Why Mini Trucks are not made: Unintended Consequences?

Saw a YouTube video that talked about why there are no mini trucks anymore.   It comes down to the math that is used to calculate the CAFE mileage requirements for vehicles.  One of the primary factors in the formula is the "Footprint" of the vehicle, which is defined by the Track x the Wheel base.  The larger the Footprint, the less mileage is allowed ( allowing for lower mileage for large trucks).

The effect?  Make bigger trucks so they can have lower mileage requirements!  

So, the EPA essentially encouraged manufactures to make larger, lower mileage vehicles.... nice...

Also explains why trucks (and SUV's) have been getting bigger and bigger.  Doesn't explain the 6 foot high truck bed though (!!).  I guess you could manufacture a mini truck with a really long wheel base, but that would be stupid.

Does this sound correct?  Thoughts?

Here are the relevant charts:

YouTube video (really doesn't say much more than above):

https://youtu.be/azI3nqrHEXM

Alpha Wolf...

Don't forget manufacturers raised the price of real minis to the point of "just $5000 more and I can get a full size with 4 doors?!?!?". Then financing got lucrative for the larger models. 
Back in 96, I bought my 96 ranger for 10k brand new. A mustang was 16k or so. A f150 was 22k iirc. Steadily that gap got closer and closer. Basically turned minitrucks into an accounting "failure" and poof gone.

Witness the Ford Maverick.   

Sold out for the year 2 years in a row . 

2024 Order Banks are open already, probably will be sold out soon as well.

        Prices going up accordingly.

There's the other side that's not being posted- the small trucks existed because of the large trucks being fuel economy hogs.  Many of the trucks were almost given away so that the many large trucks could be sold.  

And that's why you saw $10k trucks, brand new.  

Small trucks with the OEM's didn't really exist until they needed to so that they could meet the truck CAFE number.

The actual bad side effect of that is that the public expectation of small trucks is that they had to be cheap, which meant the OEM's who built small trucks for the sake of it had to compete with GM and Ford "giving" them away.  Then Toyota got into the full size truck segment.  

So, yea, the re-calcualtion of fuel economy targets did doom small trucks.  But they existed because of the original calculation in the first place.

As for the expansion of new SUVs- all I will post is that we just finished a 5200 mile trip around the US in a 2.0l Turbo Ford Escape.  One that was loaded with a lot of luggage.  And averaged 32.1 mpg.  That's better than my Miata got over the 14 years I commuted to work with it.  And many of those miles was north of 75mph.  So if they have gotten bigger and heavier, they have also gotten more efficient.

But we are at least now seeing small trucks being built and sold thanks to demand.  Do note that the smallest, like the Maverick, are more built like a car than a truck- making them cheaper to make.

also imports still had the 25% Chicken tax  ,  Toyota imported trucks without beds and then built and installed the beds in the USA which got them out of the 25%  tax.   Then they started building the trucks  in the USA ......

Ranger50 said:

Don't forget manufacturers raised the price of real minis to the point of "just $5000 more and I can get a full size with 4 doors?!?!?". Then financing got lucrative for the larger models. 
Back in 96, I bought my 96 ranger for 10k brand new. A mustang was 16k or so. A f150 was 22k iirc. Steadily that gap got closer and closer. Basically turned minitrucks into an accounting "failure" and poof gone.

I am not entirely convinced that a truck half the size would be half as expensive to make.  The raw materials cost difference is negligible, the tooling and stamping and everything is similar, so on and so forth.

Size 6 and size 13 boots cost about the same, too.

I owned several of both small and full size trucks 'back then'.  Those little carbureted pickups with their wheezing four cylinder engines really didn't get great fuel mileage. The cabs were tiny and they had no towing capability. The price difference in the used market was pretty small, and I quit buying the mini trucks because it cost just as much to license and run one as a full size model with all it's capabilities.

However, with modern trucks being the size of a box truck I would gladly opt for the Maverick type truck for my needs. Without the need for towing a lot of weight, the rest of my truck needs could easily be met with something like that.

