The pickup truck is pretty much the default car for millions of Americans. Pickup trucks are work vehicles, family cars, luxury cars, hot rods, tuners, and so much more. Today’s trucks can pull down mountains and still get 20 mpg. But you know what sucks? How high modern truck bed heights are!
Every time I test a truck, I try to see how easily I could get a box into the bed. Most of the time, bedsides come pretty darn close to my shoulders while the floor can be more or less stomach level. It’s not great for using a truck as a truck. Who wants to lift a generator or a motorcycle so high off of the ground? Today, David wrote about going car-spotting and what was really cool was seeing old trucks with low bed heights. A. Barth said it best:
…mini trucks still abound, and are often used for hard labor…
Three words, my friend: Low. Load. Height.
I shall continue to beat that LLH drum until manufacturers get back to sensible bed heights or until I find a decent Mazda B-series.
Technically, today’s top COTD nomination goes to a comment responding to Jason’s Cold Start about an imaginary Ford V10 van-truck that would have been the worst possible competitor to the Dodge Viper. Isis asks:
Am I the only person who had to google “onanism”?
I don’t hate manual transmissions kept the bit going:
Beats me.
Yeah, I’m not even sure what I would have used for a COTD topshot for that one! Also, I love that this is becoming a thing. Data:
Body roll must have been awful.
StillNotATony:
Needs some stiff gummipuffers.
There we go! Have a great evening, everyone.
(Topshot: Gates Toyota (vehicle sold, sorry guys.))
FWIW, my brother-in-law is in a chair and relied on an ancient S-10 extended cab (the one with the suicide back doors) to get around for many years. The low seat height made transfers easy and it was easy to stash his chair. His current ride is a Transit Connect, and with that gone from the US market, there really are no replacement options for this admittedly limited market.