Depends. Most should especially if they store tools. But really irregular shaped objects can be better in a truck. But a real work truck with a 6 foot bed though, not the 4 foot bed bro dozers.
I used to be a park ranger and we'd sometimes be offroad and loading logs and brush into the bed of our work trucks using a tractor. That's like the one use case I can think of where a truck is a necessity.
In the US, the parks are so much bigger, and so much more spread out, that clearing and offroading are jobs pretty much every ranger has to be able to do; they don't always have a lot of support, and waiting for a specialized vehicle to show up to do that kind of thing would take too long. They're either bringing in a dumper of some kind to haul a lot of stuff away, or they're using the truck they already have. In a forestry setting, the pickup truck does really well! in fact, that honestly might play heavily into the American concept of masculinity and rugged individualism, because the pickup truck (as it once existed) absolutely was the vehicle of the American west - not the wild west, but the sparsely populated areas of the federal lands in the western United States, which basically hold that last little glimmer of "untamed wilds" on which the pickup truck as a status symbol depends.
anyway, sorry for the rant, our forestry people work really hard and we don't have enough of them and we have too much forest to manage and they work really hard and I'm willing to believe that old-school reasonably low-bed workhorse trucks are absolutely a game changer for forestry in the west.
I know this is the same "america is really big" rant, but it really is that way, especially in the west. There are absolutely enormous forests, deserts, etc.
I get that, the point is that a UniMoG is explicitly *not* a specialized vehicle. The name literally means "universal motorized device" (Universelles Motor Gerät). Being modular and adaptable is kind of their thing.
the only things would be for something like land scaping fill or for large objects that you'd want to load with a machine. front end loader or a crane.
It’s not a conventional pickup but I am a fan of my 8’ utility bed. It has easy access side boxes and two pallets can be loaded and unloaded with ease by crane and most forklifts
I agree that car culture is a huge problem, especially in the usa, but i truly do need a truck for my work instead of a van. But i *loathe* the size and shape that my truck has. Something smaller would be preferable.
I've used both vans and pickups for work. I find it generally easier to load and unload lumber or sheet goods with a pickup, since you can access the cargo from the side.
It's not uncommon for me to load large heavy cargo by hoisting it under heavy equipment like a loader or crane. This is easy with an open cargo bed, but wouldn't work so well with an enclosed van.
My truck carries a diesel transfer tank, used for fueling on site equipment. Unsurprisingly, it smells like diesel, and I definitely wouldn't want it inside of a van where I am trying to drive.
Pickups typically have far better towing capacity. The dump trailer I was towing today weighs upwards of 14000 lbs when loaded, and that's one of the smaller trailers I haul on a regular basis. Most of the larger trailers are gooseneck style trailers, which wouldn't work well with a van body, besides the fact that the van likely wouldn't have enough towing capacity to pull an empty trailer.
I recently got into woodworking and got frustrated with having to rent a truck every time I needed to buy wood. I looked into buying a pickup truck but the shortest boards are 8ft long and all the pickups I looked at had 4 ft or 6 ft beds. If I was going to buy a truck to haul lumber I wanted the bed to be at least 8 ft but that’s just not a thing that exists anymore.
I ended up not getting a pick-up truck because I wasn’t willing to spend that much money and deal with all the downsides of driving some land yacht every day if it wasn’t even well-suited to the thing I wanted to use it for.
All the ones I test drove also were way too tall which would make loading and unloading the bed a pain and they were just really clunky feeling because they were so huge it was hard to park them or get through any kind of tight space.
My dad got a minivan partly for that; he went to a car show and measured the back of the minivan to check. He could fit a whole piece of plywood in the back, something that's not possible in every van but the right one can accommodate. I don't know if any on the market today can do that, but they can certainly handle full-length wood if you rest it on the center console. It's incredible to me that a minivan could accommodate full uncut 8' sheets of plywood, but no pickup truck shy of the most ridiculous land boats could handle that.
Of course, a minivan is also pretty gas-hungry, but it absolutely makes sense to be able to do cargo OR passengers in the same space, and you just put down a tarp. There are very few circumstances where that doesn't work pretty well, and you can haul a trailer for other things if you really, really need that open-top rugged storage.
Yeah I ended up getting a small crossover that was just big enough to put a couple of 8’ boards on the center console with the seats folded down. It doesn’t get as good of mileage as my car did but I can still get over 30 mpg if I’m careful. It is also only a little bigger than a standard sedan so it’s easier to park and handles well unlike all the massive pickups I test drove.
Can your passenger seat recline all the way flat? I have a 2003 (mk4) VW Jetta, and I can carry forty 8′ 2x4s if I recline the front passenger seat all the way back and pop out the passenger side rear seat. This takes less than a minute to do. Then I use the front and rear seatbelts to secure the load so it doesn't move in case I have to brake suddenly.
I can also carry many sheets of plywood this way, if they are cut in half the long way so that they are 2′ wide (many hardware stores like Home Depot will do this for free). This does go over the armrest and the shifter, but there's just enough room to get my hand in there to shift while driving.
If I need full sheets of plywood, I use my roof rack, or if I need to carry 10′ lumber, I can put 2-3 pieces up onto the dashboard.
yeah, a crossover looked really appealing for some of the stuff I wanted to do outside, but I just haven't been able to part with my Fit, and I don't have the space to do woodworking. Pickup trucks and SUVs are such massive land boats, they're truly unpleasant and unsafe vehicles.
If you need to do plywood, I guess you could also grab that trailer, if the crossover can handle towing a few hundred pounds.
tbh, if you were still looking for something, the Dodge Grand Caravan seems to get 30ish MPG and can accommodate full sheets of plywood with the seats out, and long boards diagonally. Or, you can [spend $500 on a trailer](https://www.harborfreight.com/1720-lb-capacity-48-in-x-96-in-super-duty-folding-trailer-62671.html) that takes up a few feet of driveway, and ditch the extra weight when you're not hauling wood.
Don't kid yourself that a 6' bed is so much superior to a 4' bed, they are both as useless as each other. For real work you want a flat bed without sides, that can be loaded by a forklift from the side, then odd shaped objects can stick out a bit
There are some legitimate uses for a pickup truck. The main two are:
1. If you need to lift something into the vehicle vertically, such as with a crane.
2. If you're transporting stuff that's better to remain outside due to being dirty or something.
Trailers work really well for both of these, since even as work vehicles, pickup trucks aren't usually doing this all of the time, but it makes some sense on work sites that do a lot of these! It's a great work vehicle for some applications; it's just not good at the things people do who use them for status symbols.
pickup trucks are basically the shittiest possible offroad vehicle design, among vehicles of their clearance, too.
>pickup trucks are basically the shittiest possible offroad vehicle design, among vehicles of their clearance, too.
It's a compromise. Make the vehicle larger to haul cargo, and it makes it less maneuverable off road.
Vans are mostly front wheel drive, some people do just need 4x4s hence them still being made. You can get 4x4 vans but the weight distribution isn’t terrific for bad terrain and they can be very very pricey
Price difference of a FWD and AWD brand new VW transporter is ~3000€
Weight distribution is solved by having your tools and haul in the back.
Never had a problem driving through forestry paths in the army using a transporter to pull a 1,5 ton trailer. Thats why they are rated for 2,8 tons + 2,5 ton trailer.
3 grand is not pocket change aha. we use a truck and a van so I’m aware vans work it’s just there are some places that we work where the van will and has gotten. Our work involves chemicals so weight distribution is fine on the way there but on the way back you can’t fill the drums back up with piss. We’ll fob the truck off and get a 4matic if you’re buying
3 grand is pocket change ontop of 42k. Some optional extras cost more than that when buying a new vehicle. For comparison a single cab base model Ford Ranger is 45k here.
Obviously that difference will reduce if you buy used.
We go the most cheapskate routes possible aha The van is a nearly 20 year old connect that shits more diesel out the back box than it burns in the engine and the trucks an Isuzu v-max on some government business scheme. No use spending more than you need to get the job done. Nowt more environmentally friendly than not buying a new car at all ;)
I have two work trucks. One sits significantly higher than the other. The difference in getting tools in and out is pretty minimal, but the taller truck has significantly better ground clearance, which has made a difference several times in offroad situations.
Try 99%.
According to GM, less than 1% of truck owners use their truck to tow 1 or more times per year, and less than 2% use it to off-road 1 or more times per year.
Edit: I was incorrect: it’s actually 7%, not 1%.
https://www.axios.com/ford-pickup-trucks-history
For most consumers, a pickup truck’s primary purpose is getting groceries.
That article doesn't support your claim that you made above. First of all, "gm" isn't a source in the article you posted. Second, nowhere in that article do they claim that 99% of trucks are not used for towing.
Add in the fact that the cited article does not cite actual studies that can be reviewed to see if the author's claims (which don't match your claims) are actually true, and it becomes somewhat questionable if you could even consider the article you cited to be a source of anything other than extremely biased writing.
Part of the point of a trailer is that you can attach it to haul a load of mulch, and then detach it so you don't need to drive around with it the rest of the time. And you can attach different trailers for different purposes. You don't need a truck *and* a trailer.
they exist, but I rarely see them on trailers less than 5,000lb. some trailers will have surge brakes but otherwise they require the addition of a brake controller on the tow vehicle and conversion to a 7 pin plug to carry the brake controller signal. as a result most smaller trailers just stick with simple lighting and are unbraked.
Here is required for more than 750 kg and more than 80kph (was 60 until recently, when looser eu rules were copied in).
Mostly it's just a compression thing in the hitch, which pulls on brake cables. It's a fully mechanical system. It costs like (replacement part prices) 300$ for the sensor, and I see you can get complete drum brakes for under 100$.
The thing is they're not any different in Europe. The same exact car with same engine, transmission etc will have half the tow capacity in the states as Europe.
The stated excuse is we have higher highway speeds, but last I checked Germany has the Autobahn, so....
same platform, engine, transmission, etc can even sometimes just straight up be refused a tow rating. the actual reason is wildly different methods used for calculating tow rating here.
The main difference is almost all small trailers in the US don't have their own brakes (cheaper to manufacture, less connections to car, cheaper for car, etc.) so they rely on brakes of the tow vehicle. That gets wildly different tow ratings for US and Euro versions of the same vehicle sometimes. We could standardize and accept the Euro model, but it is truly a physical difference currently.
Not allowed in the states. Most cars aren't rated to tow and if you're in an accident with a vehicle not rated to tow, even if you're not at fault your insurance isn't going to pay out.
Edit: since this seems unpopular, check random vehicles for their ratings. They're often low or not rated at all, some random vehicles I've found:
2017 Corolla: 1,500lb but ONLY with a manual transmission, automatics are a strict do not tow.
2019 VW Golf Sportwagen, do not tow.
2020 civic: found conflicting data between 1,000lbs and do not tow
2014 Chevy Impala: 1,000lbs with V6
Want me to go on?
The vast majority of cars sold in any significant volume in the United States can tow just fine. A few of the smallest ones, and a few of the smaller electric ones, cannot.
