What is a truck? A question a child might ask, yet not a childish question. You’d think the answer would be so obvious that you wouldn’t even need to ask, it’d be like that famous quote from that judge who makes legal decisions based on whether or not he gets erections: you know it when you see it. But I’m not sure the status of truckitude is all that simple. I realized this a few days ago when discussions in the comments of our post about the refreshed Hyundai Santa Cruz truck got downright existential, as people wondered exactly what a truck is. I can’t stand by and let people wallow in confusion; I’m the sort that will turn on the headlights rather than curse your darkness, so let’s see what we can do to solve this problem. Let’s get to the essence of just what is a truck.
You may recall the time I ushered in an era of peace and prosperity to the Peoples of Earth by defining the Three Rules of Wagonhood, which defined what a station wagon is, finally, ending centuries of conflicts all over the world. I’m pretty sure the UN gave me some sort of medal or fruit basket or possibly cookie bouquet for this achievement, but don’t check on that. I also defined what makes a van, as well. So I’m absolutely qualified to undertake this sort of important taxonomical challenge.
I’ve been giving the matter of what defines a truck a lot of thought lately, and trying to really get to the core of the concept. I think there’s a lot of red herring paths one can go down; for example, David was talking about a vehicle being built as a body-on-frame as a criterion for truck-itude, but I don’t think that’s the case, because unibody vehicles like the Honda Ridgeline or the Volkswagen Pickup are definitely considered “trucks.” And I’d even consider three-wheeled vehicles like a Piaggio Ape to be a truck. I don’t think the essence of what makes a truck can be found in any technical criteria or construction approach; I think it’s something different.
I think it’s about intent.
I think when it comes to what makes a truck, we have to consider why the vehicle exists. What’s the fundamental goal of a truck? To understand this, we can look at the simplest possible vehicle that still gets classified as a “truck”: a hand truck.
And what’s the point of a hand truck? It’s a human-powered vehicle designed to move stuff. And that stuff is the key. Fundamentally, for something to be a truck, at its core it must be a vehicle whose primary raison d’etre is the moving of stuff as opposed to people. Trucks move cargo, or at least were designed for that purpose.
So, with this fundamental core mission in mind, I think we can define what a truck is like this:
A truck is a vehicle where the design of the body is defined by a means to haul cargo instead of people.
Nothing else really matters; a truck can be electric or gasoline or even steam-powered. Hell, the very first automobile in the world, the 1769 Cugnot Steam Drag, was a machine designed primarily to haul artillery:
The first car ever made was a truck.
The mechanics don’t matter here, the method of construction doesn’t matter, but the body design does. The defining trait of the body design should be some way of hauling cargo, like a pickup truck’s bed, or a box truck’s box, or a flatbed truck’s flat, um, bed, or the whole rear cargo area of a van, because, yes, vans are a subset of truck.
With this in mind, the category of truck becomes very broad, but all members of the set of trucks still follow that one golden truck rule: they all have a design that is focused on the hauling of stuff. All of these are trucks:
As you can see, size, design, how it’s built, what sort of stuff it’s hauling, none of that matters. All that matters is that intent to haul stuff. And the stuff has to be the priority; an SUV can hold a lot of stuff, but it’s just the stuff that the people inside want with them – the people are still the focus. Same with buses. A bus isn’t a truck, because a bus is for hauling lots of people, and I think we feel this inherently. There’s a big difference in tone if someone yells “everyone get on the bus” as opposed to “everyone get in the truck.” One is going to take you to a museum or park, the other could be dumping you out in some war zone or some forsaken patch of jungle or something.
If you’re still not with me, consider this: the government seems to agree with this concept. The infamous Chicken Tax defines a commercial vehicle, or truck as something not designed to carry people (beyond the driver and one passenger). That’s why the Subaru Brat had those ridiculous seats in the bed, so it could be considered a “passenger car.”
It’s all ridiculous, of course, but so is the whole Chicken Tax. But that tax says a truck is something designed to move stuff, not people.
