Whatever happened to smaller Ford Ranger type trucks?
I could be wrong, but I heard it was emission regulations that happened.
As the emission standards became stricter, the truck manufacturers started producing bigger trucks as they had more lax emission requirements.
You’re right. But it’s more that emissions standards didn’t happen.
Cars got them while trucks got them much, much less. So they build more trucks and fewer cars.
They should just have a road tax based on weight and an emissions tax based on emissions. Not emissions per class twice removed just CO2 per mile. All vehicles.
Roads get maintained by the weight tax, emissions tax to fund decarbonisation of the economy.
But instead they’re charging me an extra $100 to renew my tags for my hybrid sedan. If i had a full electric, it would be $200 extra.
Gas vehicles pay that as taxes on gas, hybrid and electric cars put more wear on the roads due to their weight so it’s only fair that owners would pay for road maintenance as well.
It’s partially that, the fact that instead of making the trucks more efficient they made them larger to skirt the regulation, but another factor is the profitability of larger trucks. It doesn’t cost them that much more to make a massive truck vs a reasonable vehicle but the target market for unnecessarily large trucks is willing to pay hand over fist for them and so the manufacturers and distributors make more money per sale by a large margin.
So when you see a large truck, don’t just think “someone who’s compensating” but also think “someone who got fleeced”.
The roads would be safer without massive trucks, no one should be above ridicule.
Just to be clear, small trucks weren’t good on gas either (I would know, I’ve had a bunch of them) and we’re at the point where full sized trucks and mid sized trucks get pretty much the same fuel economy. The shape of the vehicle is bad for fuel economy, it’s that simple…
