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Comment by ajmurmann | Hacker News Reader

Is there a good explanation why pick up trucks are so popular in the US, but no in Europe? Coming from Europe I've always wondered this and only ever have gotten reasons that would be valid in Europe as well. Uses cases of farmers and construction workers should be largely identical. Yet in Europe these get covered by tractors and vans. For farmers I wonder if the larger areas in the US make the difference.

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As I just alluded to in another comment, a lot of it is marketing of a macho image, e.g. commercials in Texas are customized to tell guys how the pickup being marketed is tough enough for Texans. So plenty of people I've known buy them because they associate them as being the most appropriate thing for a man to drive, whether they ever use the truck bed or not.

This sums it all really: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yAuu3xOsorQ

> Is there a good explanation why pick up trucks are so popular in the US, but no in Europe?

Because they are the most versatile vehicle on the road, if you are not constrained artificially by narrow roads and heavily taxed fuel.

Let's remember that it's actually cheap fuel that has its price maintained "artificially", and not the other way round.

More than half the retail price at the pump in much of western Europe is tax. If you take the base price of the fuel in both Europe and the US, exclude taxes, then the price isn't actually all that far apart.

It's got little to do with the width of the road. The Model X is quite popular in Europe, and the difference in width vs the F150 is literally 1 inch.

The biggest reason is probably purchase price. An F150 Raptor (the only model I could find a price for) is $100k in Britain, versus $60k in the US.

You do see quite a few pickups in Europe, especially as commercial vehicles. But the Toyota Hilux, Mitsubishi L200, VW Amarok etc. outnumber the American trucks at least 10:1.

And very few trucks are owned by "regular" people. Much better to get a Land Rover Discovery or a Toyota LandCruiser, and throw the big unwieldy stuff you need to move in a trailer.

(As an aside, we used to have a Chevy Avalanche with the 8.1L Vortec. That was a fun car, I'll agree, but you had to close your eyes while filling up with petrol.)

The ford ranger costs $104.355 in Denmark including taxes. This is not something anyone buys unless they have a need or a fetish.

Then you have pay the yearly $675 green tax and $1.51 per litre of diesel.

I would say that taxes are constraining how many people are buying this type of car.

Edit: more taxes.

I prefer narrow roads which leave space for pedestrians, businesses like cafés and shops, properly walkable cities, etc. And I would like fuel to be even more heavily taxed (or other more progressive schemes for taxing personal car use).

I’d have thought they’re less practical than vans for a lot of tradespeople. If nothing else, the van protects equipment from rain.

Everyone has their own use case, obviously. But remember that a pickup can easily have a canopy, or even just a bed cover. A van cannot take the roof off to haul junk, dirt, gravel, etc.

My point is that a truck is arguably the most versatile, not that it is the best choice for all use cases.

It's cultural, mostly. There are technical or economical reasons both current and historic (Truck Tax, Size of roads, cost of gas...), but mostly I think it's just cultural.

A similar cultural thing made wagons not cool in the US 30 years ago, and they didn't come back (Which is a shame).

Part of it has got to be based on gas prices. I pay under $2 per gallon in Texas. In Europe, you might be paying 4 times that amount.

Before COVID, I regularly paid double that just in California.

There's a big tax benefit to them, if you can swing it. A lot of folks are being... loose with the definition of "business use".

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-to-make-a-tax-saving-d...

Image/status. In the US, pick-ups are macho. A cargo van may be equally practical, if not moreso, but a van isn't manly.

A number of my whitewater paddling friends favor minivans (and larger vans) for trips--in part because they're better for shuttling than SUVs. Personally I've had an SUV for decades because they're a bit better on rough back roads--although there have been 4WD minivans for a while now.

What I don't care for are the SUV designs that have basically recreated the minivan with 3 seat rows and they're really not as good for hauling people as a minivan is.

We are starting to see more of them in the U.K. even though they are impractical on our roads and with our higher fuel prices.

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