The focus on cargo over people doesn’t even have to have been baked in from the start; a vehicle converted to cargo use can become a truck. Consider cars turned into vans, like what GM is referring to in this old Vega ad that shows three cars and one “panel truck”:
See what I’m getting at? The intent of the car was changed from focusing on people to focusing on cargo, and the design was modified accordingly, The Fiat Panda van is another example:
Fiat changed the use case of their little hatchback, removed some glass, added that squared-off replacement for the hatch, and boom, the Panda is now a truck, with as valid a claim to truckitude as any farm-use F-150.
Before any of these, there were also the “business coupes” of the 1930s and 1940s, some of which could be converted into actual pick-up-like vehicles:
These were cars made for traveling salesmen who needed to carry around a lot of product. They looked like a normal coupé from the outside, but had an interior configuration more like a small truck, and some, like the Coupe Pick-Up seen up there, even shoved a whole truck bed into the trunk as well. They’re trucks because they were always intended to haul stuff as their defining trait.
There are, of course, some interesting gray areas here. Take the Chilean-market Citroën Citroneta:
This was a Citroën 2CV modified for the needs of the Chilean market, which included using the car to do truck-like hauling, sometimes. There was a lid for the rear bed, as seen above, but plenty of Citronetas had no lid, just an open, small truck bed, too:
So, are these cars or trucks? Is that a trunk or a bed? Is the lid a trunk lid or a tonneau cover? I think we can define some of these: a tonneau cover is a truck bed cover that is not an inherent part of the vehicle’s design. If your vehicle can look “finished” without any lid over the cargo area, then it’s not a trunk lid, it’s a tonneau cover over a truck bed. A trunk lid is an inherent, un-removable part of a car’s cohesive design. So, in that context, I think the Citroneta has a truck bed, not a trunk, and its lid is a tonneau cover, not a trunk lid.
But is the purpose of a Citroneta to haul people or cargo? I think perhaps people, more so. And it’s derived from a design that was a passenger car design, so I’m not thinking it’s a truck.
But what about a luxurious crew-cab pickup truck?
A pickup like that Ford F-150 Lightning up there is very likely going to be primarily used to move people around. It’s luxurious and expensive and the size of the area for people commands as much or more space on that wheelbase as the area for cargo. So is it a still truck?
I say yes, because the basic design is still from a vehicle that has cargo hauling as its defining body trait: an F-150 truck. Even if it never gets used for this purpose, it’s still a truck.
Can a truck willingly abdicate its status as a truck? This is a tricky one.
Would a Lincoln Blackwood, which is basically a Lincoln-badged, luxurious F-150, still be a truck, even if it seems like Lincoln wanted to separate itself from the concept of a truck? I mean, look at the ads Lincoln ran:
The only thing in that huge bed was a briefcase, which is even ejected at the end, and all the dude does is drive fast and do some weird telekinesis shit with a fish. You don’t need a truck for that. They never showed these hauling lumber or mulch, and that bed was far too nice to comfortably haul that kind of thing, anyway. So is it still a truck?
Same goes for those Freightliner-based SUVs; the Freightliner was designed as a big rig tractor, hauling trailers, but had an SUV body fitted to it, changing its purpose and intent, in sort of the opposite way that the Fiat Panda got turned into a truck. So if a non-truck can be converted with intent and some body modifications, why can’t it go the other way, too?
I’m going to stand by my truck definition, but I’m willing to listen. In the comments, I’d love to know what you think – is this a valid definition of a truck? Am I missing any key criteria? If you think it’s too broad, I’d love to know why, and I’d love to know how much of what we consider truckishness are based on more irrational, emotional concepts?
This is fascinating stuff, and we’re doing important work here. So let’s talk about what makes a truck.
Up until the late 1980s, the most identifiable feature of a pickup truck was the steel bumper on the back. Those bumpers had the dealer’s name etched into it. Honestly, those bumpers look way more cooler than what passes for bumpers today.
So we start with a big MAN diesel dump truck, which is obviously a truck by any definition. Then we remove the dump body and build and install a camper body. We now have a vehicle that is designed to move people. This is no longer a truck? I don’t think so.