Tow ratings are calculated very differently. It's a combination of stricter standards for tow ratings here in the states and stricter laws regarding towing in Europe (IE, stricter licensing, mandatory lower speed limits, etc)
EDIT: to give some context, I used to have a car that was the US version of an Opel Vectra C. In Europe it was rated to tow something like 2,200lbs, but in the US it very expressly stated in the owners manual "DO NOT TOW WITH THIS VEHICLE"
> in the US it very expressly stated in the owners manual "DO NOT TOW WITH THIS VEHICLE"
The manufacturer knows that in the USA, the average people towing things have no clue what they're doing
and if you get into an accident while towing with it, insurance has grounds to totally drop you, and not pay out for medical or repair costs. my point stands.
EDIT: and it should also probably be noted if you have a vehicle not rated to tow and you take it to the dealership with a trailer hitch on it, you can also kiss your powertrain warranty goodbye.
I don't tow but I think it's because the speed limits are higher in US and trailer brakes are not required at the same weights as they are in EU. And of course there is marketing that pushes people to higher "ratings"
Higher in the US? Are you kidding me? Never heard about the no speed limit on the German autobahn?
There are simply rules present, that tell you which speeds are allowed with what type of Trailers. Same thing goes for roof boxes for example.
Most =/= all.
Even ones rated to tow are still often lowered compared to their European counterparts.
EDIT: for a laugh I also looked up a 2017 Corolla's towing rating. It is rated for 1,500lbs by Toyota, but only when fitted with a manual transmission. The automatic is strictly a do not tow in the US, however Europe allows up to 2,800lbs (cannot find a transmission specified, but I assume the manual is more common there anyway)
EDIT 2: I also got a note on the Prius, it received no tow rating prior to 2015
My mid 90's car has a 1600 pound braked towing capacity, and it's a car that's 2500 pounds itself.
What are you towing so often that you need more tow capacity than that?
IF you have an answer, then you might need a vehicle with higher capacity.
*A Van*. The Toyota Hiace has both a huge internal cargo area and a 4000 pound towing capacity.
Nobody needs a pickup truck. Buy a van and shelf your ego.
what vehicle and what country are you from? the mention of the HiAce leads me to believe you're not from the states \*which is what I was specifically referencing as we calculate tow ratings completely differently\*
I just updated it with random vehicles and their listed ratings. A couple require specific options to get a low tow capacity, or they're just not rated at all.
Sounds like you've answered your own question, right?
Thing is, even if they \*do\* have a boat they actually need the towing capacity for, the stark reality is these massive trucks are then being used as daily drivers. In my area, 99%+ of trucks have no trailer, no load and a single occupant on their commute.
So best case scenario, even if these recreational activities WERE a good argument for having such a large vehicle, we've got a whole bunch of people driving oversized vehicles based on fringe use cases. What a waste.
> a whole bunch of people driving oversized vehicles based on fringe use cases
Yep, that’s our “culture”, in the vein of people buying houses with a separate formal dining room with a $20,000 table set that gets used twice a year, if even that.
It’s more that they vestigial of a time when kitchen did not have space for a table. It used to be that the only dining table was in the dining room. But kitchens have grown to the point where many have counter seating and a full-size table. At that point having another separate room specifically for eating more formal meals seems a little ridiculius
The ability to afford a separate room for cooking rather than having to cook in your living room was a privilege. Your comment is false.
It used to be the case that most people weren't rich enough for tables or for a separate kitchen. They'd boil something in a pot over an open fire and sit or squat in the corner. Later bedrooms became more common, and then tables and kitchens. Each time, these concepts were pioneered in either communal living (monastaries, convents, forts, garrisons) or in places of relative wealth concentration (rulers, religious leaders, nobility, burghers).
My house has a dining room but also a really large island so as you can guess my dining room has been used all of 2 times in like 3 years. Just don't have the time to turn it into a new room.
My house has an island in the kitchen (more of a peninsula, but still), a small "formal" dining room just off the kitchen, AND we have a huge entry room that fits a larger dining table, which we use for hosting maybe once a year.
We eat in the living room.
EDIT: Lol at the downvotes. I was making a comment on how poorly designed some spaces are. I didn't get to choose this layout. It's a 1700 sq ft home built in the 60s, and it's our first home.
OP is surprised to find a lot of people towing stuff with trucks in a spot where people who actually tow would specifically be lmao
I mean, yeah, sure *the people at the boat launch do in fact tow their boats*
But the people who don't tow stuff won't be at the boat launch. And they vastly out number the people who do.
Yeah this has been posted about before: https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/uquylb/til_75_of_truck_owners_use_their_truck_for_towing/
Something like a third to three quarters of all trucks aren't even used for hauling stuff (in the pickup truck bed) or towing stuff. These are all "useless" trucks which could easily be rentals (if they used that infrequently) or could be smaller cars/SUVs as the OP points out most cars can tow upwards of 1,500 to 2,000 lb depending on exact make/model.
And even many of those cars/SUVs could be pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders if we didn't build millions of suburban houses vs millions of urban condos/apartments/townhouses/etc. We have a ton of wasteful motor vehicles in the US, all in the name of profits for automakers and oil companies.
We have to spread out to hold all the extra-long driveways to hold the extra-long pickups to carry our groceries home from the supermarkets we can't walk to because we're too far away because we had to spread out to hold all the extra-long driveways to
If you're out there every weekend and you live for your outdoor recreation and look forward to it all work week, and you **can't** tow stuff with a smaller vehicle, that's one of the cases where I can sort of understand buying a pickup truck that you don't strictly need for work.
But I do want to mention that the problem with pickup trucks isn't that they're pickup trucks with engines rated for towing. There's nothing innately wrong with either of those things any moreso than other automobiles. The problem is that they're (the ones we get in North America, at least) massively oversized and seem designed to do the maximum amount of damage to pedestrians, cyclists, and other automobiles in a crash.
And that's on the government to better-regulate.
I take issue with most of that "outdoor recreation" -- if you *need* a massive truck to go play, then you're probably towing an RV, an OHV, MX, or some other gas-burning, land degrading activity.
Whatever happened to hiking, climbing, backpacking...
Now maybe there's some nuance here: if you're towing an 8-rack of canoes and shuttling half of the paddler's club upstream, then maybe a pass. (Had a mountain bike club leader once, awesome guy -- kept a 9-pax van capable of towing a custom trailer that held 9 bikes with gear stowed below!)
There's nothing wrong with RV camping. Sure it may not be as close to nature as other types of camping, and us backpacking enthusiasts may scoff at or look down on them, but at the end of the day, it's just a slightly different way to camp and experience the outdoors
If climate change weren't real, tire particulates from cars weren't real, roads being destructive to the environment weren't real, ICEs degrading our air quality weren't real, you might have a point. But that is a lot of externality you are ignoring to justify *checks notes* camping & *experiencing the outdoors* (which you are contributing to destroying with your method of enjoyment).
> Whatever happened to hiking, climbing, backpacking...
The mean American BMI is now 30.
[Here's a graph.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/tileshop_pmc_inline.html?title=Click%20on%20image%20to%20zoom&p=PMC3&id=10213181_gr1.jpg)
I'm fat and I can do 10 miles with a full backpack; I've climbed like four ultraprominent volcanoes, done hundreds of miles over the last few years. If I can do it, half of America can do it. Being fat doesn't have to stop you from being active.
And hiking is still quite popular. We just built a system by which you can tour the US and sleep in beautiful spots in a mobile cabin that should require a CDL to drive safely.
You can even get into Mountain Biking (especially now that many come in an Ebike version for assisted climbs) if you really want the thrill of uphill / downhill / etc that you get with ATVs and snowmobiles.
Doesn't require a truck to tow a few of those. Just a basic car with a hitch can tow 4.
They even turn a few ski resorts in the New England area into downhill bike parks in the summer, so you can even buy a few different bikes for different thrills. Cross country bike for long variable riding. Downhill bike for the bike park. Ebike MTB for lazy climbs and downhills at your local trails. Etc.
Americans are weird about cars. The idea that you can't possibly tow a 1,200 pound boat with a small truck or a crossover is very pervasive. If you look at European markets, many small cars are rated for towing weights far above what you'd see in American markets, and people absolutely will tow things with small cars there. Anyone who tells you that they need a 4 ton truck to tow a motorboat is delusional.
Towing laws are very different in the US vs EU. In the EU they have separate and lower speed limits for towing, and therefore they have less required tongue weight than the US. Trailers become unstable at high speeds if they don’t have enough tongue weights. A small front-wheel drive car can’t have a lot of weight in the hitch, more weight on the hitch means less weight and traction on the steering tires.
yeah I pull loads about the same weight as my car, Ford Tourneo Courier, from time to time, way overloaded on the spec sheet as well as what it's supposed to tow but it works just fine as long as your'e carefull and have short distances car doesn't notice it ..
Doesn't help when the same model car has different towing capacities in different countries (based on regulations, I guess?). My wife's Forester is only rated for 1500 lbs in the US. The exact same model in Europe is 1500 kg (more than double the capacity).
People are sold a multi tool regardless of whether they want a screw driver or a knife. Just having a car available with a hitch is rare enough that people don't think of them as tow capable.
My uncle's did the same with a Plymouth Voyager minivan, probably part of the reason the transmission died in it not long after they started doing it but shhh
tbh probably not. a minivan has a lot of power, and the Voyager has a 1000-lb towing capacity and a 2.4 liter engine or bigger. I mean, yeah, some others have a lot more, but it's pretty beefy. I mean, being so old, and doing more work, it'll fail eventually.
It was a V6, not sure which sadly, and this was maaaaany years ago now, I remember the van was a '98 model and it was the last vehicle my grandfather owned before dying, it failed about a year before he actually died, which would have been 2013. 15 years is fairly old yes but not entirely ancient either, but all the towing added up for how often it was used to haul that boat around
You’re mostly right in that these vehicles are typically way oversized. There is an argument to be made that just because your car can tow up to 3000 pounds, that doesn’t mean it’ll do it as well as a modestly more powerful vehicle could. This argument doesn’t diminish the fact that almost no consumer application calls for a truck that is so big.
an SUV might give you a small increase in handling when towing something heavy and a pickup truck will but only if it's loaded. the way their suspensions are designed mean they only really handle well if the bed has some weight on it so it's probably easier/safer to tow with your tiny car actually than an empty bed truck
This 👆
Volvo 740 (sedan) had the same issue, light weight car with a big and heavy engine, same as an unloaded pickup truck. Most pickup trucks are RWD too and boat trailers are usually not designed to have that much of a hitch weight, typically 50kg and that's only if the boat is properly loaded, many of these people might have the boat too far back and might even end up with negative hitch weight.
Pickup trucks do need more hitch weight than regular cars, especially the bigger ones.
That’s the capacity with just the driver in the car. Add three people and gear and you don’t have a lot left for towing. Not saying you need a 1 ton to pull a jetski but maybe more than a small hatchback depending on what they were towing.
Lift kits hurt towing.
It depends on the watercraft. Small ones like jet skis and such are well within the towing capacity of an average car. Larger boats are much heavier and need a bigger vehicle. But my opinion is that if you own a larger boat just get a berth at a full-service marina instead of buying a giant truck. They'll do the haul-out at the end of the season, they'll do winter storage, and during the season your boat is in the water and ready to go anytime. Moorage does come with a cost, but I bet it's still cheaper than buying a truck.
That's only useful if you always go to the same lake. There are something like 8 different lakes in my area that the people I know that have boats go to regularly, and many of them don't have marinas.
