Dang, if only someone made an everyday car with a soft weather proof enclosed cargo area, possibly you could have the tailgate open up and away as well so it's not in the way. I would think Americans would love to have something more practical than a work vehicle
Sure, I could buy a dedicated more efficient car for the rare days when there is zero risk of rain and I don't need to haul anything larger.
After more than 1cm of rain, the last 500m of the steep dirt road up to my off-grid house in the mountains is completely impassable without 4wd. And I, or my family-in-law, regularly haul large trees, construction equipment, several 100kg of fertilizer, etc. in the truck bed.
Buying a single vehicle, a pre-owned 4wd Ford Ranger made the most economic sense.
> But who knows maybe it’s already full of stuff under there
This is why I'm excited for REO.
I live in a pretty dense city and don't have much storage space in my residence. On the weekends I'm clearing and developing a lot a couple of hours away. My vehicle doubles as storage for all the stuff I need for that and don't want to leave unattended (saws, tools, winch, etc).
I used a Forester for the first two years, which was cramped but doable. The bigger issue was messes. Oil has a way of getting everywhere. I also had one gas spill from a faulty saw gas cap which was both dangerous and a huge PITA to clean up. I also got to a phase where the difference between awd and 4x4 matters, and where I was yanking milled planks around which didn't feel safe doing with the forester.
I switched to a truck after a couple of years and went small. The box is completely full between tools, saws, gas, winch, ropes, etc. When I do groceries I can usually fit some of the "hard" bags back there (cans, bottles) but the rest has to go up front.
A REO would be great for my use-case. The price is low enough that for the price of a new Tacoma or F-150 I could (get close enough to) buying both a REO and a used beater 3/4 ton at the property, which is a better fit for the things I need a big truck for anyways. And I wouldn't be driving a dumb big truck around a very cramped city.
For now I'm stuck with a big truck in the city because owning more than one personal vehicle in this town is insanity.
Maybe in the past, but the size thing isn't really true of the modern line-up. Relative to eg a base Tacoma or especially a Maverick, The Ford Transit has about the same wheel base, is slightly heavier, has worse visibility (for me at least), has a larger displacement engine, and is on a pragmatic level more difficult to maneuver and park. They also have far fewer creature comforts, which wouldn't be a huge deal if they didn't MSRP at $10K MORE than a base midsized truck!
Vans also don't have 4x4, have much lower ground clearance, no good mechanism for transporting longer stuff, and you can't hose them out nearly as easily as a truck bed. The main thing that those vans are built for is just lots of weight in the van. Great fits for some use-cases, but not mine.
And, again, they're just seriously expensive for what they are because of all the commercial applications.
I did also consider an old minivan or a used van from previous generations when they made the smaller transits. Again, 4x4/awd isn't really super optional in these parts, so pickins were slim.
A friend with a RAM 1500 truck (a brute of a machine) bought a Harley in a neighboring state, I kept him company during the 8h ordeal. He rented a trailer because the bike was too heavy to hoist on the bed. Hillarious.
It's just a style thing, folks, however silly. Why do Texans wear cowboy hats and boots?
FWIW, transporting (even large) bikes in the bed of a truck is doable and normal. The typical way to do this isn't with a hoist. You just ride or walk it up a ramp and tie it down.
ofc a Forester or RAV4 with a trailer is a far superior solution, especially for interstate driving where the trailer is less of an annoyance.
Nope, sign of (relative) poverty. Big trucks are expensive, and having one that has obviously never seen so much as a 2x4 is very effective class signaling. The people who actually need trucks to work with buy the cheapest option that gets the job done and wring every last dollar back out of it.
So true! My Ram 1500 was purchased to pull our travel trailer. It has the tow package and is factory raised up some. I'm kind of old, so I keep a three-step ladder in the bed so I can easily climb into it.
Because of the poor gas mileage, I always wonder at why people drive these gas guzzlers as their main transport. But each to his own. (BTW, some claim safety, but it's probably fashion.)