Also! 70-series Land Cruisers. A 70 pickup is a truck but a 70 troop carrier is not?
One that’s bugging me is the Chevy SSR. I suppose it’s an abdicated ex-truck, but I can’t help but see it as a truck.
Alternatively, certain generations of Corvette were really built more to haul golf clubs than people, would they be trucks?
Lots in the comments of course for this topic.. always fun to see the differing opinions.
At least it’s not the ‘trucks are evil, too big, terrible vehicles and because I think everyone could get by with a small car and if you disagree than you’re a jerk’ topic you see other places.
Sure maverick & ridgeline types are ‘trucks’ that can suit many people.
My opinion is a truck is BOF, passenger compartment separated from bed, solid axle. From a basic S-10 to the typical 4 door short bed we see everywhere.
The BOF and cargo area separated from the passenger area is key. I use mine for hauling brick, concrete and lumber for my side business and also hauling kayaks and my quad for enjoyment. But with the tonneau cover, I use it as a gigantic trunk.
Sprayed out the bedliner, packed up the family and all of our junk and drove it down to Florida for spring break with a safe, dry, locking cover. It’s a great compromise.
sorry for the long post! Despite having other vehicles over the years, I’ve always had a truck, and they are great!
So a Crown Vic with the trunk lid removed has more claim to be a truck than a Maverick, despite the Maverick’s ability to do the things you’ve identified as “truck stuff” better (albeit, less capably than an F-150).
In my opinion no, but Crown Vics are cool. Crown Vic – El Ranchero – style could be a parts runner for that Cleetus McFarland youtuber dude who has celebs race Crown Vics down in Florida
So what’s your amended definition, to avoid classifying a Vic missing a body part as more truck than a Maverick?
If Pops Racer can drive a 1769 Cugnot Steam Drag.
Who are we to argue?
After reading all the comments to this point, I’m beginning to think this is more a philosophical question than automotive.
And, along those lines, I’m amused by the fact that I a) was really was happy to get a definition of a shooting brake, b) disliked the strict wagon definition because it excludes the Pinto van-back with a porthole (I mean, c’mon: that is clearly a low-buck shaggin’ wagon!), and c) am uncomfortable that many truck definitions suggested here are exclusionary even when people are using their vehicle to do truckish things.
I can’t even say ‘I know a truck when I see one’: if you have 500lbs of mulch on a tarp in the back of your Sienna, all I see is a minivan though you are definitely doing a truckish thing in my book
I can agree with the “truckish things” sentiment; my wagon has hauled a lot in its life. But when I loaded it down and the rear was dragging, I knew I was cheating Torch’s Truck Commandments. I think being a truck requires some element of design & capacity for carrying loads. Maybe that’s steel girders or maybe it’s >9 people, but that definitely sets a car apart from a truck. Ten people stuffed in a Honda Civic doesn’t make it a truck because the vehicle wasn’t designed with the intent to carry that load. The Lincoln Blackwood is really nice, but the frame could conceivable haul a ton (?), so it’s still a truck.
Ezra Dyer tried to define this once. I recall some of his criteria:
If it has an open cargo bed, it’s a truck.
If it has a trim level named after a place in Wyoming, it’s a truck.
I think if it has a bed or can be purchased as a cab/chassis it is a truck regardless of unibody, body on frame etc. Unibody SUVs are not trucks. However if it is a body on frame SUV, it can also be called a truck.
I want to address the commenters that say that a vehicle has to have a full, self-supporting frame in order to qualify as a “truck”. Are you saying that a 1988 Chevrolet S-10 is a truck, but a 1988 Jeep Comanche is not a truck? I mean… it sure looks like a truck to me, but it doesn’t have a standalone frame, so…?
As a person that owns a Jeep Comanche, I purchased it to use it as a truck, and it’s a far better truck than most others I’ve driven thanks to its Uni-frame design.
What about the uniframe makes it better than most other trucks? As another Comanche owner, I’m very interested in what advantages you’re attributing to the frame design.