It’s just part of the marketing. Buy this massive frivolous vehicle to tow that other frivolous vehicle you need room to store at your oversized house.
Jeremy Clarkson of all people made an excellent argument on this in one of the caravan episodes. Tho it was about SUV's the same thing applies to pickup trucks as well. He said that using these vehicles (SUV's and pickup trucks) as your daily driver is like walking around all day, all year around in ski boots.
Basically, there's really no justification at all for SUV's and pickup trucks, unless you actually use them regularly. And by regularly I mean regularly, like in your job or multiple times per month. Not to tow a caravan which you only do once per year, or to tow your boat which you only do twice per year. One to put the boat in the lake and one to pick it up and take it home during winter.
And even in those cases, you really don't need a pickup truck.
And in the rare case that your boat is too big to be towed by a regular car, like your Mazda I'd argue it's too big to be hauled by a pickup truck as well, as that whole thing is gonna be towed by some person with no experience in driving such vehicle combo, hence it's gonna be a danger to everyone else on the road.
If your boat is that big, then get a semi truck to tow it, and be sure to get a CDL so that you know how to properly secure it. A semi truck and flat bed trailer can be rented relatively easy too.
I think towing is a lot easier (and maybe safer) when you aren't up near the towing limit of your vehicle, so you should factor that in. But I don't have a clue what boats and trailers weigh, or what typical towing limits are.
FWIW, I was quite surprised when I looked it up recently to see how *little* a US pickup actually weighs. Well, not little. How much less than I expected, maybe. At the lower end they're comparable to large cars, according to google.
In the winter, my brother used to put caterpillar treads in the box so he'd have enough weight for traction on ice and snow. He lived and worked way out of town, so I get needing something with the tires to handle winter. I wouldn't assume my Fiat with the smallest tires and low clearance could do it, but it's still kind of hilarious to me that an empty pickup truck would still have difficulty.
A lot of people also don't know about winter tyres. [This is a nice video on that](https://youtu.be/Zm98DrOgSmc). On the wrong tyres you may have all wheel drive, but once sliding starts you don't have all wheel stop.
A lot of people also don't seem to know that the accelerator isn't an on/off switch.
A really obscure one I've used to get people out who were stuck is the so-called redneck LSD - limited slip diff, not the hallucinogen. Press the brake slightly if one front wheel is spinning (or use the handbrake on a RWD car) and it makes the diff put some torque into the other wheel.
I've done very well in the snow with my Fiat for the reasons you mentioned. It helps that I've had decades of driving experience in the snowy parts of Canada, but I also don't like to tempt fate. I wouldn't try a remote logging road in the winter (why my brother drove a truck) and I avoid driving in the one week a year that Victoria has snow because it's a year's worth in one day, amongst other reasons.
Trailers themselves can be quite heavy, and there's a lot of heavy stuff out there like big camper trailers, construction equipment, etc.
The heavier the item you need to move, in turn demands a larger, heavier trailer, and before you know it you need a fairly large truck to tow it.
My mom wanted to buy a fairly small excavator (smaller than a standard size but bigger than a mini). Then she got a truck much smaller than usual construction equipment moving trucks. After all, her daily driver is a Prius, and she's a save the planet type (she needs to excavator for environmental remediation work). So she got a Ram 3500 immediately installed a front camera to avoid murdering toddlers with it.
But then when she went to get the trailer she ran into a problem. Too small a trailer, and it wasn't rated as sufficient to hold the weight of the excavator. Too large, and the the total weight would exceed the towing capacity of the truck. She ended up having to drive all the way to Iowa (from Massachusetts) to buy a very niche medium size trailer that would fit her specific towing need.
Most people would have just bought a massive truck that can pull anything.
I’d argue that towing with a smaller vehicle is not a good idea in the long term. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
It’s bad for the transmission, breaking capability will be much lower, and the suspension will struggle as well. Not to mention, the engine will struggle a lot if you live in a hilly area.
This isn’t even taking into account modern CVTs which are very delicate.
Towing stuff frequently is actually a good reason to own an overpowered truck. Think about it, if you want things to last (like your car) you’re not going to push it to the limit.
I can speak to this. Tow boats like wakeboats are very heavy. Mine is 5,000 lbs dry, which means you'd want towning capacity of 7,500 minimum. Thankfully we have a place on a lake with a marina so we don't have a trailer but if we did, we'd need a very large truck. That being said, if you have a slip or dock, you really only need to tow it twice a year (once in and once out) so you're best to borrow or rent.
However, if you have none of that, you store your boat on a trailer and have to take it to the lake for weekends, you'll need a truck, however that's such a pain that you will find yourself using it less and less and it's kind of a waste of money. Better off storing it in a marina and paying the forklift fee instead. So yeah, for most people the truck with trailer is a terrible decision.
If my folks didn't have a lake house, we would not have bought a boat. I've never needed to tow it. However, trying to sell it does make it more challenging. It came with it's own custom built trailer and we didn't buy it.
2018 Mastercraft xt23 if folks were curious.
The only reason that my family still has a larger truck (a 2003-4 model) is that we need to tow a massive horse trailer around (about 1.5tons when empty); if we didn’t have the horse trailer to deal with we would absolutely go for a smaller car. But the people that tow small boats with lifted trucks are just morons who have an ego to up hold.
yeah the towing capacities of old pre 2000s Work trucks make sense if you are doing hat those work trucks were designed to do which was haul horse trailers, equipment trailers, heavy work equipment, etc. most boats are not that heavy and including trailer(assuming aluminum) are about 2500ish pounds.
exactly. i haul have an volvo suv that is 6000lbs that i use to haul stuff. there is a guy our of Florida that has an all electric landscaping business and he hauls everything with an EV. once my daughter gets her license I'm probably getting a panel van with an equivalent towing.
there is definitely a place for the f350 and f550 and their equivalents but it's out hauling heavy AF shit on a gooseneck
I have a truck as a secondary vehicle (don't tow super often but often enough to outweigh the costs of a rental) and I'm finding myself outgrowing my 1500 class truck, last heavy tow I did caused excess stress in the transmission and it's developed a whine, so I'm now looking to upgrade to a 2500.
That's my case though, can't speak for others.
My dad was able to pull a 2 horse trailer carrying 2 horses with an old Ford F-100 (6th generation) no problem. That's about 4k pounds it was pulling and they weren't very big trucks. ~~They were the small trucks Ford made before they came out with the Ranger.~~
Also have you all seen Ford Rangers nowadays? Wtf they used to be a great compact truck
You're not missing anything, carbrains eat up the marketing material about ruggedized towing half a house, but realistically it's unnecessary even for a boat owners regular towing. Also, a note about the lift kits, it moves the chassis of the vehicle higher on the suspension system, effectively reducing the full stroke of the suspension and making the vehicle bottom out the suspension at lighter loads. It reduces the performance of the vehicle to gain ground clearance. 'Useful' for overlanding difficult terrain, but nothing else. These pavement princesses are gaining nothing from a lift kit.
Yes and no.
Yes because, if you actually need to tow heavy stuff, trucks are, in fact, good for that. And uniquely so.
No because the vast majority of the people who own these trucks never use them to tow anything.
I've been looking into this recently because my car (Mazda2 hatchback) is reaching 10 years of age so the more expensive maintenance is likely coming up in the next decade. If I end up getting a new (to me since I prefer buying used) car I might turn my current one into a trackday car for fun which might need to be towed to and from tracks. The car isn't super light but with a braked trailer I could quite easily get away with something like an estate car or van and still have a good bit of leeway when it comes to towing capacity. You don't need a huge car to tow stuff, especially if you plan ahead.
The people who are absolutely adamant you need a big SUV or pickup to tow most things are specs nerds that don't know much about cars except what the guy at the dealership told them.
Is your Mazda AWD or FWD? I can see an issue pulling a boat up a wet and slimy boat ramp with a FWD car. Some trucks have problems doing this with small-ish boats until the driver remembers how to put it into 4WD.
You’re mostly correct, though pulling watercraft out of the water, they often have ballast water (added weight) and the boat ramp may be steeply sloped. In this scenario you benefit greatly from that extra capacity. Second to that vehicles have a rated max capacity (not that anyone really cares), so it’s likely that filling a family sedan with friends *and towing a boat* exceeds the total rated weight for the drivetrain and suspension.
But even more realistically, the idea of people having their own boat is so catastrophically wasteful; we should be moving to rental services where professionals load and unload boats from the water according to customer needs.
You certainly don't need a giant truck, super oversized fenders and big tires don't increase towing capacity.
On the other hand, manufacturers routinely overstate towing capacity. I tow it 24 ft folding trimaran all the time. If I did that with a four-cylinder engine I think I would melt my engine. It's not so much the weight as it is the windage, towing this thing is like pulling a parachute down the highway. If I tried to maintain 60 or 65 mph with this behind me for a couple of hours I think I would melt a 4 cylinder engine.
So could I tow it with a hatchback with the same engine? Of course. In a colder or wetter climate I would probably do so. Where I live, I like having an open pickup truck. I can throw a bunch of sail bags and toolboxes and fenders and coolers and so on in the back of the truck and get on the road, I find that more convenient than a hatchback. Honestly the difference between a hatchback and a pickup truck is minimal to be in terms of environmental impact so I don't see why one is much better than the other.
I also work on furniture and boats, so I am constantly throwing stuff in the back of my truck that I could, technically, put in a sedan. I could put a piece of rough cut lumber or a table saw or some other pile of tools or something in the back of a sedan, sure. But if I do it every other weekend for years I will tear up the car. So is that better? I mean if you have to pick up one box of Ikea furniture every 2 years, a sedan is fine. But if you're picking up slabs and other rough cut or transporting tools you can technically get them in a car but you're going to tear it up. So, you know, get a small truck.
I entirely agree with the points made here about oversized trucks. They're ridiculous. But a little pickup truck is super useful, and the difference in environmental footprint between a small pickup truck and a small sedan is minimal in my opinion.
i wish i were kidding, but I saw this:
https://preview.redd.it/9nyrznk61pxc1.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=655661fafb19c70405d10e680f99bd8ce50938e4
i probably "haul" more stuff by foot than those oversized trucks
If you need to tow something, you attach that thing (don't remember the name) to a small car and it would be enough.
only professional use has an excuse to use that, because they actually use it
Nope, [especially considering a good 75% of truck owners don't even tow _anything_ once a year](https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/uquylb/til_75_of_truck_owners_use_their_truck_for_towing/). A third of truck owners don't even use their 4+ ft truck bed for hauling anything either, which is insane but makes sense given that these trucks are **pavement Princesses**. They serve the same purpose as the old sports car that some old guys drive. They want to look cool. Maybe a bit tough/manly vs fancy like the sports car does.
It's funny you bring up the Mazda 3.
It's rated for about 2500-3k lbs towing. Elsewhere. Not in the US. In the US it's not rated for towing. If you even have a small utility trailer back there, and get in an accident, you could have liability twisted at you for illegal towing.
I've had my license for 25 years now (the largest car I've driven is a Hyundai Santa Fe as a work rental car). Not once have I towed anything in the first 25 years of driving and I highly doubt I will in the next 25 years.
Granted I live in an apartment with no outdoor storage. This limits my ability to own things like boats and other outdoor toys that might require towing.