In reply to alfadriver :

The flip side was that, for a period of time in the '90s, anyone looking for cheap reliable transportation discovered small trucks and bought them for daily drivers.

So they became revenue generators instead of regulatory obligations, and prices rose accordingly.

I started driving in the peak minitruck era, so I have a soft spot for them.  I owned an '80 Datsun King Cab, 86 Nissan V6, and a '98 Frontier, all 5pds.  They were great!  But big trucks back then meant knuckle-dragging domestics, so they were also different enough to have a niche. 

Then big trucks got really good.  I have an '06 Tundra that is better at everything than those mini trucks were, without being too unwieldy.  I recently got a new F-150 crew cab, 4wd, ecoboost as a rental for a work trip.  It's the truck, perfected.  Tons of power, didn't feel too large, great mileage.  

Mini trucks have a challenging market to re-enter.  They have to be cheaper in a world where people expect all the niceties.

In reply to ddavidv :

My '91 Ram 50 gets 25mpg commuting in town... pretty decent mileage, IMO.

I dunno. I never understood it. My first vehicle was an S10 with regular cab and a 6 foot bed. At 5'10 280-300 at the time, and working construction, it was too small to be useful or comfortable. 

Followed by the extended cab Ranger I got rid of a few years ago that was again, too small to be really useful. Jump seats were a joke, couldn't even fit my 3 year old in them without a car seat, and it really wasn't a fan of "heavy" loads. 

Now there are Mavericks, which look on paper to be old Ranger sized while comfortably fitting 4 people, but the bed is too small to be useful, and the new Rangers are as big or bigger than the old F series, again with too small of a bed to be useful. But the full sizes coming with shorter and shorter beds are equally useless in hauling ability as far as I'm concerned. 

I don't understand why it's so hard to have a bed than can hold a full sheet of drywall with the tailgate up. 

Because most of these pickup beds will never see a load, unfortunately.

RevRico said:

I dunno. I never understood it. My first vehicle was an S10 with regular cab and a 6 foot bed. At 5'10 280-300 at the time, and working construction, it was too small to be useful or comfortable. 

Followed by the extended cab Ranger I got rid of a few years ago that was again, too small to be really useful. Jump seats were a joke, couldn't even fit my 3 year old in them without a car seat, and it really wasn't a fan of "heavy" loads. 

Now there are Mavericks, which look on paper to be old Ranger sized while comfortably fitting 4 people, but the bed is too small to be useful, and the new Rangers are as big or bigger than the old F series, again with too small of a bed to be useful. But the full sizes coming with shorter and shorter beds are equally useless in hauling ability as far as I'm concerned. 

I don't understand why it's so hard to have a bed than can hold a full sheet of drywall with the tailgate up. 

I agree with your comments about the beds being too small. As more of the overall length of the truck gets devoted to the cab size, adding a full-size bed makes a really long unwieldy vehicle.
 

Since most of these seem to be sold as daily drivers and not tools for a job, that reduces their overall daily driver functionality.

Because hanging a 4x8 1-2ft beyond the edge of the bed is no big deal, and the tradeoff is it facilitates a larger cabin so you can actually carry more people comfortably.

I have an order in for a Maverick, but there isn't a chance I would be interested if it were only a 2 door.  I dont know how I align with other truck owners, but carrying mountain bikes & unwieldy household items is usually what I am after, or the occasional 4x8.  And even then, as I always point out, construction material is so staggeringly cheap to have delivered I wouldn't bother with using a truck to go get it unless I need ASAP.

Duke said:

In reply to alfadriver :

The flip side was that, for a period of time in the '90s, anyone looking for cheap reliable transportation discovered small trucks and bought them for daily drivers.

So they became revenue generators instead of regulatory obligations, and prices rose accordingly.

 

Maybe for some, but if they were truly revenue generators for F, we would have put more into them to sell them at a higher price.  We got our Rangers to lease for under $200/mo.  Once well under.  And given the fuel economy of the 5.0 and the later 4.6's doing the same thing, well...