Yes, the RAM Rampage is comparable to a Ford Maverick which is a unibody vehicle with a truck bed.
The massive truck they likely meant would be a RAM 3500 HD super crew cab full size bed Cummins diesel dually rear axle with a vertical dual stainless steel smokestack exhaust kit for good measure. Which is essentially the largest truck you can get with a pickup bed from RAM, GM, or Ford; and they go for over $100,000 with options.
There are even larger monstrosities with pickup beds built on top of 550/5500/Class 5 truck chassis which are basically a Canyonero from He Simpsons in real life: https://www.elevationoffgrid.com/
My favorite derogatory term for a vehicle type is ‘hausfrauenpanzer’ which means ‘housewife tank’ in German, which is used for a large SUV in Germany, lol.
It's honestly not that many. That's a very expensive truck for a daily driver. Most likely they have a large Airstream camper, horse trailer, or 5th wheel trailer or similar that they pull with it.
Sure, some people just like a big diesel truck for ego reasons. But the cost of them limits most people's ability to endulge that.
I grew up in a suburb of Detroit, and when I went back to visit the family home a few years ago, every street was parked up on both sides with giant vehicles. It was a sight to behold.
They weren't all the most expensive trucks, and many were noticeably older. Things in our town went up and down with the cycle of the car industry.
That’s what one would expect, but in some parts of the US it’s not uncommon to see dilapidated houses with a shiny tricked out F-150 that’s never worked a day in its life sitting out in the parking lot…
I think for some it’s an identity thing more than anything else.
> But the cost of them limits most people's ability to endulge that.
Sounds like you’ve never been to the US. Thanks to cheap credit, every hillbilly and redneck has one of these. Which feels like about 60% of the population sometimes.
I have lived in the US my entire life. And yes pickup trucks are part of the "country" or "rural" identity to some extent but most people who live in rural areas actually use their trucks as trucks frequently. They pull trailers, or use them to haul furniture, appliances, building materials, trash... all the stuff that has delivery services in the city but you have to do for yourself if you live in the country.
I can't identify with this. You see these trucks everywhere. There are far more of them than there's any reason for - other than the whole weird only-in-America "light truck" regulations that relax emissions requirements for these trucks. Basically, a big reason we see so many of them is that the US simply refuses to take global warming seriously, instead basically saying "we're going to stick it to the planet as hard as we can, damn the consequences."
And when I said hillbillies and rednecks, I'm not talking about the actual people using their trucks for what they're supposed to be used for. I'm talking about the pavement princesses which wouldn't actually haul anything in their trucks because it would scratch the beds. They have the hillbilly redneck mindset without doing the work that justifies it. The truck is an emotional support vehicle for them, or a gender affirming vehicle. And there's no world in which you can honestly say "there aren't that many" of those in the US.
4 trips a year picking up a heavy excavator or tractor so you dont have to pay a tradesman a gazillion dollars and it pays for itself. "But just pay someone to haul it or rent a truck" lmao good fucking luck down my dirt roads
And when they pick up groceries they load everything onto the floor of the back seat because the bed is so high up you’d need a step ladder to use it
I think the more important reasons are to prevent the groceries from sliding around in the bed and to protect them from the sun and precipitation.
Dang, if only someone made an everyday car with a soft weather proof enclosed cargo area, possibly you could have the tailgate open up and away as well so it's not in the way. I would think Americans would love to have something more practical than a work vehicle
Sure, I could buy a dedicated more efficient car for the rare days when there is zero risk of rain and I don't need to haul anything larger.
After more than 1cm of rain, the last 500m of the steep dirt road up to my off-grid house in the mountains is completely impassable without 4wd. And I, or my family-in-law, regularly haul large trees, construction equipment, several 100kg of fertilizer, etc. in the truck bed.
Buying a single vehicle, a pre-owned 4wd Ford Ranger made the most economic sense.
Not doubting there's a place for them. I'm in suburbia and all my friends have or want them for grocery getting. It's stupid.
Suburban Americans are temporarily embarrassed farmers and outdoorsmen.
