If you actually read the article, you'll see that—going by usable length—pickup trucks are generally no longer thing-haulers but people-haulers, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of their form factor.
If you want general hauling space/volume, your best best seems to be a (mini)van.
Making the cab longer isn't to ruin people's nostalgia. It's to deal with the legal requirements for transporting passengers. You're illustrating my point. We shouldn't be outraged when you make something illegal and the vehicle is adapted to deal with that.
Why would we be upset about fewer people getting dead, shouldn't we be happy about bigger cabs if that's the case?
In 1982 the top selling vehicle in the US was the Ford Escort. In 2022 it was the Ford F-150.
People were hauled in the Escort just fine (and probably more comfortably in the rain and winter). The F-150 wasn't adapted to better haul people because changes to safety laws: it was adapted do help profit margins.
I've helped friends haul some of those things as well since they knew my dad had a minivan (Caravan, later Sienna), and would ask if I could (in my late-teens, early-20s) help them out.