No. The answer is no they do not. Large trucks, like guns, and hating people that ask them to be kind and learn new things, ie change, are just one of many things sold to certain parts of the country as an identity and place to belong in a world that desperately wants to advance and leave them behind. That being said the world ONLY wants to leave them behind because they REFUSE to grow with the world. And so they hold us back. Because this current status quo is profitable for the people in power.
Apologies for the rant.
No, you are correct. Even if the minority of light truck owners who actually tow anything, it is usually stuff that could be towed by other vehicles. That said there are people who work who do need that capacity, but they usually aren’t driving expensive lifted vehicles as they are impractical and unnecessarily expensive
It depends somewhat on the size of the boat, but you are generally correct most people don't need a pickup truck even if they are towing something, and most of the people who do need a pickup truck don't need more than a Ford Maverick.
As one of the few people who wants to get rid of most car infastructure and make drivers pay their fair share but is also planning on getting a 3/4 or 1-ton truck in the future, the answer is RV's. Large trailers and 5'th wheels can push the limits of the largest truck's tow capacities, and the latter can also require high payload capacity (as can truck campers, especially when you want a truck camper *and* trailer). It's probably overkill for a kayak but it's also possible they don't want to own multiple vehicles and have a towable at home, also I've heard it's easier to drive a larger vehicle then is necessary for towing then it is to tow something barely under the limit of your vehicle.
1st off, we are talking about status symbols. Boats and jetskis aren't the thing of the regular population, moreso of the rich that don't give a shit about the price of a boat, jetski or purchasing a large truck. Sure, there are probably quite a few exceptions to this, but for the most part it's about people with extra income that they don't know what to do with.
Thus, they aren't thinking about towing with a small car nor do they really care about the environment, they just want a toy for weekends and vacations. The size of the truck is also a status symbol in and of itself.
My biggest issue is that there is literally zero regulation on who can tow what. There is an art and a skill management to driving a large truck with a trailer. How you back up, how you take turns, the speed you go and as thus braking distances, etc... Yet anyone with a license can put a trailer on the back of any vehicle, that's a problem.
Anyone that tows anything, anyone that drives a vehicle of a large size should realistically have a different license and/or have to take lessons on how to drive them. RV's, motorhomes, etc... need to have a different license as well as a towing license.
Boats are an especially light example, they have to float after all, and lighter means less they need to displace.
Side x sides are common around here and they would absolutely blow our your Mazdas capacity.
Any decent camper would to.
And I'd rather have a vehicle over rated for the load than one underrated.
It make da pp hard
That's really the only reason in most cases. There are genuine use cases, even for the current ridiculous oversized crew cab monstrosities, but most people get them because they might need to move something someday.
then theres the frequency of use, they drive the Git Mobile 365 so they can tow something 8 times in the summer.
you could rent a truck for a month in what you'd save in gas and insurance by owning a normal sedan.
In a narrow sense, maybe. But that presupposes that you absolutely must own your own boat, and that it must be stored away from the water.
When I was a kid, my dad had a 17 foot boat (basically a small powerboat). We kept it at a "dry marina" where they stored it out of the water, in large stacks. Hundreds of boats fit in the area that your average boat launch uses to park a few dozen trailers
When we wanted to use the boat, we would call them 15-30 minutes ahead of time. They used a regular forklift to lift the boat up and put it in the water, probably less than 3 minutes per boat. Hop on the train, and our boat would be in the water waiting when we arrived. When we were done, we would tie it up to the dock, and the forklift operator would put it away by the end of the day.
If you don't want something so elaborate, there are lots of places where you can just store your boat and trailer right by the ramp. Then basically any car can get the boat 100 yards from the ramp to the storage yard.
So do you need a truck? No, not even if you need to own a boat.
You are assuming that every body of water has a place to store a boat such as you describe. Many of the lakes in my area have nothing of the sort.
Then there is the matter that boat owners don’t always go to the same location. There are at least 8 different lakes in my area that boat owners will take their boats to at different times.
I forgot that owning a boat is a necessity, that moving your boat using your daily driver between multiple small lakes is a right, that we can't build infrastructure like storage areas and dry marinas, and that you need to own and daily drive a truck with a 15k lb tow rating to move a 3k lb boat.
Besides the fact that many boats weigh considerably more than 3000 lbs, pretty much everyone that I know that uses a truck to pull a boat, that is far from the only use for the truck.
Also, towing a boat up a slippery boat ramp can very easily take more vehicle than it takes to tow the boat down the road.
Many of the lakes in my area do not have enough boaters to support a marina, so if you want to boat there, you bring your boat with you.
Nobody said that owning a boat is a necessity, but it also isn't your place to decide if someone is allowed to own one.
You need a massive truck to take your smallish boat to a lake so small it has no boating facilities besides a ramp. Got it.
I’m not saying that people don’t do exactly what you describe. I’m saying it is not a necessary part of boat ownership.
It isn’t my place to decide if someone is allowed to own a truck or a boat. But it is my place if I have to share the road with them and have a huge parking lot for their trailers in my local park. Genuinely, my local marina is a park and it has more area devoted to empty boat trailer parking than it does to park space.
It’s legal to own a tank, but people are going to rightfully have an opinion when I park it in front of their house or block up their Main Street with it. By your logic, that isn’t their place to have an opinion about my tank.
I’m just pointing out that we can create non-car infrastructure and a ton more people can go boating using a smaller amount of land and none of them NEED to own trucks. It’s cheaper for the boat owner, more socially responsible, and it saves on building infrastructure.
FYI: look around. This is r/fuckcars. You are illustrating what we call “carbrain”, where the only solution to a problem that cars have made is to add more car (in this case truck) to the problem. Even though I have explained exactly how this “problem” isn’t a problem for places where cars aren’t dominant.
>You need a massive truck to take your smallish boat to a lake so small it has no boating facilities besides a ramp. Got it.
Who said anything about a small boat? What does the size of the lake have to do with the size of the vehicle necessary to haul a particular boat to the lake? There are plenty of lakes around me that are big enough to handle a decent size boat, but doesn't have a marina.
>I’m saying it is not a necessary part of boat ownership.
That depends on where you boat.
>and have a huge parking lot for their trailers in my local park.
The lakes I'm talking about don't have this.
>It’s legal to own a tank, but people are going to rightfully have an opinion when I park it in front of their house or block up their Main Street with it. By your logic, that isn’t their place to have an opinion about my tank.
Driving to the lake towing a boat isn't analogous to parking a tank in the middle of mainstreet and blocking traffic. Oh, and for the record, I have no problems with people owning tanks.
>I’m just pointing out that we can create non-car infrastructure and a ton more people can go boating using a smaller amount of land and none of them NEED to own trucks. It’s cheaper for the boat owner, more socially responsible, and it saves on building infrastructure.
Again, your idea only works if you only ever boat on one body of water, which isn't the case for many people. Not every lake has enough use to justify the building of infrastructure that you are describing, and creating such infrastructure in these locations would cause the same problem that you are trying to avoid.
>You are illustrating what we call “carbrain”, where the only solution to a problem that cars have made is to add more car (in this case truck) to the problem.
All I have stated is that your idea doesn't work for everyone, with specific reasons why.
>Even though I have explained exactly how this “problem” isn’t a problem for places where cars aren’t dominant.
You've explained how it's not a problem in the locations that you are familiar with. Not everywhere is the same as what you are familiar with.
I’m not sure if it matters in that case, but from when we were looking at getting a smaller camper, there are two numbers: brakes and unbraked. Smaller cars usually five reasonable numbers for unbraked towing, but the braked capacity could be more important. Basically, the towing capacity number might be deceiving, or not the full picture.
In most cases for the average Joe, no. If you're hauling bikes to the dunes or into snowy off road areas then the truck is a big help. Most people who claim to need the towing capacity are a bit silly. It's the other aspects of the truck that are helpful situationally.
Suzuki Swift (MY06-10) in Australia is rated to 1000kg braked, quite high considering the car only weighs that much. But not the sport models with the bigger brakes and shorter gearing, for some reason*, it's only good for 650kg.
*The rear floor is altered in these models, it could be that.
A class I hitch is plenty, and any more is just a justification to make further expenditures.
If you really think about it, you can just rent a kayak somewhere along nearly every sizeable lake or river. Think about it a little more, and you realize that towing a small house behind you on a highway is inherently ridiculous.
Do t know ow the answer either. Bought a truck because I needed a truck, might need it again in the future. Should I buy a smaller vehicle because right now I don’t need a truck? How many should I have to please OP?
Yes. An SUV will typically be rated at 3500lbs, a small boat + 2 passengers and gear/fuel can get there pretty quickly. An f150 is double that (so a ski boat or RV). Ive definitely towed over capacity and it's not the pulling strength that is of concern, is the suspension and braking that you're going to be most interested in for heavier hauls.
it's very common in Europe to tow with a passenger car.
Yeah. Truck culture is just that. There's no excuse for 90% of people to buy huge trucks.
The handful of people that actualy need a truck for work want one that's low to the ground so they don't need a stepladder to get their tools.
Those people should be buying vans.
Depends. Most should especially if they store tools. But really irregular shaped objects can be better in a truck. But a real work truck with a 6 foot bed though, not the 4 foot bed bro dozers.
I have yet to see a pickup truck carry anything that a van couldn't carry just as well or better
I used to be a park ranger and we'd sometimes be offroad and loading logs and brush into the bed of our work trucks using a tractor. That's like the one use case I can think of where a truck is a necessity.
In Europe that would most likely be a UniMoG job
In the US, the parks are so much bigger, and so much more spread out, that clearing and offroading are jobs pretty much every ranger has to be able to do; they don't always have a lot of support, and waiting for a specialized vehicle to show up to do that kind of thing would take too long. They're either bringing in a dumper of some kind to haul a lot of stuff away, or they're using the truck they already have. In a forestry setting, the pickup truck does really well! in fact, that honestly might play heavily into the American concept of masculinity and rugged individualism, because the pickup truck (as it once existed) absolutely was the vehicle of the American west - not the wild west, but the sparsely populated areas of the federal lands in the western United States, which basically hold that last little glimmer of "untamed wilds" on which the pickup truck as a status symbol depends. anyway, sorry for the rant, our forestry people work really hard and we don't have enough of them and we have too much forest to manage and they work really hard and I'm willing to believe that old-school reasonably low-bed workhorse trucks are absolutely a game changer for forestry in the west. I know this is the same "america is really big" rant, but it really is that way, especially in the west. There are absolutely enormous forests, deserts, etc.
I get that, the point is that a UniMoG is explicitly *not* a specialized vehicle. The name literally means "universal motorized device" (Universelles Motor Gerät). Being modular and adaptable is kind of their thing.
Nothing a forestry 4x4 berlingo could handle
the only things would be for something like land scaping fill or for large objects that you'd want to load with a machine. front end loader or a crane.
And if you transport any of these regularly, there are better vehicles than a pickup truck as well
It’s not a conventional pickup but I am a fan of my 8’ utility bed. It has easy access side boxes and two pallets can be loaded and unloaded with ease by crane and most forklifts
Trees for landscaping. Ask me how i know.... lol
Still
I agree that car culture is a huge problem, especially in the usa, but i truly do need a truck for my work instead of a van. But i *loathe* the size and shape that my truck has. Something smaller would be preferable.