In reply to ddavidv :

Didn't have to get much better to offset the larger trucks.  The F150's of that era were truly horrible in terms of fuel economy.

In reply to RevRico :

Small trucks were not supposed to be work trucks in the traditional sense.  That's why there were large trucks available.  I don't understand why people think small trucks were supposed to be used as large ones.

For the "weekend warrior", the Maverick works fine to move stuff to someone's home.  And it's considerably larger than the packing area in our Escape.  For people who have small SUV's, the Maverick keeps the 4 seats and gives you more space to put stuff.

Back in the day, the small trucks were better for pizza delivery or insect spray people or document carrier than construction.  And they were cheap enough to be bough en-mass by small usage companies.    

I liked and wanted a Maverick until I got to stand next to one finally. And I just looked up numbers to confirm my hunch. It has a longer wheelbase than my old Tahoe, is longer overall, and only 6" narrower. It's probably more a civilized experience overall and is definitely more efficient. But it's not really "small". Which leads me to believe 90s full size became the new target for "small trucks" when the new full sizes became unreasonably tall and wide.

I also wish trucks with fold down bed sides, like trucks have in the rest of the world, were popular here. The practicality and convenience just make sense. Need to contain things? Leave the sides up. Need a flatbed to haul something really big? Fold the sides down. Modern trucks are also so tall that you can barely load them with the tailgate down.

Ranger50 said:

Don't forget manufacturers raised the price of real minis to the point of "just $5000 more and I can get a full size with 4 doors?!?!?". Then financing got lucrative for the larger models. 
Back in 96, I bought my 96 ranger for 10k brand new. A mustang was 16k or so. A f150 was 22k iirc. Steadily that gap got closer and closer. Basically turned minitrucks into an accounting "failure" and poof gone.

That was a marketing trick.  The Ranger listed with a 12% profit margin. While full sized trucks had a list price with a 22%  profit margin.   Thus the full sized @ 22% came near that $5000 price  difference 
      At $10,000 the factory was underwriting an actual loss on the truck  because it was considered an entryway  vehicle.  Dealers accepted the loss because it increased sales volume and dealers with the big volume  got more of the high profit cars, and better terms like 120 day floor plan support rather than 90 day.  
  Ford always had a red headed step child attitude about the Ranger plant in St. Paul.  Deliberately delaying modernization  such as automation. 
    Yet the plant was always profitable for Ford,  I suspect in part because it provided its own electricity  because of a Dam ( built in the 1930's ) in the Minnesota river which bordered the plant.  

In reply to frenchyd :

I'm sorry, frency, but that info makes no sense at all. The math has to work out so that there isn't a corporate underwriting for it to actually be 12% profitable.  $10k underwriting means $10k less revenue on each truck.  Which means the plant wasn't profitable.  And that's why the ranger ended production in 2012.

And the lack of profitability is why both the plant and the truck didn't receive actual, significant, upgrades for the last 14 years of it's production.

Personally, I thought it would have been an easy job to update the truck- lift the more modern Escape interior and put it inside.  But I also understood that mid 2000's, Ford had to walk away from the products that didn't make money.

Trucks really haven't gotten bigger the last 20 years - at least not the F150s.

2001 to 2021...

+3-6" in length

Fractional differences in width (disregard the Raptor)

Fractional differences in height ( again, disregard the Raptor)

+2 to +6" in wheelbase. 

Minitrucks always seemed like one of those vehicles that are good at nothing and bad at everything.  Not comfortable.  Not a big payload.  Can't tow.  Not offered in high trim versions.  No power.  Not really that great of economy considering the size.  

How did we get here again?

93gsxturbo said:

 

Minitrucks always seemed like one of those vehicles that are good at nothing and bad at everything.  Not comfortable.  Not a big payload.  Can't tow.  Not offered in high trim versions.  No power.  Not really that great of economy considering the size.  

Its funny because now the Maverick ranges from pretty respectable to excellent in all those areas.