is for building a fence, one is for towing a 5th wheel and a toy hauler. The fence builder is similarly unregistered because it’s “expensive enough to maintain”
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This is actually my fourth vehicle, lifetime. My second was a 97 ranger with the 5 speed and 4 banger. I sold it and missed it so bad I got this one after I lost the car in a flood.
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My current daily driver, which I won’t upload my own photo of because it’s literally enough to dox me (by people who know me IRL), is one of these:
It’s not an SUV, but air suspension allows it to rise taller than some crossover SUVs, providing decent clearance. And on the road you can lower and stiffen it for better handling (or keep it in the comfort position for normal height and soft suspension). Both axles are always being driven, with front and rear diff locks being electronic, based on the ESP system.
It doesn’t do as much work as your truck, but then I don’t live on a farm. If I did, I’d have a truck too. It does however do significantly more work than any of those pavement princesses. In particular, it’s been used for towing trailers, I’ve had the entire trunk, with rear seats folded down, filled when I moved most of my furniture. I’ve gone off road in it because I needed to go to the woods. Everything was muddy afterwards.
I’ll use yank units for the fun of it, so it’s got around 250k miles on it. It’s a remapped 3.0 diesel, so it does over 40 mpg very easily unloaded, and can keep up with pretty much anything on the road because of the ridiculous amount of torque it puts out. I paid less than 2k EUR for it (paid pretty much exactly 2000 USD given current exchange rates actually). With all the torque it has, you could also easily tow way more than the legal limit of such a vehicle - which I’ve never needed to.
It’s also rusty, scratched up, dented, etc. Some of the unnecessary extras don’t work (park distance control? lol no, it’s shorted out) It’s not the best car I’ve owned, but it’s the best one I’ve had for getting shit done. 3 months and 6000 miles so far, I’ve spent ~500 to replace some safety-critical neglected parts (brake, suspension) some of which will last the next 100k miles and some hopefully indefinitely (updated to a newer, more reliable ABS module).
It wasn’t cheap for the first person who bought it, but neither are modern trucks. It was cheap to buy used though, unlike trucks. Parts are cheaper too, but that’s partly because I’m in Europe.
I wish I had AWD/4WD sometimes. That’s really the only thing I don’t like about the truck.
Before this truck, I had a Malibu, kept folding the seats down, toting 2x4’s and such. Ripped sheets plywood in the parking lot with a battery powered saw to fit it in before.
Parts are still pretty cheap for this truck here. They made so many of them. I only gave $3500 for it, but that was before prices on used little trucks jumped so high.
I’m hoping I don’t ever have to replace this truck, but if I do, I would be looking at a V6 minivan, especially if I could get in AWD. Gut one of those, and it’s basically a little truck. I think it would do everything I needed, better on fuel costs, etc. I’m not much for lifitimg suspensions, but a truck-minivan with AWD I might lift a little to get into standard truck ground clearance range.
Trucks/utility vehicles are tools and should be used and maintained like a good tool. If it doesn’t have a few scratches and dents, it’s not a real tool.
that’s one sexy looking truck! practical and it has a nice color!
Cue the Australians laughing in Ute.
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Yeah I really don’t get it.
I drive an old pickup truck with a standard sized bed. Every time I’ve needed the bed of the truck, I’ve needed it to be as big as it is. If it was as short as modern truck beds I’d be making more trips or hiring a U-Haul or something.
I get a normal, functional bed AND it’s still a normally sized vehicle that’s easy to drive and park. When this vehicle eats shit, whoever makes a normal sized pickup is getting my money.
It’s because they’re emotional support vehicles for suburban dudes who have an incredibly fragile ego. What they need is a van or a “sensible” SUV or even just y’know a fuckin car but these men are too sensitive and scared to drive one of those so they buy a truck as a family car instead.
It’s kind of pathetic honestly.
I’d be pissed if I bought a pickup that can’t fit a damn couch
When this vehicle eats shit, whoever makes a normal sized pickup is getting my money.
So… either you’ll be buying used or not a truck.
Chevy still makes a regular cab, 8’ bed version of the Silverado in the entry-level “WT” (work truck) trim, which at least theoretically is available to non-fleet buyers. Good luck finding one though.
I thought the bed size was chosen as standard so it would fit a standard 4x8 sheet of plywood. What’s the point of it can’t fit that?
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I really want a Kei Truck, and I can’t be the only one.
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A “regular bed” has always been an 8ft bed for the last 60-odd years. Look at any full-sized Ford, GMC, AMC, or Chevrolet pickup from the 70s, 80s, or 90s – it’s nearly impossible to find one with anything but an 8ft bed. If you wanted anything shorter you went with a “toy truck” like the Mazda B2000 to B2600i, or a Toyota Tacoma.