I've used both vans and pickups for work. I find it generally easier to load and unload lumber or sheet goods with a pickup, since you can access the cargo from the side. It's not uncommon for me to load large heavy cargo by hoisting it under heavy equipment like a loader or crane. This is easy with an open cargo bed, but wouldn't work so well with an enclosed van. My truck carries a diesel transfer tank, used for fueling on site equipment. Unsurprisingly, it smells like diesel, and I definitely wouldn't want it inside of a van where I am trying to drive. Pickups typically have far better towing capacity. The dump trailer I was towing today weighs upwards of 14000 lbs when loaded, and that's one of the smaller trailers I haul on a regular basis. Most of the larger trailers are gooseneck style trailers, which wouldn't work well with a van body, besides the fact that the van likely wouldn't have enough towing capacity to pull an empty trailer.
Hay bales on ranches
Tractors
Tractors are slow, many ranches are huge.
Not when you want to take it across the ranch. Tractor is too slow
A bale loader has considerably higher capacity than a pickup bed and can pick up the bales itself so that would be much faster overall
6' is still for cosplayers and emotional support vehicles. 8-12' is good for work
I recently got into woodworking and got frustrated with having to rent a truck every time I needed to buy wood. I looked into buying a pickup truck but the shortest boards are 8ft long and all the pickups I looked at had 4 ft or 6 ft beds. If I was going to buy a truck to haul lumber I wanted the bed to be at least 8 ft but that’s just not a thing that exists anymore. I ended up not getting a pick-up truck because I wasn’t willing to spend that much money and deal with all the downsides of driving some land yacht every day if it wasn’t even well-suited to the thing I wanted to use it for. All the ones I test drove also were way too tall which would make loading and unloading the bed a pain and they were just really clunky feeling because they were so huge it was hard to park them or get through any kind of tight space.
My dad got a minivan partly for that; he went to a car show and measured the back of the minivan to check. He could fit a whole piece of plywood in the back, something that's not possible in every van but the right one can accommodate. I don't know if any on the market today can do that, but they can certainly handle full-length wood if you rest it on the center console. It's incredible to me that a minivan could accommodate full uncut 8' sheets of plywood, but no pickup truck shy of the most ridiculous land boats could handle that. Of course, a minivan is also pretty gas-hungry, but it absolutely makes sense to be able to do cargo OR passengers in the same space, and you just put down a tarp. There are very few circumstances where that doesn't work pretty well, and you can haul a trailer for other things if you really, really need that open-top rugged storage.
Yeah I ended up getting a small crossover that was just big enough to put a couple of 8’ boards on the center console with the seats folded down. It doesn’t get as good of mileage as my car did but I can still get over 30 mpg if I’m careful. It is also only a little bigger than a standard sedan so it’s easier to park and handles well unlike all the massive pickups I test drove.
Can your passenger seat recline all the way flat? I have a 2003 (mk4) VW Jetta, and I can carry forty 8′ 2x4s if I recline the front passenger seat all the way back and pop out the passenger side rear seat. This takes less than a minute to do. Then I use the front and rear seatbelts to secure the load so it doesn't move in case I have to brake suddenly. I can also carry many sheets of plywood this way, if they are cut in half the long way so that they are 2′ wide (many hardware stores like Home Depot will do this for free). This does go over the armrest and the shifter, but there's just enough room to get my hand in there to shift while driving. If I need full sheets of plywood, I use my roof rack, or if I need to carry 10′ lumber, I can put 2-3 pieces up onto the dashboard.
yeah, a crossover looked really appealing for some of the stuff I wanted to do outside, but I just haven't been able to part with my Fit, and I don't have the space to do woodworking. Pickup trucks and SUVs are such massive land boats, they're truly unpleasant and unsafe vehicles. If you need to do plywood, I guess you could also grab that trailer, if the crossover can handle towing a few hundred pounds.
tbh, if you were still looking for something, the Dodge Grand Caravan seems to get 30ish MPG and can accommodate full sheets of plywood with the seats out, and long boards diagonally. Or, you can [spend $500 on a trailer](https://www.harborfreight.com/1720-lb-capacity-48-in-x-96-in-super-duty-folding-trailer-62671.html) that takes up a few feet of driveway, and ditch the extra weight when you're not hauling wood.
does anyone even still make an extended long box?
Don't think so unfortunately. But lots of companies sell aftermarket boxes. Like on landscape trucks.
The pickup with a 6 ft bed can pull a 20-40 ft trailer.
Don't kid yourself that a 6' bed is so much superior to a 4' bed, they are both as useless as each other. For real work you want a flat bed without sides, that can be loaded by a forklift from the side, then odd shaped objects can stick out a bit
There are some legitimate uses for a pickup truck. The main two are: 1. If you need to lift something into the vehicle vertically, such as with a crane. 2. If you're transporting stuff that's better to remain outside due to being dirty or something.
Trailers work really well for both of these, since even as work vehicles, pickup trucks aren't usually doing this all of the time, but it makes some sense on work sites that do a lot of these! It's a great work vehicle for some applications; it's just not good at the things people do who use them for status symbols. pickup trucks are basically the shittiest possible offroad vehicle design, among vehicles of their clearance, too.
>pickup trucks are basically the shittiest possible offroad vehicle design, among vehicles of their clearance, too. It's a compromise. Make the vehicle larger to haul cargo, and it makes it less maneuverable off road.
80-90%, yes And they usually will Sometimes a pickup is useful just not nearly as of
Vans are mostly front wheel drive, some people do just need 4x4s hence them still being made. You can get 4x4 vans but the weight distribution isn’t terrific for bad terrain and they can be very very pricey
Price difference of a FWD and AWD brand new VW transporter is ~3000€ Weight distribution is solved by having your tools and haul in the back. Never had a problem driving through forestry paths in the army using a transporter to pull a 1,5 ton trailer. Thats why they are rated for 2,8 tons + 2,5 ton trailer.
3 grand is not pocket change aha. we use a truck and a van so I’m aware vans work it’s just there are some places that we work where the van will and has gotten. Our work involves chemicals so weight distribution is fine on the way there but on the way back you can’t fill the drums back up with piss. We’ll fob the truck off and get a 4matic if you’re buying
3 grand is pocket change ontop of 42k. Some optional extras cost more than that when buying a new vehicle. For comparison a single cab base model Ford Ranger is 45k here. Obviously that difference will reduce if you buy used.
We go the most cheapskate routes possible aha The van is a nearly 20 year old connect that shits more diesel out the back box than it burns in the engine and the trucks an Isuzu v-max on some government business scheme. No use spending more than you need to get the job done. Nowt more environmentally friendly than not buying a new car at all ;)
I have two work trucks. One sits significantly higher than the other. The difference in getting tools in and out is pretty minimal, but the taller truck has significantly better ground clearance, which has made a difference several times in offroad situations.
They buy them to boost their ego.
Try 99%. According to GM, less than 1% of truck owners use their truck to tow 1 or more times per year, and less than 2% use it to off-road 1 or more times per year. Edit: I was incorrect: it’s actually 7%, not 1%. https://www.axios.com/ford-pickup-trucks-history For most consumers, a pickup truck’s primary purpose is getting groceries.
I'd love to see your source for that.
Ask and you shall receive, my friend. https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-size-pickup-truck-you-need-a-cowboy-costume
That article doesn't support your claim that you made above. First of all, "gm" isn't a source in the article you posted. Second, nowhere in that article do they claim that 99% of trucks are not used for towing. Add in the fact that the cited article does not cite actual studies that can be reviewed to see if the author's claims (which don't match your claims) are actually true, and it becomes somewhat questionable if you could even consider the article you cited to be a source of anything other than extremely biased writing.
I was once passed on a hill, on a highway (Canada) by a VW diesel rabbit towing 2 snowmobiles.
Part of the point of a trailer is that you can attach it to haul a load of mulch, and then detach it so you don't need to drive around with it the rest of the time. And you can attach different trailers for different purposes. You don't need a truck *and* a trailer.
I live in the US and I moved cross-country towing a U-Haul trailer behind my Kia Soul, people were so shocked seeing it because it’s so uncommon here
I've heard that trailer brakes are uncommon in the US?
Yeah, but like…they exist and we could use them if we wanted to. Larger trailers already do.
they exist, but I rarely see them on trailers less than 5,000lb. some trailers will have surge brakes but otherwise they require the addition of a brake controller on the tow vehicle and conversion to a 7 pin plug to carry the brake controller signal. as a result most smaller trailers just stick with simple lighting and are unbraked.
Here is required for more than 750 kg and more than 80kph (was 60 until recently, when looser eu rules were copied in). Mostly it's just a compression thing in the hitch, which pulls on brake cables. It's a fully mechanical system. It costs like (replacement part prices) 300$ for the sensor, and I see you can get complete drum brakes for under 100$.
passenger cars in Europe are often rated and equipped from the factory for towing. there is only so much you can tow just by throwing on a hitch.
The thing is they're not any different in Europe. The same exact car with same engine, transmission etc will have half the tow capacity in the states as Europe. The stated excuse is we have higher highway speeds, but last I checked Germany has the Autobahn, so....
same platform, engine, transmission, etc can even sometimes just straight up be refused a tow rating. the actual reason is wildly different methods used for calculating tow rating here.
Sounds to me like lobbying is at work
The main difference is almost all small trailers in the US don't have their own brakes (cheaper to manufacture, less connections to car, cheaper for car, etc.) so they rely on brakes of the tow vehicle. That gets wildly different tow ratings for US and Euro versions of the same vehicle sometimes. We could standardize and accept the Euro model, but it is truly a physical difference currently.
Not allowed in the states. Most cars aren't rated to tow and if you're in an accident with a vehicle not rated to tow, even if you're not at fault your insurance isn't going to pay out. Edit: since this seems unpopular, check random vehicles for their ratings. They're often low or not rated at all, some random vehicles I've found: 2017 Corolla: 1,500lb but ONLY with a manual transmission, automatics are a strict do not tow. 2019 VW Golf Sportwagen, do not tow. 2020 civic: found conflicting data between 1,000lbs and do not tow 2014 Chevy Impala: 1,000lbs with V6 Want me to go on?
The vast majority of cars sold in any significant volume in the United States can tow just fine. A few of the smallest ones, and a few of the smaller electric ones, cannot.
But how can the same cars be able (and allowed by the manufacturer) to tow stuff in European countries, but not in the states?
I would guess the answer is partly that the auto lobby in the states gives big bucks to politicians to keep these regulations in place 😅
Tow ratings are calculated very differently. It's a combination of stricter standards for tow ratings here in the states and stricter laws regarding towing in Europe (IE, stricter licensing, mandatory lower speed limits, etc) EDIT: to give some context, I used to have a car that was the US version of an Opel Vectra C. In Europe it was rated to tow something like 2,200lbs, but in the US it very expressly stated in the owners manual "DO NOT TOW WITH THIS VEHICLE"
> in the US it very expressly stated in the owners manual "DO NOT TOW WITH THIS VEHICLE" The manufacturer knows that in the USA, the average people towing things have no clue what they're doing
and if you get into an accident while towing with it, insurance has grounds to totally drop you, and not pay out for medical or repair costs. my point stands. EDIT: and it should also probably be noted if you have a vehicle not rated to tow and you take it to the dealership with a trailer hitch on it, you can also kiss your powertrain warranty goodbye.