I was surprised to find out that pretty much all kei trucks have an exact copy of the Comanche system, where the cab is unibody but the bed is removable and sits on a separate ish frame.
But yeah, I think chassis load paths are quite irrelevant to whether it’s a truck or not.
So the space shuttle was a truck right?
Kaiser/Frazier Vagabond. Studebaker Wagoneer. GMC Envoy. Discuss.
Envoy XUV only becomes a truck when the roof slider breaks in the open position. Before that point, it is a SUV. Same logic should apply to the Studebaker.
A truck is any vehicle which you can use to bring home a grandfather clock that is standing upright.
So, anything with a sunroof?
Convertibles are great for hauling big long objects.
Convertibles have seats in the way, you need a flat floor to do it safely.
You would think, but no! Grandfather clocks need a steady surface.
Welp, I was waaay off the first read through of that one.
Probably need Viagra to get a Grandfather c(l)ock to stand up.
(someone beat me to mentioning a convertible)
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1VHnHcKBhbCHqEH5tmTP1Wp5mbgdq4ptGwvXy_N0wxZ9j6Ur5ldBlKh-4bMykpy9yKw_mxYWNGA0nieMdoKQrwf7_xGPBT7dRtslnBapM0411qtyRZljDBNGOZCDD3_hRiG-kC7HlWrc/s200/2cv-clock.png
Isn’t that a still from the uk version of antiques roadshow?
A 2CV is a truck, then.
Something that carries a 4×8 sheet good with gate/door closed a van is a truck if it can do that.
This is a genuinely good rule of thumb but with edge cases. Lots of pickups have 5-6 foot beds and I’d still call those trucks
I love this discussion.
I always call my expedition a truck but it’s more out of habit. The vin sticker says “mpv.” But it is identical on the interior from the front seat to the windshield, shares most of a frame, front suspension and drivetrain with an f150 and I use it to carry large amounts of cargo and my enormous family.
Truck is also 2 less syllables than “SUV”, so there’s that. But I wouldn’t call my old telluride a truck.
IMO, to be a truck it has to be compromised in some passenger ergonomics / driver engagement way to serve a specific purpose. If I had an infinite fleet to chose from each time I took a trip, you can basically guarantee I’d be picking a sports car or luxury sedan 99% of the time, however I did own a GMT-800 that I hated driving, but respected a lot for how good it was at that 1% of my needs. That said, I think I’d enjoy driving a Brat or a Santa Cruz, possibly a Maverick too much to call it a truck, and they kind of suck at the whole trucking stuff around thing. Minivans are also a gray area… No joke a condo near me was going through a gut-rehab and the workers would always show up with their Tundras and F250’s, struggle to parallel park, but haul all of their supplies in a Toyota Sienna as it is the only thing that can fit 4/8 sheets of plywood/drywall.
This is so good, now I gotta go back read the van one and the wagon one. I would recommend you not try to define a “ute” unless you want to make an enemy out of a longtime ally on the other side of the world.
Anything that can carry 3 kegs upright is a truck.
I once knew a barmaid in Heidelberg … never mind.
– Great Gam Gam: You two are the rightful heirs to the Von Wolfhausen Brewery. You should have the balls to take back what is yours!
– Steve “Fink” Finklestein: Wow! You even talk like a whore!
– Great Gam Gam: We are all whores in some ways.
OMG, a “Beerfest” reference!
Top 5 comedy of all-time.
100% Yup.
There are always grey zones, but that’s okay.
But a good definition minimizes gray zones, and I think gray zones can be almost completely eliminated in the Truck vs Not-Truck question.
I don’t like Torch’s definition in part because most pickups on the road are a part of his gray zone. It’s quite bad at conclusively classifying vehicles.
Is the PT Cruiser a passenger car or a truck? IIRC the PT Cruiser was technically a truck by EPA standards. Something to do with having a flat loading floor in the back and the rear seats being removable.
Definitely a passenger car, almost every part of its design is clearly optimizing for the purpose of carrying people and normal amounts of people’s stuff.