It’s just the utter lack of 8ft beds in full-sized modern (last 10-15 years) trucks that has had the industry reclassifying uselessly lobotomized truck beds as “regular” and normal-length beds as “extended”
They’re projecting, as has always been the case for giant truck owners
What? The “regular bed” in a full-size truck was always 6.5’, even back in the ‘90s and earlier. That is longer than the “regular bed” in a compact truck (let alone the vestigial bullshit they sell you today), but it’s not 8’.
If you’re going to downvote my objectively correct statement of fact, at least have the courtesy to answer this: if you think a “regular bed” on a 70s/80s/90s full-size pickup is 8’, just how long do you think a “long bed” is?
if you think a “regular bed” on a 70s/80s/90s full-size pickup is 8’, just how long do you think a “long bed” is?
It’s the 9ft bed you could get as an option on full-sized trucks above the base model. So for Ford, the F-150 was stuck with either the regular 8ft bed - which was the default - or could go down to a 6.5ft short bed, but for the F-250, F-350 and higher, you could go for a 9ft long bed.
In some model years, the F-250 & 350 even had its rear axle shifted further towards the rear by a few inches when choosing the long bed in order to get better balance for loads.
This 9ft long bed was even marketed as a “large camper bed” for those oversized slide-in campers that were too long to allow a standard 8ft bed to raise its tailgate. This was a problem with 8ft beds, because a permanently-lowered tailgate could obstruct the license plate, necessitating its removal so the plate was more visible. The long bed didn’t have this problem, and the tailgate could stay on.
That sir is a trunk.
It’s a vestigial bed.
Trunkvertible
I have a midsize truck from a yester-decade that by now seems like a small truck. Even if it had a long bed and full cab it would be more practical, and I’d argue universally acceptable size and shape than full-sized trucks pulling even a crew cab + short bed combo. When you see a full size with a crew cab and a long or god help us extended bed, it just makes the blood boil. Because as we all know, on top of the “needs two parking spaces and probably takes 4-6 depending on the driver” situation, they have nothing in their beds practically all the time.
Trucks aren’t inherently a problem, and it’s okay if they’re unladen plenty of the time. But most people need a truck like mine; most people have a truck like the full-sized nonsense described above. That’s the problem.
Very few people need a truck like yours. They need one guy in their friend group with a truck like yours who they can ask for a favor every couple years.
In some places some substantial percentage need, like, an uncovered coated spray off space big enough to throw a deer into.
So, someone else needs to own and pay for such a vehicle just you can mooch off of them for free?
Yes. I’m glad we understand each other.
I think you know what I meant. Most people who need a truck need a truck like mine. Obviously most people don’t need a truck. I only have one because the last few years have required a lot of work on my house and yard. Whenever all that wraps up I’ll swap it back out for another car.
People toss out the “you just need a buddy with a truck” or “you just need to rent one” thing so much but those things require you to bend your life around, say, inconveniencing people to borrow / hoping their schedule accommodates, or, having to go collect, use, pay for, and return during a narrow window of time a rented truck, which, yes, is fine for one day, but if again, you’ve got years of unpredictable needs ahead of you, it’s not a sin to buy a cheap, well-used truck as a second or third vehicle so you’ve always got it when you need it. And in that case, those “most people” need a truck like mine_.
Im not saying you don’t. If your main hobby/job is construction/rennovation; it makes sense. That’s pretty rare.
How else do you expect to fit two morbidly obese American parents and their morbidly obese children?
Ya. It makes sense this is what the majority of people in the US are buying.
The small car market only constitutes like 2% of the entire market.
The other 98% are suvs and pick up trucks which means most people aren’t buying a truck because they need it for work or some kind of utility reason. They don’t need 8ft beds. They need back seats because they don’t want to buy a sedan.
But since the customer is almost never right outside of matters of taste what they all really want is a sadan that looks like a pick up. So here we are.
Trucks are third now I think. compact SUV’s started taking over the market roughly last year
https://www.autoblog.com/news/study-says-these-four-segments-make-up-half-of-us-car-sales
I had an 06 Ford Ranger (actually a Mazda). RWD with a 4 cylinder and a 5 speed. No frills at all. That was a phenomenal truck. You could put snow tires on it, throw some sand bags in the bed, and go just about anywhere.
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I had a 98 Ford Probe with a Mazda four cylinder engine. I loved that car. The flip up headlights never failed me even in Minnesota winter ice storms.
So today’s ‘trucks’ have just slightly more storage space than my old Mini Cooper did. Neat. Like can you legit fit like a bike or 4-wheeler in that?
Here’s my usual comment about how awesome my 1996 Nissan hardbody pickup was, with its regular cab and 6 foot bed.