Sounds communist
Still see this in the ones with tonneau covers as if they intended to put cargo in the bed
But who knows maybe it’s already full of stuff under there
> But who knows maybe it’s already full of stuff under there
This is why I'm excited for REO.
I live in a pretty dense city and don't have much storage space in my residence. On the weekends I'm clearing and developing a lot a couple of hours away. My vehicle doubles as storage for all the stuff I need for that and don't want to leave unattended (saws, tools, winch, etc).
I used a Forester for the first two years, which was cramped but doable. The bigger issue was messes. Oil has a way of getting everywhere. I also had one gas spill from a faulty saw gas cap which was both dangerous and a huge PITA to clean up. I also got to a phase where the difference between awd and 4x4 matters, and where I was yanking milled planks around which didn't feel safe doing with the forester.
I switched to a truck after a couple of years and went small. The box is completely full between tools, saws, gas, winch, ropes, etc. When I do groceries I can usually fit some of the "hard" bags back there (cans, bottles) but the rest has to go up front.
A REO would be great for my use-case. The price is low enough that for the price of a new Tacoma or F-150 I could (get close enough to) buying both a REO and a used beater 3/4 ton at the property, which is a better fit for the things I need a big truck for anyways. And I wouldn't be driving a dumb big truck around a very cramped city.
For now I'm stuck with a big truck in the city because owning more than one personal vehicle in this town is insanity.
Get a work van. It's a big capped pickup bed basically. But a reasonable size
I did consider.
Maybe in the past, but the size thing isn't really true of the modern line-up. Relative to eg a base Tacoma or especially a Maverick, The Ford Transit has about the same wheel base, is slightly heavier, has worse visibility (for me at least), has a larger displacement engine, and is on a pragmatic level more difficult to maneuver and park. They also have far fewer creature comforts, which wouldn't be a huge deal if they didn't MSRP at $10K MORE than a base midsized truck!
Vans also don't have 4x4, have much lower ground clearance, no good mechanism for transporting longer stuff, and you can't hose them out nearly as easily as a truck bed. The main thing that those vans are built for is just lots of weight in the van. Great fits for some use-cases, but not mine.
And, again, they're just seriously expensive for what they are because of all the commercial applications.
I did also consider an old minivan or a used van from previous generations when they made the smaller transits. Again, 4x4/awd isn't really super optional in these parts, so pickins were slim.
Roof rack for long stuff. Maverick seems too small to even be useful for that.
I once met a homeless guy who kept a mattress back there.
The Ram 6000 Max Diesel Rampage Pro: Because homelessness can be anyone's future
A friend with a RAM 1500 truck (a brute of a machine) bought a Harley in a neighboring state, I kept him company during the 8h ordeal. He rented a trailer because the bike was too heavy to hoist on the bed. Hillarious.
It's just a style thing, folks, however silly. Why do Texans wear cowboy hats and boots?
> hoist
FWIW, transporting (even large) bikes in the bed of a truck is doable and normal. The typical way to do this isn't with a hoist. You just ride or walk it up a ramp and tie it down.
ofc a Forester or RAV4 with a trailer is a far superior solution, especially for interstate driving where the trailer is less of an annoyance.
What’s the “all hat no cattle” for pickups?
All truck no load?
Another reason is to avoid letting the inside of the bed get scratched. I lived in Texas for a while, and people were that fussy about their trucks.
As a european I would have thought having scratches in the bed and dirt on the bodywork would be a mark of pride.
Nope, sign of (relative) poverty. Big trucks are expensive, and having one that has obviously never seen so much as a 2x4 is very effective class signaling. The people who actually need trucks to work with buy the cheapest option that gets the job done and wring every last dollar back out of it.
First thing I did with my truck is get a spray-in bed liner.
So true! My Ram 1500 was purchased to pull our travel trailer. It has the tow package and is factory raised up some. I'm kind of old, so I keep a three-step ladder in the bed so I can easily climb into it.
