Most American pickup trucks spend their lives running errands
Surveys of Ford F-150 owners found that 87 percent often used their trucks for shopping and errands, while only 7 percent often towed anything. The pickup, once a bare-bones farm tool, has become a lifestyle vehicle, helped along by a tax on imported chicken.
Early car makers sold bare chassis and let other firms add bodies. In 1913 the Galion Allsteel Body Company fitted hauling boxes to lightly modified Ford Model Ts, and Studebaker used the word pickup the same year, though nobody knows where the term came from. General Motors offered light pickups aimed at private owners in 1931, Ford Australia built the first ute in 1932, and both GM and Ford created dedicated light-truck platforms in 1940. During the Second World War the US government stopped production of private pickups altogether so factories could build heavy military trucks.
In the 1950s Americans started buying pickups for lifestyle reasons. Smooth-sided, car-like designs such as Ford's Styleside of 1957 appeared, along with power options, air conditioning and four-door crew cabs. By the 1990s fewer than 15 percent of owners said work was the main use.
Policy shaped the market. The 1963 chicken tax, a tariff that hit imported light trucks, curtailed the Volkswagen Type 2 and squeezed smaller Asian truck makers out of the American pickup market. Fuel-economy rules introduced in 1973 held trucks to looser standards than cars, which helped minivans and then SUVs replace station wagons and let pickups take over from muscle cars as performance machines. The F-150 has been America's best-selling vehicle since 1982, and pickups make up about 18 percent of US vehicle sales.
Elsewhere they are rarer. In Europe, where fuel costs more and streets are narrower, pickups account for under 1 percent of light vehicles, with the Ford Ranger leading at 27,300 sold in 2015. Australians and New Zealanders call them utes, and South Africans say bakkie, from an Afrikaans word for a bowl or container. Britain even had an Austin Mini pickup, built from 1961 to 1983.
Source: Pickup truck