Illinois seems to think my IS-300 wagon is a utility vehicle for what it’s worth… It may be down to the rear seats and front passenger seat folding flat allowing me to carry either 10 or 12 foot sticks of lumber + a passenger.
I think you’re just lucky to have a SportCross, they are so great.
I love it, but I think this summer is when it’s finally going under the knife… I bought it as a project car + something I can camp in and have had a 6-speed manual, a second 2JZ I can do dumb things to and not feel bad when something breaks, and an LSD sitting and waiting for a good excuse of “well, while you’re in there…” for 2 years now. I’m of the mindset of don’t fix it until it’s broken but I’m starting to get impatient.
Thumbs up and good luck with the project.
Yeah, buying a Toyota product and waiting until it breaks is almost always going to extend the timeline.
“Truck” is an idea and/or activity, not any one type of vehicle. If I use a VW Beetle to haul topsoil, I am “trucking.” (I’m also stupid, but that’s another discussion.)
The Model T – designed as a motor carriage for people – was quickly pressed into service to truck (activity) cargo and adapted by many of its owners to enhance this capability. When Henry Ford saw this, he realized a moneymaking opportunity by offering customers a choice of carriage or truck on the same platform with, initially, no other distinctions between the two.
Over time, more platform enhancements for either carriage or truck duty created a divergence in design to emphasize one or the other of the capabilities. This is where Jason’s “intent” argument begins to take hold.
What’s interesting, though, is that what we commonly refer to as a pickup truck has always had a foot in both worlds (to varying degrees) as the most “civilized” version of truck. There have been pickups with more carriage (car) DNA (Ranchero, El Camino, Rabbit Pickup, Rampage to use American examples) in their design and pickups with more heavy work truck DNA (F350, Ram 3500, Sierra HD). They’re all trucks, they just don’t all do the same things equally well.
Interestingly, with the emergence of the pickup as a predominant vehicle with US buyers, and the gentrification of pickup cabins and amenities, the lines between carriage and truck are more blurred now than ever.
Arguing over whether something is or isn’t a truck is, therefore, pointless and as useless as arguing over which religion is correct. If it’s used for trucking, it is, in those instances, a truck. In the case of a VW Beetle, a bad one, but a truck none-the-less.
Are some trucks better than others? Yes, and “better” depends entirely upon what you want it for as to which is best.
So if your neighbor sees a Santa Cruz and thinks truck, they’re correct. If you don’t see a truck until an F150 drives by, well then, you’re correct, too. The discriminating factors are the use cases embedded in your own perceived needs and desires.
All of this is a long winded way of saying that a truck, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. And with that, I’ll depart with the immortal words of R. Crumb:
“Keep on truckin’.”
As I pondered the definition of “truck”, one I came up with was, “anything which carried anything is a truck”, which seems to be your definition too.
I think this definition is correct, but also worthless, because it doesn’t let you distinguish anything.
I think you can, but the criteria for that distinction is personal to each of us. You can’t generalize with this definition, though, which apparently makes a lot of people uncomfortable, probably because our brains like patterns which makes it easier and less stressful when it comes to quantification.
I certainly like distinguishing. That’s the whole point of using different words for cars and trucks; they’re different things which need to have a well defined distinction.
Well sure, and generally speaking most people will think cargo when they hear truck and people hauling when they hear car. But, I think we’re veering more into the area of linguistics now than vehicles.
If we can’t agree, generally speaking, on what is a car versus what is a truck (and judging from comments in this thread, there is not a consensus), then there is no guarantee that any two people are referring to the same thing. If you get a Ford salesperson who doesn’t think unibody vehicles are trucks, he/she won’t show you a Maverick when you say you want a truck, even though appearance-wise, at the least, the Maverick looks the part. But, if you say you’re looking for something economical, easy to park and drive in traffic, able to convey a small family, and has an open bed for light hauling, the first thing the salesperson will think of is the Maverick. Of course, if they are more liberal in their definition for truck, then their first question for you will be what do you want to do with it, and thereafter they’ll lead you to either the Maverick or F150 aisle. Chances are, though, you’ll know what you want before you arrive at the dealer.
