On the flip side, as a van owner (though not a professional "working van") ...
1. you don't need straps and bungees for the van - ours can take pipework, framing lumber and other "long" stuff up to 16', straight on the floor, fully interior.
2. you don't need the gate down - it handles 4x8' sheet goods with all the doors closed, either vertical or horizontal
3. security concerns are much better
4. weather concerns are much better
5. for some folks, you can have highly effective work space inside the van (granted, I've seen some loose equivalents on custom work trucks)
6. mileage is generally significantly better
From my POV, the two wins of the truck form factor are (a) easy of loading/unloading bulk material (e.g. the van is 100% useless for gravel) (b) tall loads. That said, I don't think I've ever need to move anything that was too tall for our Sprinter - worst comes to worst, it gets laid down.
That's not a "flip side" just different uses. I said wide as well as tall, not just long. Truck is also useful for loose loads, including that I can put stuff (sand/gravel/soil) directly into the bed from my tractor bucket as well. And the form factor does feel better sometimes too imo. Like, just 3 days ago I moved around 1100 lbs of concrete mix for a small job, and even though I could have fit them into a van in principle for loading/unloading and cleaning of all the nasty dust it's nice just to have a truck bed. Security is whatever here, and I don't think weather is actually much of an impact either since you can easily add a basic cover if you want (and then have it out of the way when unneeded). They're useful and at least in the past could be had pretty utilitarian and cheap. Small little things too, like just plain less volume for environmental control in a no-cab or half-cab vs a full or van, always seemed a little easier/faster to heat up or cool down. But this is all really personal, and as they've turned more and more into show vehicles the value has gotten worse for sure.
1. you don't need straps and bungees for the van - ours can take pipework, framing lumber and other "long" stuff up to 16', straight on the floor, fully interior.
2. you don't need the gate down - it handles 4x8' sheet goods with all the doors closed, either vertical or horizontal
3. security concerns are much better
4. weather concerns are much better
5. for some folks, you can have highly effective work space inside the van (granted, I've seen some loose equivalents on custom work trucks)
6. mileage is generally significantly better
From my POV, the two wins of the truck form factor are (a) easy of loading/unloading bulk material (e.g. the van is 100% useless for gravel) (b) tall loads. That said, I don't think I've ever need to move anything that was too tall for our Sprinter - worst comes to worst, it gets laid down.