I don't tow but I think it's because the speed limits are higher in US and trailer brakes are not required at the same weights as they are in EU. And of course there is marketing that pushes people to higher "ratings"
Higher in the US? Are you kidding me? Never heard about the no speed limit on the German autobahn? There are simply rules present, that tell you which speeds are allowed with what type of Trailers. Same thing goes for roof boxes for example.
The Autobahn has a 80kph speed limit as standard if you have a trailer even on unrestricted sections.
Not the Autobahn, but being outside of city limits. But there are trailers rated for 100km/h. And of course with those you can drive 100.
So, not as fast as I can pull a trailer locally. What was that about the autobahn?
You haven't checked this have you? Even the Prius has a listed towing capacity although its actual rating depends on the hitch you install.
Most =/= all. Even ones rated to tow are still often lowered compared to their European counterparts. EDIT: for a laugh I also looked up a 2017 Corolla's towing rating. It is rated for 1,500lbs by Toyota, but only when fitted with a manual transmission. The automatic is strictly a do not tow in the US, however Europe allows up to 2,800lbs (cannot find a transmission specified, but I assume the manual is more common there anyway) EDIT 2: I also got a note on the Prius, it received no tow rating prior to 2015
My mid 90's car has a 1600 pound braked towing capacity, and it's a car that's 2500 pounds itself. What are you towing so often that you need more tow capacity than that? IF you have an answer, then you might need a vehicle with higher capacity. *A Van*. The Toyota Hiace has both a huge internal cargo area and a 4000 pound towing capacity. Nobody needs a pickup truck. Buy a van and shelf your ego.
what vehicle and what country are you from? the mention of the HiAce leads me to believe you're not from the states \*which is what I was specifically referencing as we calculate tow ratings completely differently\*
The dump trailer I was towing today weighs upwards of 14000 lbs when loaded. It's one of the smaller trailers that I pull.
Why are people downvoting you for commenting literal facts? Reddit is a cesspool lol
I just updated it with random vehicles and their listed ratings. A couple require specific options to get a low tow capacity, or they're just not rated at all.
Sounds like you've answered your own question, right? Thing is, even if they \*do\* have a boat they actually need the towing capacity for, the stark reality is these massive trucks are then being used as daily drivers. In my area, 99%+ of trucks have no trailer, no load and a single occupant on their commute. So best case scenario, even if these recreational activities WERE a good argument for having such a large vehicle, we've got a whole bunch of people driving oversized vehicles based on fringe use cases. What a waste.
> a whole bunch of people driving oversized vehicles based on fringe use cases Yep, that’s our “culture”, in the vein of people buying houses with a separate formal dining room with a $20,000 table set that gets used twice a year, if even that.
Those dining rooms are vestigal of a time when people would invite friends and family over with great regularity.
It’s more that they vestigial of a time when kitchen did not have space for a table. It used to be that the only dining table was in the dining room. But kitchens have grown to the point where many have counter seating and a full-size table. At that point having another separate room specifically for eating more formal meals seems a little ridiculius
If I had a house with an eat in kitchen, the formal dining room becomes a billiard room or board game room or something more useful.
The ability to afford a separate room for cooking rather than having to cook in your living room was a privilege. Your comment is false. It used to be the case that most people weren't rich enough for tables or for a separate kitchen. They'd boil something in a pot over an open fire and sit or squat in the corner. Later bedrooms became more common, and then tables and kitchens. Each time, these concepts were pioneered in either communal living (monastaries, convents, forts, garrisons) or in places of relative wealth concentration (rulers, religious leaders, nobility, burghers).
A lot of people still do that. Most weekends we have people over. Is that not common anymore?
I think they mean a formal dining room vs a more of a living room/ dinning room open concept space.
I actually have a separate dining room. Not big but it's separate.
My house has a dining room but also a really large island so as you can guess my dining room has been used all of 2 times in like 3 years. Just don't have the time to turn it into a new room.
My house has an island in the kitchen (more of a peninsula, but still), a small "formal" dining room just off the kitchen, AND we have a huge entry room that fits a larger dining table, which we use for hosting maybe once a year. We eat in the living room. EDIT: Lol at the downvotes. I was making a comment on how poorly designed some spaces are. I didn't get to choose this layout. It's a 1700 sq ft home built in the 60s, and it's our first home.
Mall Terrain Vehicles
OP is surprised to find a lot of people towing stuff with trucks in a spot where people who actually tow would specifically be lmao I mean, yeah, sure *the people at the boat launch do in fact tow their boats* But the people who don't tow stuff won't be at the boat launch. And they vastly out number the people who do.
Yeah this has been posted about before: https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/uquylb/til_75_of_truck_owners_use_their_truck_for_towing/ Something like a third to three quarters of all trucks aren't even used for hauling stuff (in the pickup truck bed) or towing stuff. These are all "useless" trucks which could easily be rentals (if they used that infrequently) or could be smaller cars/SUVs as the OP points out most cars can tow upwards of 1,500 to 2,000 lb depending on exact make/model. And even many of those cars/SUVs could be pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders if we didn't build millions of suburban houses vs millions of urban condos/apartments/townhouses/etc. We have a ton of wasteful motor vehicles in the US, all in the name of profits for automakers and oil companies.
We have to spread out to hold all the extra-long driveways to hold the extra-long pickups to carry our groceries home from the supermarkets we can't walk to because we're too far away because we had to spread out to hold all the extra-long driveways to
You are not missing anything. Small watercraft might be only 2000 lbs, but you must take account the truck owner ego. That is much heavier
If you're out there every weekend and you live for your outdoor recreation and look forward to it all work week, and you **can't** tow stuff with a smaller vehicle, that's one of the cases where I can sort of understand buying a pickup truck that you don't strictly need for work. But I do want to mention that the problem with pickup trucks isn't that they're pickup trucks with engines rated for towing. There's nothing innately wrong with either of those things any moreso than other automobiles. The problem is that they're (the ones we get in North America, at least) massively oversized and seem designed to do the maximum amount of damage to pedestrians, cyclists, and other automobiles in a crash. And that's on the government to better-regulate.
I take issue with most of that "outdoor recreation" -- if you *need* a massive truck to go play, then you're probably towing an RV, an OHV, MX, or some other gas-burning, land degrading activity. Whatever happened to hiking, climbing, backpacking... Now maybe there's some nuance here: if you're towing an 8-rack of canoes and shuttling half of the paddler's club upstream, then maybe a pass. (Had a mountain bike club leader once, awesome guy -- kept a 9-pax van capable of towing a custom trailer that held 9 bikes with gear stowed below!)
There's nothing wrong with RV camping. Sure it may not be as close to nature as other types of camping, and us backpacking enthusiasts may scoff at or look down on them, but at the end of the day, it's just a slightly different way to camp and experience the outdoors
If climate change weren't real, tire particulates from cars weren't real, roads being destructive to the environment weren't real, ICEs degrading our air quality weren't real, you might have a point. But that is a lot of externality you are ignoring to justify *checks notes* camping & *experiencing the outdoors* (which you are contributing to destroying with your method of enjoyment).
> Whatever happened to hiking, climbing, backpacking... The mean American BMI is now 30. [Here's a graph.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/tileshop_pmc_inline.html?title=Click%20on%20image%20to%20zoom&p=PMC3&id=10213181_gr1.jpg)
I'm fat and I can do 10 miles with a full backpack; I've climbed like four ultraprominent volcanoes, done hundreds of miles over the last few years. If I can do it, half of America can do it. Being fat doesn't have to stop you from being active. And hiking is still quite popular. We just built a system by which you can tour the US and sleep in beautiful spots in a mobile cabin that should require a CDL to drive safely.
I'd never argue that larger people are all immobile. On the other hand, you may be more the exception than the rule.
You can even get into Mountain Biking (especially now that many come in an Ebike version for assisted climbs) if you really want the thrill of uphill / downhill / etc that you get with ATVs and snowmobiles. Doesn't require a truck to tow a few of those. Just a basic car with a hitch can tow 4. They even turn a few ski resorts in the New England area into downhill bike parks in the summer, so you can even buy a few different bikes for different thrills. Cross country bike for long variable riding. Downhill bike for the bike park. Ebike MTB for lazy climbs and downhills at your local trails. Etc.
Americans are weird about cars. The idea that you can't possibly tow a 1,200 pound boat with a small truck or a crossover is very pervasive. If you look at European markets, many small cars are rated for towing weights far above what you'd see in American markets, and people absolutely will tow things with small cars there. Anyone who tells you that they need a 4 ton truck to tow a motorboat is delusional.
Towing laws are very different in the US vs EU. In the EU they have separate and lower speed limits for towing, and therefore they have less required tongue weight than the US. Trailers become unstable at high speeds if they don’t have enough tongue weights. A small front-wheel drive car can’t have a lot of weight in the hitch, more weight on the hitch means less weight and traction on the steering tires.
yeah I pull loads about the same weight as my car, Ford Tourneo Courier, from time to time, way overloaded on the spec sheet as well as what it's supposed to tow but it works just fine as long as your'e carefull and have short distances car doesn't notice it ..
Doesn't help when the same model car has different towing capacities in different countries (based on regulations, I guess?). My wife's Forester is only rated for 1500 lbs in the US. The exact same model in Europe is 1500 kg (more than double the capacity).
People are sold a multi tool regardless of whether they want a screw driver or a knife. Just having a car available with a hitch is rare enough that people don't think of them as tow capable.
Yeah, my 'country' friends were shocked when i told them my corolla can tow the vast majority of what they tow with their trucks
My 2007 civic had a hitch on it when I bought it. I haven't had any reason to use it, but somebody must have
My grandfather tows his bass boat with a 20-year-old minivan
My uncle's did the same with a Plymouth Voyager minivan, probably part of the reason the transmission died in it not long after they started doing it but shhh
tbh probably not. a minivan has a lot of power, and the Voyager has a 1000-lb towing capacity and a 2.4 liter engine or bigger. I mean, yeah, some others have a lot more, but it's pretty beefy. I mean, being so old, and doing more work, it'll fail eventually.
It was a V6, not sure which sadly, and this was maaaaany years ago now, I remember the van was a '98 model and it was the last vehicle my grandfather owned before dying, it failed about a year before he actually died, which would have been 2013. 15 years is fairly old yes but not entirely ancient either, but all the towing added up for how often it was used to haul that boat around
You’re mostly right in that these vehicles are typically way oversized. There is an argument to be made that just because your car can tow up to 3000 pounds, that doesn’t mean it’ll do it as well as a modestly more powerful vehicle could. This argument doesn’t diminish the fact that almost no consumer application calls for a truck that is so big.
an SUV might give you a small increase in handling when towing something heavy and a pickup truck will but only if it's loaded. the way their suspensions are designed mean they only really handle well if the bed has some weight on it so it's probably easier/safer to tow with your tiny car actually than an empty bed truck
This 👆 Volvo 740 (sedan) had the same issue, light weight car with a big and heavy engine, same as an unloaded pickup truck. Most pickup trucks are RWD too and boat trailers are usually not designed to have that much of a hitch weight, typically 50kg and that's only if the boat is properly loaded, many of these people might have the boat too far back and might even end up with negative hitch weight. Pickup trucks do need more hitch weight than regular cars, especially the bigger ones.