I agree, from the comments in this thread, there is no consensus. But that’s kind of the point of this article, and this discussion.
I’m glad you brought up the Beetle because I can make a case that it was in fact a pretty good truck with a slight modification. In the early 80’s my grandfather bought a rough looking Beetle for his ranch. As a cattle rancher, he already owned a solid pickup truck but I guess he got a deal on it since it was modified. Someone had cut the top off behind the front seats. He would load up two or three 50lb sacks of feed in the backseat. My oldest brother got the front passenger seat and my other brother and I got to ride on the feed sacks. My grandpa would crawl that Beetle-truck up some fairly rocky, semi-steep roads to find and feed the cows. I have a picture of it somewhere. A quick image search does not turn up anything like it that I could link.
The F150 4 door is not a truck.
It’s just a super-sized LTD without a trunklid.
Couldn’t agree more, with the addition that a two door f150 like mine is still just an LTD with a bed.
Yet it is a truck. I used mine to move last year; fold up the rear seat and fill the bed and it carries an impressive amount of crap. Last week I moved 3 box worth of scaffolding. Truck.
Yeah, it can carry things, but any car can carry things. For it to be a truck it needs to be considerably more capable of carrying things than a car.
You can haul a lot in your short bed f150, but is is considerably more than non-truck cars, like a big wagon or SUV?
Yup. Cars don’t normally have anywhere near the same payload ratings trucks have. The car will be limited by the volume of the interior. I think a key part of “truck” is to be less dimensionally constrained than a car/SUV. Moving big plants? Sheets of plywood and 2 bys? Washer and dryer? Truck. We’ve had 2 Suburbans — excellent vehicles — but there’s times you just need an open bed.
An open bed is nice, but I’ve never had to load anything in my f150 a whole lot taller than my camper shell. Maybe only short bed losers have to stack stuff that tall????. Anyways, I really don’t think my f150 is capable of hauling that much more stuff than my minivan or Expedition, both of which have seen plenty of lumber, furniture, appliances, ect. And both of those have a payload rating in line with the f150, aka way more than you’ll ever need stuffing plants and washers and dryers in there.
Well, you can make the argument that those are trucks too! But for me the open bed is key, or we’d have bought another Suburban. I agree that the bed length of the Super Crews is seriously annoying though.
My Dad folded down the back seat and carried firewood in the back of the Chevy II wagon up deeply-rutted dirt roads to our place outside Grass Valley when I was a kid.
I carried a lemon tree in a large terra cotta pot, and later an antique dresser, in the back seat of my Mercedes-Benz convertible.
Does that make them Trucks?
No, but it’s cool to that you did. I once carried a large cat tree in a t-top camaro with the panel pulled. I guess you could argue that truck = possible vertical space with no seat in the way.
To become a truck: First you must be like a rock. You must be built tough, with guts and glory. Born from the invincible. But ultimately, to be a truck you must have a slogan preferably masculine, about how god damn tough a truck you are.
Torch, I think you nailed it. I’m with you 100%.
Boy, that’s kind of boring. Not a very fun argument, but uhhh … yeah.
I really like that Fiat Panda van. Just the thing for doing errands and picking up potting soil.
Despite its leather seats and power windows, my F150 is definitely a truck since it has an 8′ bed and regularly hauls 8′ long stuff
I’m not sure where trucks begin and everything else ends, but after moving to rural South Dakota, I was given some advice on trucks by people who either had farms or ran hobby farms on top of their regular jobs.
It wasn’t so much the difference between a car and a truck as much as it was how you described your truck. A “truck” is something that does farm work, like haul bales or tow trailers or wrangle cattle or whatever needs to be done. A “pickup,” on the other hand, was just something you ran errands in or used as a daily driver without ever engaging in actual work with it. Thus, the term “pickup truck” is (somehow) an oxymoron.
This probably doesn’t clear anything up.