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Comment by matwood | Hacker News Reader

> The bed was not large enough to readily hold full sheets of plywood

Many trucks are sold as not much more than vehicles to haul around some plants. But, what I would consider 'real' trucks tend to have 8' beds. My old Toyota Tundra was great at towing, had an 8' bed and was generally an all around great vehicle. It was long, but it was meant to be.

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Eh, depends on your use case. I've got an F250 that I use for towing, and we specifically chose a standard bed rather than a long bed when we got it - and that's after having an 8' bed on our previous truck. The long bed is certainly nice sometimes (and was great for camping in!), but it's also pretty annoying whenever you're not actually using the bed length, which ends up being most of the time.

I haul plywood all the time, though; the shorter bed isn't really a problem. either you slide it in at an angle or you put the tailgate down and put it in that way with a strap.

There are two kinds of trucks. There are trucks that people buy for their capabilities, and there are trucks that people buy because driving a truck is part of their personality. The latter is far more popular, so your average truck ends up not being very good at doing truck things because it doesn’t have to be.

This is a lazy stereotype of people. But there’s a huge number of truck owners that only need a truck once a month, so they buy a truck. I’m one of these people and actively resisted buying a truck for years and finally caved in. I think it’s easy for folks, perhaps like you, to scoff and say that’s a minor inconvenience but it really isn’t. And sometimes it’s one of those things you can’t plan, or you go 6 months without using but then you have something come up where you use it daily for a week or two.

Did you buy a practical truck, or did you buy an SUV with a uselessly tiny bed tacked on? If the latter, then I wonder why you'd do that if you actually need a truck on a monthly basis. If the former, then you're not in the category I'm scoffing at.

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