I’ve literally transported dishwashers in a Renault Twingo. And the „small car + trailer“ combo will always carry more than a pickup. Pickups are pure lifestyle.

To be fair, the Twingo mk3 even has the front passenger seat fold down. In van mode the interior is huge for a small car.

You live somewhere where things are tiny and close together. That’s lovely but not America. My dishwasher does not fit in your car.

A small car cannot safely transport much of a trailer, and a pickup can tow a much larger trailer.

Something tells me that dishwashers are smaller in areas where the Twingo is sold.

There's no way my piece of shit Samsung dishwasher would fit in your car. It's huge.

In a lot of smaller cars, you can fold down back row.

And if you are ok, with having trunk open, and tied down, you can transport fridges (I used reno clio, that is slightly bigger). Done that myself (not two door wide ones, one door fridge).

That's said I just found out you can hire van for 35EUR 20min away from where I live, so nowdays I just do that.

I looked it up. It does not appear to me it would be possible to fit an American dishwasher in that car in the box, seats folded down or not, based on the internal dimension and hatch width/height or door width/height. It might be possible if you take it out of the box.

It's important to note that American appliances are generally larger than European ones.

I drive a small very useful car almost every day I have moved a ton of stuff in (including a DRESSER) but it's inarguable that trucks simply have greater utility for this sort of thing. And any time I do need to move something...I just use the cheap pickup I bought so I don't even have to worry about it or spend ages trying to squeeze it in.

Most recent purchase: Christmas tree. Yeah, that wouldn't have fit in my car.

Christmas tree? Real ones are usually tied to the top of the car for transport. Artificial ones absolutely fit inside a car with the back seats folded, and possibly just across the back seat. I bought and transported my current artificial tree in my WRX years ago.

An artificial tree that can’t fit in a car would be a big tree.

Which is more convenient?

1. Let the Christmas tree farmer toss a 8’ tree in the back of my truck, tying the base to the anchors behind the cab. Very little overhang with the tailgate down. Drive away. This is what most people do.

2. Spend 15 minutes balancing the the 8’ Christmas tree on the roof of my Honda Fit with substantial overhang, precariously tying it, I guess leaving the windows down in the cold weather and praying the Highway Patrol doesn’t pull me over. This is not what most people do but I’m sure it can be done.

Lots of things “can” be done but people value convenience.

I don’t know where you live but around me I see people carry trees on top of their cars all the time at Christmas. It’s not complex. You put the tree on the car. You open the doors and tie the tree. You get in and close the doors. You don’t drive with the windows down because why would you? And why would highway patrol pull you over? I’ve never even heard of anyone getting pulled over for carrying a tree or anything else.

Is it more convenient in the back of the truck, though? Sure. I didn’t say otherwise.

I will say that buying a giant truck with poor visibility and 2.5x the kill rate of a sedan so that you can haul a tree once a year is nonsense. It’s a shitty tradeoff and a much smaller truck would do exactly the same job. But little trucks don’t sell like giant trucks because people are not actually buying them for their utility.

Do you think suggesting people who do things you don’t like are just not as enlightened and rational as you a productive way to change hearts and minds?

Of course not. Probably more than 99% of online conversations are a complete and utter waste of time. I would assume there is literally nothing anyone could say to you that would make you get rid of your truck.

With that said, you admitted with your first comment that buying these trucks is based on feelings and not rational.

“Consumers buy what they like and feel like they need and can afford. They place an almost absurdly high value on convenience and not having to think about things like "oh I need to move this thing I need to go rent a truck because I only ever need to do this once every two years, making it irrational to buy one."

It’s economically irrational for most people to live in anything but a one bedroom sublet. Why is it trucks that gets your goat?

Because a 7 bedroom McMansion is unlikely to drive over my child in a parking lot or kill my wife in a collision. The dangers of these giant trucks are not hypothetical. It’s documented that they kill drivers of cars at 2.5x the rate of cars.

In terms of pure annoyance, the McMansion is also not using 3 parking spots at the grocery store.

An minivan will transport almost anything a normal person would want to move, while being more practical the other 99% of the time, but of course they have the wrong image.

A number of my whitewater paddling friends really like their minivans. There are still at least a couple of models available but they have largely gone out of fashion.

