Eventually, we always fall into this sort of conversation, especially living in Colorado. “ That’s not a truck, this is a truck!
People have different criteria for what makes the truck a truck. Some people think it’s because of the bed in the back of the truck, others believe a truck needs to share parts with other trucks to make it a truck. Others will still adamantly say that a truck means “body on frame.”
You might ask “what if it has a solid rear axle, but doesn’t have that much in the way of ground clearance?” “Can a truck have independent suspension on all four corners? Does a truck need to have a bed to be called a truck?
Disregarding the wording, we can all agree that this is a pretty contentious question to ask.
Utility
“ How are you gonna put a dirtbike in a truck bed if you don’t have one to begin with?” A coworker asked me last week, in reference to me calling my Sequoia a truck instead of what it really should be, an “SUV”. “ are you going to haul a quart of lumber in that mom-mobile?“
Damn. That hurts. All the way down to my core. I had no idea that I was driving around a tundra-based SUV that was a piece of trash and in no way could I call it a truck. :/
“ Yeah, but it shares almost all the parts you can get with the Toyota Tundra which is, in fact, a truck!“I said. However, I then started thinking:
“What does a truck really mean?”
Is the truck really just a designation the people give to their cars to make them seem cooler? Is a Subaru Baja with a bed that can’t really carry a dirtbike or a cord of lumber, or a bunch of rocks is that considered a truck?
To help answer this question, I turned to science.
Truck Definition
Webster’s says:
Truck, Noun 1. “1. a large, heavy motor vehicle used for transporting goods, materials, or troops.”
“A wheeled vehicle for moving heavy articles: such as. a: a strong horse-drawn or automotive vehicle (such as a pickup) for hauling. b: an automotive vehicle with a short chassis equipped with a swivel for attaching a trailer and used especially for the highway hauling of freight.”
So, a truck is definitely meant for utility, which we all probably knew at this point. I guess to that end, we may have to find out what “heavy” means in this definition. Does that mean goods that are too heavy to transport in a normal passenger car? If that’s the case, then a truck would probably start with a standard pickup truck like a Ford F-150, and then only go stronger than that all the way to semi-trucks!
The only thing is this definition doesn’t specify how the hauling must be done. Does it need to be in the pickup truck bed? If so, then that rules out pretty much every heavy SUV like the Toyota Land Cruiser, Mercedes Benz G Wagon, Ford Excursion, Isuzu Trooper, Mitsubishi Montero, Toyota Sequoia :( and even trucks like the Chevy Tahoe!
If we’re talking about towing, or the “hauling of goods”, then all of the above SUV’s would be venerable TRUCK STATUS candidates, no? They all have a +8000lb towing capacity, what more than that do you need?
Perhaps I’ve just answered my own question. If you are hauling goods, you can use both a Pickup truck and an SUV. They are both “trucks” by definition,
…and so is your mom’s Honda Accord with a trailer hitch.
Cheers,
Al