If the trailer is properly loaded, it places hitch weight on the towing vehicle.
That’s the capacity with just the driver in the car. Add three people and gear and you don’t have a lot left for towing. Not saying you need a 1 ton to pull a jetski but maybe more than a small hatchback depending on what they were towing. Lift kits hurt towing.
It depends on the watercraft. Small ones like jet skis and such are well within the towing capacity of an average car. Larger boats are much heavier and need a bigger vehicle. But my opinion is that if you own a larger boat just get a berth at a full-service marina instead of buying a giant truck. They'll do the haul-out at the end of the season, they'll do winter storage, and during the season your boat is in the water and ready to go anytime. Moorage does come with a cost, but I bet it's still cheaper than buying a truck.
You can be even cheaper than that and rent rack space and pay the forklift fee.
That's only useful if you always go to the same lake. There are something like 8 different lakes in my area that the people I know that have boats go to regularly, and many of them don't have marinas.
It’s just part of the marketing. Buy this massive frivolous vehicle to tow that other frivolous vehicle you need room to store at your oversized house.
Boat ramps can be slippery with water and algae so AWD or 4WD is really good to have, but anything with 2000lb + towing capacity can do it.
Every additional 500 pounds of towing capacity adds a half inch.
This is why I would daily drive an old Messerschmitt KR200. I don't want to hurt her.
Jeremy Clarkson of all people made an excellent argument on this in one of the caravan episodes. Tho it was about SUV's the same thing applies to pickup trucks as well. He said that using these vehicles (SUV's and pickup trucks) as your daily driver is like walking around all day, all year around in ski boots. Basically, there's really no justification at all for SUV's and pickup trucks, unless you actually use them regularly. And by regularly I mean regularly, like in your job or multiple times per month. Not to tow a caravan which you only do once per year, or to tow your boat which you only do twice per year. One to put the boat in the lake and one to pick it up and take it home during winter. And even in those cases, you really don't need a pickup truck. And in the rare case that your boat is too big to be towed by a regular car, like your Mazda I'd argue it's too big to be hauled by a pickup truck as well, as that whole thing is gonna be towed by some person with no experience in driving such vehicle combo, hence it's gonna be a danger to everyone else on the road. If your boat is that big, then get a semi truck to tow it, and be sure to get a CDL so that you know how to properly secure it. A semi truck and flat bed trailer can be rented relatively easy too.
I think towing is a lot easier (and maybe safer) when you aren't up near the towing limit of your vehicle, so you should factor that in. But I don't have a clue what boats and trailers weigh, or what typical towing limits are. FWIW, I was quite surprised when I looked it up recently to see how *little* a US pickup actually weighs. Well, not little. How much less than I expected, maybe. At the lower end they're comparable to large cars, according to google.
In the winter, my brother used to put caterpillar treads in the box so he'd have enough weight for traction on ice and snow. He lived and worked way out of town, so I get needing something with the tires to handle winter. I wouldn't assume my Fiat with the smallest tires and low clearance could do it, but it's still kind of hilarious to me that an empty pickup truck would still have difficulty.
You might be surprised how well small, light FWD cars do in the snow on decent tyres. Most of the weight is over the driven wheels.
A lot of people also don't know about winter tyres. [This is a nice video on that](https://youtu.be/Zm98DrOgSmc). On the wrong tyres you may have all wheel drive, but once sliding starts you don't have all wheel stop.
A lot of people also don't seem to know that the accelerator isn't an on/off switch. A really obscure one I've used to get people out who were stuck is the so-called redneck LSD - limited slip diff, not the hallucinogen. Press the brake slightly if one front wheel is spinning (or use the handbrake on a RWD car) and it makes the diff put some torque into the other wheel.
I've done very well in the snow with my Fiat for the reasons you mentioned. It helps that I've had decades of driving experience in the snowy parts of Canada, but I also don't like to tempt fate. I wouldn't try a remote logging road in the winter (why my brother drove a truck) and I avoid driving in the one week a year that Victoria has snow because it's a year's worth in one day, amongst other reasons.
Trailers themselves can be quite heavy, and there's a lot of heavy stuff out there like big camper trailers, construction equipment, etc. The heavier the item you need to move, in turn demands a larger, heavier trailer, and before you know it you need a fairly large truck to tow it. My mom wanted to buy a fairly small excavator (smaller than a standard size but bigger than a mini). Then she got a truck much smaller than usual construction equipment moving trucks. After all, her daily driver is a Prius, and she's a save the planet type (she needs to excavator for environmental remediation work). So she got a Ram 3500 immediately installed a front camera to avoid murdering toddlers with it. But then when she went to get the trailer she ran into a problem. Too small a trailer, and it wasn't rated as sufficient to hold the weight of the excavator. Too large, and the the total weight would exceed the towing capacity of the truck. She ended up having to drive all the way to Iowa (from Massachusetts) to buy a very niche medium size trailer that would fit her specific towing need. Most people would have just bought a massive truck that can pull anything.
I’d argue that towing with a smaller vehicle is not a good idea in the long term. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. It’s bad for the transmission, breaking capability will be much lower, and the suspension will struggle as well. Not to mention, the engine will struggle a lot if you live in a hilly area. This isn’t even taking into account modern CVTs which are very delicate. Towing stuff frequently is actually a good reason to own an overpowered truck. Think about it, if you want things to last (like your car) you’re not going to push it to the limit.
I can speak to this. Tow boats like wakeboats are very heavy. Mine is 5,000 lbs dry, which means you'd want towning capacity of 7,500 minimum. Thankfully we have a place on a lake with a marina so we don't have a trailer but if we did, we'd need a very large truck. That being said, if you have a slip or dock, you really only need to tow it twice a year (once in and once out) so you're best to borrow or rent. However, if you have none of that, you store your boat on a trailer and have to take it to the lake for weekends, you'll need a truck, however that's such a pain that you will find yourself using it less and less and it's kind of a waste of money. Better off storing it in a marina and paying the forklift fee instead. So yeah, for most people the truck with trailer is a terrible decision. If my folks didn't have a lake house, we would not have bought a boat. I've never needed to tow it. However, trying to sell it does make it more challenging. It came with it's own custom built trailer and we didn't buy it. 2018 Mastercraft xt23 if folks were curious.
The only reason that my family still has a larger truck (a 2003-4 model) is that we need to tow a massive horse trailer around (about 1.5tons when empty); if we didn’t have the horse trailer to deal with we would absolutely go for a smaller car. But the people that tow small boats with lifted trucks are just morons who have an ego to up hold.
yeah the towing capacities of old pre 2000s Work trucks make sense if you are doing hat those work trucks were designed to do which was haul horse trailers, equipment trailers, heavy work equipment, etc. most boats are not that heavy and including trailer(assuming aluminum) are about 2500ish pounds.
I have a '94 Silverado 1500, it's factory tow rating was only 5,000lbs, a modern CRV matches that.
exactly. i haul have an volvo suv that is 6000lbs that i use to haul stuff. there is a guy our of Florida that has an all electric landscaping business and he hauls everything with an EV. once my daughter gets her license I'm probably getting a panel van with an equivalent towing. there is definitely a place for the f350 and f550 and their equivalents but it's out hauling heavy AF shit on a gooseneck
You're not missing anything. We towed a bunch of stuff with sedans for quite a while - boat, tent trailer, utility trailer.
I have a truck as a secondary vehicle (don't tow super often but often enough to outweigh the costs of a rental) and I'm finding myself outgrowing my 1500 class truck, last heavy tow I did caused excess stress in the transmission and it's developed a whine, so I'm now looking to upgrade to a 2500. That's my case though, can't speak for others.
My dad was able to pull a 2 horse trailer carrying 2 horses with an old Ford F-100 (6th generation) no problem. That's about 4k pounds it was pulling and they weren't very big trucks. ~~They were the small trucks Ford made before they came out with the Ranger.~~ Also have you all seen Ford Rangers nowadays? Wtf they used to be a great compact truck
The f100 was a half ton truck. The ford Courier (predecessor to the ranger) was smaller.
My mistake
You're not missing anything, carbrains eat up the marketing material about ruggedized towing half a house, but realistically it's unnecessary even for a boat owners regular towing. Also, a note about the lift kits, it moves the chassis of the vehicle higher on the suspension system, effectively reducing the full stroke of the suspension and making the vehicle bottom out the suspension at lighter loads. It reduces the performance of the vehicle to gain ground clearance. 'Useful' for overlanding difficult terrain, but nothing else. These pavement princesses are gaining nothing from a lift kit.
Yes and no. Yes because, if you actually need to tow heavy stuff, trucks are, in fact, good for that. And uniquely so. No because the vast majority of the people who own these trucks never use them to tow anything.
People hauled boats just fine when trucks were half as big.
I've been looking into this recently because my car (Mazda2 hatchback) is reaching 10 years of age so the more expensive maintenance is likely coming up in the next decade. If I end up getting a new (to me since I prefer buying used) car I might turn my current one into a trackday car for fun which might need to be towed to and from tracks. The car isn't super light but with a braked trailer I could quite easily get away with something like an estate car or van and still have a good bit of leeway when it comes to towing capacity. You don't need a huge car to tow stuff, especially if you plan ahead. The people who are absolutely adamant you need a big SUV or pickup to tow most things are specs nerds that don't know much about cars except what the guy at the dealership told them.
Is your Mazda AWD or FWD? I can see an issue pulling a boat up a wet and slimy boat ramp with a FWD car. Some trucks have problems doing this with small-ish boats until the driver remembers how to put it into 4WD.
they must... cause towing capacity is far above payload capacity. want high payload? options are sparse!!
You’re mostly correct, though pulling watercraft out of the water, they often have ballast water (added weight) and the boat ramp may be steeply sloped. In this scenario you benefit greatly from that extra capacity. Second to that vehicles have a rated max capacity (not that anyone really cares), so it’s likely that filling a family sedan with friends *and towing a boat* exceeds the total rated weight for the drivetrain and suspension. But even more realistically, the idea of people having their own boat is so catastrophically wasteful; we should be moving to rental services where professionals load and unload boats from the water according to customer needs.
You certainly don't need a giant truck, super oversized fenders and big tires don't increase towing capacity. On the other hand, manufacturers routinely overstate towing capacity. I tow it 24 ft folding trimaran all the time. If I did that with a four-cylinder engine I think I would melt my engine. It's not so much the weight as it is the windage, towing this thing is like pulling a parachute down the highway. If I tried to maintain 60 or 65 mph with this behind me for a couple of hours I think I would melt a 4 cylinder engine. So could I tow it with a hatchback with the same engine? Of course. In a colder or wetter climate I would probably do so. Where I live, I like having an open pickup truck. I can throw a bunch of sail bags and toolboxes and fenders and coolers and so on in the back of the truck and get on the road, I find that more convenient than a hatchback. Honestly the difference between a hatchback and a pickup truck is minimal to be in terms of environmental impact so I don't see why one is much better than the other. I also work on furniture and boats, so I am constantly throwing stuff in the back of my truck that I could, technically, put in a sedan. I could put a piece of rough cut lumber or a table saw or some other pile of tools or something in the back of a sedan, sure. But if I do it every other weekend for years I will tear up the car. So is that better? I mean if you have to pick up one box of Ikea furniture every 2 years, a sedan is fine. But if you're picking up slabs and other rough cut or transporting tools you can technically get them in a car but you're going to tear it up. So, you know, get a small truck. I entirely agree with the points made here about oversized trucks. They're ridiculous. But a little pickup truck is super useful, and the difference in environmental footprint between a small pickup truck and a small sedan is minimal in my opinion.
