My how trucks have grown...

A new 2wd Colorado is taller than my 07 4wd Silverado. A new Silverado is much taller. A new Colorado is immense compared to my 05 Colorados. For some reason tall seems to be the new norm for trucks. I don't see how most contractors work out of a vehicle when they can't reach the toolboxes to get tools out.

My Silverado is a good height. I can reach stuff in the bed over the side. I can climb in the back without needing a step ladder. Anything taller than that is useless to me. If I was to buy a new truck I would have to look into lowering it. 

My neighborhood was built in the post WW2 housing boom. Late 40's and early 50's.

A drive through it showcases all the modern trucks that can't fit into the garages.  2 years ago a gentleman 3 blocks away broke the windshield on his brand new, first trip home from the dealership Ford F-250 because it didn't occur to him that it wouldn't fit in his garage. It hit the windshield just above the middle. Like the truck was about 16 inches shy of actually fitting.

Average size of a house at that time was what, 1500 square feet or so? An F250 is about 147 square feet. So 10% of a boomer house :)

Two years of trying to park a single cab Ram in Dallas, I niw own a Colorado.  Four inches narrower is huge.  

odd, awhile ago I was thinking the same thing.

My father was a Willys dealer back in the '50's and the Jeep pickup was small but rated at one ton.

Go figure.

I about snapped my neck checking out a new regular cab, short bed F150 on the street the other day just because it's probably more rare than the C7 ZO6 down the street.

In reply to STM317 :

That's a regular cab regular bed. The short bed is only available on the longer cab trucks. 

Yeah, When the C10 above was built, the "short bed" was 6'. Single cabs get the 6'6" bed, but the 4drs get a 5'6" bed. The the new "short bed" is shorter even though the truck is much bigger, and the "regular bed" is bigger still.

My head hurts.

I actually had a 2011 F150 reg cab reg bed company truck that was brand new. I always thought with 4x4 it would be fun offroad, or a slammed 2WD with more horses would be hot.

I have the scratch to buy a new truck but they just don't sell them to my liking anymore. I just want a little pickup with a small cab and sufficient bed. No manufacturer from A to Z makes anything like that anymore. None. I'm not willing to pay new truck money and compromise with something like a Colorado or Ranger. Just because society calls those trucks small trucks, it doesn't make them small trucks.

It may be humble, but my little Mazda doesn't have any chance of getting replaced in the foreseeable future. 

If I can ever find a nice little Tacoma pee-paw truck I will throw cash out on the table faster than you can believe. But you can't find a regular cab Toyota 2wd anywhere in Texas worth buying. They are all either wrecked or devastated by previous owner's mechanical butchery.

I've posted this before, but this side by side struck me of how little my GMT-800 looked after a few years

In reply to Toyman01 (Forum Supporter) :

I rented an F250 crew cab 4x4 to tow down to the 2017 Challenge. I was 65 and my buddy was 77. You should have seen us getting in and out of that thing. The floor was 32" above grade ! Even my 2019 Canyon is 224.6" long on a 140" wheelbase. Turning radius is pretty long. The Canyon doesn't feel small in any way, unless I happen to park next to something full sized.

My 1970 ford f100 4x4 with a 360 v8 was 4200 pounds, and the wheelbase was several inches shorter than a mid nineties Ford Ranger

You all realize that the reason modern trucks are so big is because you dismiss the Ridgeline as not a real truck.  

People talk about wanting a small truck but then expect it to have insane capabilities well beyond what a 1980 C10 could do.  Ridgeline can satisfy the modern SAE towing tests at 1500lbs payload and 5K towing.  You would of had to have a Chevy Big10 to exceed the payload in a C10 otherwise you would only have 900-1400lbs payload available.  Towing for a C10 was 3750lbs for most of them.  

Now we get upset when a Tacoma can't tow >6200lbs and say we would love something old ranger sized as long as it will tow 7500lbs.    Many mid size SUVs feature the payload and towing capacity combination that is similar to a classic pre-1995 full-size and we E36 M3 all over the companies that are willing to actually cut the back off of one and offer it.    

Hear hear. Remember the fuss about the Gladiator towing capacity when it was announced? Everyone needed just 1000 lbs more...

I own a '16 Silverado that as a 4x4 truck seems puny next to most trucks and brodozers although the bed feels high to me.  
 

In reply to SVreX (Forum Supporter) :

Be Honest, you secretly want a Peterbuilt or Kenworth? To be a "Real" trucker ?;) 

nocones said:

You all realize that the reason modern trucks are so big is because you dismiss the Ridgeline as not a real truck.  

Yep.

If you wanna feel like trucks are too big try working under the hood.

The Honda Ridgeline is the Japanese El-Camino. There, I said it.

My dad's first truck was this surplus 1941 Chevy dump truck that earned him a living for a while when he got out of the Marines. Looks smaller than some of those trucks used for personal transportation today:

While we are at it, how about a shot of my dad's last pickup truck, now mine, a 1998 F150 in the increasingly rare "regular cab short bed" combination:

In reply to Danny Shields (Forum Supporter) :

Trucks like this (reg cab short bed) are really gaining attention in the hot rod crowd.  Whenever you think about selling it, you should probably try the collector car side for the best return. 

As guys get older the only cool cars aging in are Gen 3-4 Camaros, Mustangs and Corvettes.  Nothing Mopar for another 10 years.  None of these listed are easy to get in and out of.  So the guys in their 60's now looking for a cool "ice cream run" vehicle want the egress and space of a truck platform.  Add a flamed partial wrap, a little chrome, some wheels and a little lowering, spend a lot of time to make the bed pretty and custom, hang the fuzzy dice and you're off to the car show.

I dismiss the Ridgeline because it's only a crew cab. This reduces the bed length to a hair over 5 feet while keeping the truck long-ish. I don't want a small truck that's actually long with a short bed. 

Same with the Gladiator to be honest. Bed 3 inches shorter than even the Ridgeline! I LOVE how low the bedsides are and how Jeepy it is, but there is about two and half feet behind the front seat that I don't want. 

I can justify crew cabs on giant trucks because they're giant, but not on little trucks. I'm worried that the new Ford small unibody truck that is rumored will be like the Subaru Baja and achieve similar acclaim and success. 

Back in 2002 my dad bought a regular cab long bed Silverado 2500 HD. I owned a 78 chevy k20 reg cab long bed. Mine had a 4" lift and 33" tires. Our roofs were the same height.

As I was writing this I looked out the window and a minty early 90s half ton 2wd reg cab long bed went by and I got a little envious.

Appleseed said:

The Honda Ridgeline is the Japanese El-Camino. There, I said it.

You have my undying .... like?

Vigo (Forum Supporter) said:

If you wanna feel like trucks are too big try working under the hood.

I'm surprised no one has started making the noses tilt like big trucks.