Personally I have a mid-size SUV but if you regularly need to transport around a lot of people, minivans seem more practical in general than a lot of the big SUVs.

At that point that’s just a truck with a slightly different shape. I don’t see any anti-truck argument that doesn’t apply to mid sized and larger SUVs

The anti truck sentiment is directed largely at the ever-growing full size trucks. SUVs get less hate because the market for the absurdly huge SUVs is much smaller than the market for reasonably sized (by American standards) SUVs.

I don’t think smaller trucks get the same level of hate.

I absolutely use the capacity of my mid-size SUV quite often for a variety of purposes. Don't need anything bigger or the towing capacity of a full-size truck. And, given where I live, renting for a weekend would be very inconvenient. Sure, I could use a smaller hatchback/SUV day to day but I'm not going to own two vehicles at this point (though I used to own a two-seater as well) which some folks would probably also object to.

You pick a reasonable compromise and arguably a full-size truck is overkill for many but a Mazda Miata is probably too small for a lot of people even if it largely works for a lot of day to day stuff.

I own a small/mid-size SUV (and a van) so I’m not judging your car choice, but why would you not be able to rent a truck in Boston? Home Depot, Lowe’s, U-Haul, and more all rent trucks.

I don't live in Boston--about 60 to 90 minutes outside.

So, sure, I could pay for a delivery or rent something from Lowe's if I needed to for a specific purpose but I routinely use my mid-size SUV for weekend trips, transporting a canoe, picking up construction supplies, and the like. I need a vehicle in any case and it makes sense to own a somewhat larger one than I really need day to day to run to the grocery store, especially given that parking isn't an issue and my gas mileage really isn't bad.

If one actually lives in a city (which I don't), renting a vehicle can actually be something of a hassle on a weekend based on what I saw people go through when I was in a ski house after school.

If it’s a regular thing, yeah, renting becomes massively inconvenient because of the frequency. I misunderstood your comment to mean that even a 1-time rental would be extremely inconvenient somehow.

I don't need to transport 8 people around and I can always get mulch or gravel delivered. But, yeah, it's not uncommon for me to want to easily stuff a mid-size SUV's worth of stuff into my vehicle for a weekend or longer trip. I could probably do it with a somewhat smaller vehicle but why? The longer drives are probably when I need to do so anyway.

I did also have a smaller car as well when I did more shorter regular local drives but I really don't do those much any longer other than very local drives to the grocery store or nearby hiking trails.

With sliding doors and different seat configuration. But, sure, just the same thing. But it's fine that you just don't like larger vehicles.

The roof?

Not sure how. The people I know with minivans have roof racks.

A minivan has a roof, which solves a lot of the issues with trucks

Where I live (Vancouver Island) there's been somewhat of a Renaissance of the minivan-as-adventure-vehicle.

Lots of imported Delicas but also a fair few of those Mercedes Sprinter 4x4s.

I wish my minivan was 2 inches higher and all wheel drive. I’m not sure how much I’d want to adventure in my front wheel drive low clearance van.

It’s a great vehicle for most practical cases, though it is not very fuel efficient.

A lot of standard SUVs don't have particularly great ground clearance relative to Jeep Wranglers and the like. Though that doesn't really matter unless you're going off-road in Death Valley and the like. The current Toyota Sienna (which has improved a lot) is better than my Honda Passport in terms on gas mileage.

Yeah. I don’t really need or want high ground clearance. But I would like enough that parking at a curb doesn’t risk dragging the front bumper. My van (Odyssey) is low enough that I’ve scraped on a few unexpectedly tall curbs and I would be pretty uncomfortable with anything resembling off-road. I wouldn’t drive my van anywhere I wouldn’t drive a Civic.

> The current Toyota Sienna … gas mileage.

Better mileage and optional all wheel drive were the only things I preferred about the Sienna. But while I don’t like the mileage the Odyssey gets, I also don’t actually drive far very often so it doesn’t matter much. I put less than 10k miles on my car every year.

I was actually surprised when I looked at what the current Siennas get. I have a friend with a, now, quite old Sienna who was really surprised at how high the mileage of my relatively new Honda Passport was. And the current hybrid Sienna is a fair bit better.