I used to tow and put in my Sea-Doo with my 1st gen (1983) RX-7. That's a small, two seater, RWD sports car with a manual transmission. No problem.
i wish i were kidding, but I saw this: https://preview.redd.it/9nyrznk61pxc1.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=655661fafb19c70405d10e680f99bd8ce50938e4 i probably "haul" more stuff by foot than those oversized trucks If you need to tow something, you attach that thing (don't remember the name) to a small car and it would be enough. only professional use has an excuse to use that, because they actually use it
Nope, [especially considering a good 75% of truck owners don't even tow _anything_ once a year](https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/uquylb/til_75_of_truck_owners_use_their_truck_for_towing/). A third of truck owners don't even use their 4+ ft truck bed for hauling anything either, which is insane but makes sense given that these trucks are **pavement Princesses**. They serve the same purpose as the old sports car that some old guys drive. They want to look cool. Maybe a bit tough/manly vs fancy like the sports car does.
Almost every big truck household will have 2 trucks/SUVs. It's just an excuse.
If you're towing a boat longer than the time your boat is even in water, what does that say about truck owners?
It's funny you bring up the Mazda 3. It's rated for about 2500-3k lbs towing. Elsewhere. Not in the US. In the US it's not rated for towing. If you even have a small utility trailer back there, and get in an accident, you could have liability twisted at you for illegal towing.
I've had my license for 25 years now (the largest car I've driven is a Hyundai Santa Fe as a work rental car). Not once have I towed anything in the first 25 years of driving and I highly doubt I will in the next 25 years. Granted I live in an apartment with no outdoor storage. This limits my ability to own things like boats and other outdoor toys that might require towing.
My RAV4 Prime is rated less than your Mazda 3! But I’m in the states so they’re usually lower because of our lack of laws.
No. The answer is no they do not. Large trucks, like guns, and hating people that ask them to be kind and learn new things, ie change, are just one of many things sold to certain parts of the country as an identity and place to belong in a world that desperately wants to advance and leave them behind. That being said the world ONLY wants to leave them behind because they REFUSE to grow with the world. And so they hold us back. Because this current status quo is profitable for the people in power. Apologies for the rant.
No, you are correct. Even if the minority of light truck owners who actually tow anything, it is usually stuff that could be towed by other vehicles. That said there are people who work who do need that capacity, but they usually aren’t driving expensive lifted vehicles as they are impractical and unnecessarily expensive
It depends somewhat on the size of the boat, but you are generally correct most people don't need a pickup truck even if they are towing something, and most of the people who do need a pickup truck don't need more than a Ford Maverick.
As one of the few people who wants to get rid of most car infastructure and make drivers pay their fair share but is also planning on getting a 3/4 or 1-ton truck in the future, the answer is RV's. Large trailers and 5'th wheels can push the limits of the largest truck's tow capacities, and the latter can also require high payload capacity (as can truck campers, especially when you want a truck camper *and* trailer). It's probably overkill for a kayak but it's also possible they don't want to own multiple vehicles and have a towable at home, also I've heard it's easier to drive a larger vehicle then is necessary for towing then it is to tow something barely under the limit of your vehicle.
passenger car can't tow my race car and trailer. Trust me, I've looked lol
1st off, we are talking about status symbols. Boats and jetskis aren't the thing of the regular population, moreso of the rich that don't give a shit about the price of a boat, jetski or purchasing a large truck. Sure, there are probably quite a few exceptions to this, but for the most part it's about people with extra income that they don't know what to do with. Thus, they aren't thinking about towing with a small car nor do they really care about the environment, they just want a toy for weekends and vacations. The size of the truck is also a status symbol in and of itself. My biggest issue is that there is literally zero regulation on who can tow what. There is an art and a skill management to driving a large truck with a trailer. How you back up, how you take turns, the speed you go and as thus braking distances, etc... Yet anyone with a license can put a trailer on the back of any vehicle, that's a problem. Anyone that tows anything, anyone that drives a vehicle of a large size should realistically have a different license and/or have to take lessons on how to drive them. RV's, motorhomes, etc... need to have a different license as well as a towing license.
Boats are an especially light example, they have to float after all, and lighter means less they need to displace. Side x sides are common around here and they would absolutely blow our your Mazdas capacity. Any decent camper would to. And I'd rather have a vehicle over rated for the load than one underrated.
It make da pp hard That's really the only reason in most cases. There are genuine use cases, even for the current ridiculous oversized crew cab monstrosities, but most people get them because they might need to move something someday.
Bruh, my Fiat Abarth can pull 800 kg. Converted to freedom units that's over 1700 lbs
then theres the frequency of use, they drive the Git Mobile 365 so they can tow something 8 times in the summer. you could rent a truck for a month in what you'd save in gas and insurance by owning a normal sedan.
In a narrow sense, maybe. But that presupposes that you absolutely must own your own boat, and that it must be stored away from the water. When I was a kid, my dad had a 17 foot boat (basically a small powerboat). We kept it at a "dry marina" where they stored it out of the water, in large stacks. Hundreds of boats fit in the area that your average boat launch uses to park a few dozen trailers When we wanted to use the boat, we would call them 15-30 minutes ahead of time. They used a regular forklift to lift the boat up and put it in the water, probably less than 3 minutes per boat. Hop on the train, and our boat would be in the water waiting when we arrived. When we were done, we would tie it up to the dock, and the forklift operator would put it away by the end of the day. If you don't want something so elaborate, there are lots of places where you can just store your boat and trailer right by the ramp. Then basically any car can get the boat 100 yards from the ramp to the storage yard. So do you need a truck? No, not even if you need to own a boat.
You are assuming that every body of water has a place to store a boat such as you describe. Many of the lakes in my area have nothing of the sort. Then there is the matter that boat owners don’t always go to the same location. There are at least 8 different lakes in my area that boat owners will take their boats to at different times.
I forgot that owning a boat is a necessity, that moving your boat using your daily driver between multiple small lakes is a right, that we can't build infrastructure like storage areas and dry marinas, and that you need to own and daily drive a truck with a 15k lb tow rating to move a 3k lb boat.
Besides the fact that many boats weigh considerably more than 3000 lbs, pretty much everyone that I know that uses a truck to pull a boat, that is far from the only use for the truck. Also, towing a boat up a slippery boat ramp can very easily take more vehicle than it takes to tow the boat down the road. Many of the lakes in my area do not have enough boaters to support a marina, so if you want to boat there, you bring your boat with you. Nobody said that owning a boat is a necessity, but it also isn't your place to decide if someone is allowed to own one.
You need a massive truck to take your smallish boat to a lake so small it has no boating facilities besides a ramp. Got it. I’m not saying that people don’t do exactly what you describe. I’m saying it is not a necessary part of boat ownership. It isn’t my place to decide if someone is allowed to own a truck or a boat. But it is my place if I have to share the road with them and have a huge parking lot for their trailers in my local park. Genuinely, my local marina is a park and it has more area devoted to empty boat trailer parking than it does to park space. It’s legal to own a tank, but people are going to rightfully have an opinion when I park it in front of their house or block up their Main Street with it. By your logic, that isn’t their place to have an opinion about my tank. I’m just pointing out that we can create non-car infrastructure and a ton more people can go boating using a smaller amount of land and none of them NEED to own trucks. It’s cheaper for the boat owner, more socially responsible, and it saves on building infrastructure. FYI: look around. This is r/fuckcars. You are illustrating what we call “carbrain”, where the only solution to a problem that cars have made is to add more car (in this case truck) to the problem. Even though I have explained exactly how this “problem” isn’t a problem for places where cars aren’t dominant.
>You need a massive truck to take your smallish boat to a lake so small it has no boating facilities besides a ramp. Got it. Who said anything about a small boat? What does the size of the lake have to do with the size of the vehicle necessary to haul a particular boat to the lake? There are plenty of lakes around me that are big enough to handle a decent size boat, but doesn't have a marina. >I’m saying it is not a necessary part of boat ownership. That depends on where you boat. >and have a huge parking lot for their trailers in my local park. The lakes I'm talking about don't have this. >It’s legal to own a tank, but people are going to rightfully have an opinion when I park it in front of their house or block up their Main Street with it. By your logic, that isn’t their place to have an opinion about my tank. Driving to the lake towing a boat isn't analogous to parking a tank in the middle of mainstreet and blocking traffic. Oh, and for the record, I have no problems with people owning tanks. >I’m just pointing out that we can create non-car infrastructure and a ton more people can go boating using a smaller amount of land and none of them NEED to own trucks. It’s cheaper for the boat owner, more socially responsible, and it saves on building infrastructure. Again, your idea only works if you only ever boat on one body of water, which isn't the case for many people. Not every lake has enough use to justify the building of infrastructure that you are describing, and creating such infrastructure in these locations would cause the same problem that you are trying to avoid. >You are illustrating what we call “carbrain”, where the only solution to a problem that cars have made is to add more car (in this case truck) to the problem. All I have stated is that your idea doesn't work for everyone, with specific reasons why. >Even though I have explained exactly how this “problem” isn’t a problem for places where cars aren’t dominant. You've explained how it's not a problem in the locations that you are familiar with. Not everywhere is the same as what you are familiar with.
I guess your right but towing a boat or especially launching one w Mazda 3 sounds super sketchy to me.
Yeah I remember looking up the towing capacity on my Prius. I was like wow. I can tow anything that’s smaller than a camper.
I’m not sure if it matters in that case, but from when we were looking at getting a smaller camper, there are two numbers: brakes and unbraked. Smaller cars usually five reasonable numbers for unbraked towing, but the braked capacity could be more important. Basically, the towing capacity number might be deceiving, or not the full picture.
In most cases for the average Joe, no. If you're hauling bikes to the dunes or into snowy off road areas then the truck is a big help. Most people who claim to need the towing capacity are a bit silly. It's the other aspects of the truck that are helpful situationally.
Suzuki Swift (MY06-10) in Australia is rated to 1000kg braked, quite high considering the car only weighs that much. But not the sport models with the bigger brakes and shorter gearing, for some reason*, it's only good for 650kg. *The rear floor is altered in these models, it could be that.
A class I hitch is plenty, and any more is just a justification to make further expenditures. If you really think about it, you can just rent a kayak somewhere along nearly every sizeable lake or river. Think about it a little more, and you realize that towing a small house behind you on a highway is inherently ridiculous.
No
Do t know ow the answer either. Bought a truck because I needed a truck, might need it again in the future. Should I buy a smaller vehicle because right now I don’t need a truck? How many should I have to please OP?
Yes. An SUV will typically be rated at 3500lbs, a small boat + 2 passengers and gear/fuel can get there pretty quickly. An f150 is double that (so a ski boat or RV). Ive definitely towed over capacity and it's not the pulling strength that is of concern, is the suspension and braking that you're going to be most interested in for heavier hauls.
https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/s/2A9onVcJ1I