Because of the poor gas mileage, I always wonder at why people drive these gas guzzlers as their main transport. But each to his own. (BTW, some claim safety, but it's probably fashion.)
The safety aspect is intersting. The driver might be safer, but they are vastly more likely to kill anything they hit.
https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2025/being-hit-suv-i...
Which a selfish person is definitely okay with, might even like it.
To be fair it would slide all over in the bed.
But they have a clean, covered bed and sparking clean trailer hitch that's never seen a trailer tongue - just in case.
Drug store cowboys, aka "big hat; no cattle"
Isn’t the Ram Rampage a more compact non US market 4cyl variant? Like a maverick competitor?
I just made up a name. I know Rebel is a model that’s hilariously large. Don’t know about others.
Yes, the RAM Rampage is comparable to a Ford Maverick which is a unibody vehicle with a truck bed.
The massive truck they likely meant would be a RAM 3500 HD super crew cab full size bed Cummins diesel dually rear axle with a vertical dual stainless steel smokestack exhaust kit for good measure. Which is essentially the largest truck you can get with a pickup bed from RAM, GM, or Ford; and they go for over $100,000 with options.
There are even larger monstrosities with pickup beds built on top of 550/5500/Class 5 truck chassis which are basically a Canyonero from He Simpsons in real life: https://www.elevationoffgrid.com/
My favorite derogatory term for a vehicle type is ‘hausfrauenpanzer’ which means ‘housewife tank’ in German, which is used for a large SUV in Germany, lol.
It's honestly not that many. That's a very expensive truck for a daily driver. Most likely they have a large Airstream camper, horse trailer, or 5th wheel trailer or similar that they pull with it.
Sure, some people just like a big diesel truck for ego reasons. But the cost of them limits most people's ability to endulge that.
I grew up in a suburb of Detroit, and when I went back to visit the family home a few years ago, every street was parked up on both sides with giant vehicles. It was a sight to behold.
They weren't all the most expensive trucks, and many were noticeably older. Things in our town went up and down with the cycle of the car industry.
That’s what one would expect, but in some parts of the US it’s not uncommon to see dilapidated houses with a shiny tricked out F-150 that’s never worked a day in its life sitting out in the parking lot…
I think for some it’s an identity thing more than anything else.
> But the cost of them limits most people's ability to endulge that.
Sounds like you’ve never been to the US. Thanks to cheap credit, every hillbilly and redneck has one of these. Which feels like about 60% of the population sometimes.
I have lived in the US my entire life. And yes pickup trucks are part of the "country" or "rural" identity to some extent but most people who live in rural areas actually use their trucks as trucks frequently. They pull trailers, or use them to haul furniture, appliances, building materials, trash... all the stuff that has delivery services in the city but you have to do for yourself if you live in the country.
Earlier, you wrote:
> It's honestly not that many.
I can't identify with this. You see these trucks everywhere. There are far more of them than there's any reason for - other than the whole weird only-in-America "light truck" regulations that relax emissions requirements for these trucks. Basically, a big reason we see so many of them is that the US simply refuses to take global warming seriously, instead basically saying "we're going to stick it to the planet as hard as we can, damn the consequences."
And when I said hillbillies and rednecks, I'm not talking about the actual people using their trucks for what they're supposed to be used for. I'm talking about the pavement princesses which wouldn't actually haul anything in their trucks because it would scratch the beds. They have the hillbilly redneck mindset without doing the work that justifies it. The truck is an emotional support vehicle for them, or a gender affirming vehicle. And there's no world in which you can honestly say "there aren't that many" of those in the US.
Speeding through school zones in a maximum impact people killer sure is fun too though
The suburban people buying Ram 9001 Warlord Editions are not the target market for this truck.
4 trips a year picking up a heavy excavator or tractor so you dont have to pay a tradesman a gazillion dollars and it pays for itself. "But just pay someone to haul it or rent a truck" lmao good fucking luck down my dirt roads
“Compensation” and extreme loneliness (cannot find my tribe without spreading its dumb peacock wings so they know I fit in)