Saw a video on CNBC about American pickup trucks turning into a luxury vehicle like the Ford F-150. Honest question, whats the point of buying a large pickup truck if you will never use the tray? Why not get an SUV? Does it make sense to buy a fully loaded $55K F-150 and use it for construction work where environments are abusive? Is it even made to be heavy duty?
TBH, half ton pickups(F-150, Silverado 1500, Ram 1500) have always been targeted more as "large consumer trucks" with fairly limited payload capacity and towing capacity. If all you do is haul dirt/rocks/wood etc or maybe pull a camper or boat a couple of times a month they do the job. If you're doing heavy hauling day in and day out, you should PROBABLY have at least a 3/4 if not 1 ton truck(although even 3/4s have crept up toward "luxury" trim).
I think there are several things going on with it. For one, Americans like big vehicles, and big body on frame rear wheel drive cars are a thing of the past. Pickups still offer you that. There's an incentive for the makers to build them in favor of big cars because, for a while, CAFE standards treated them differently than it did cars(not sure if that's still the case) so the companies could still build big vehicles without having to take hits on gas guzzler taxes or other things that factor into CAFE calculations.
Many people get "hooked" on high ground clearance and sitting up high, and don't want to go back to a car once they've done that. That slots them into always buying CUVs, SUVs, or pickups(minivans also work, but are "not cool" now). You can see that in the market in the US, with fewer and fewer true car offerings these days.
There are people for whom it only makes sense to have one vehicle, but they want something nice that can haul both the family and some stuff in the bed or pull a trailer. That's another big market for these fancy 1/2 tons. My brother in law is one of those people. He has a fairly nicely trimmed F150 Ecoboost. It's his main vehicle(my sister drives their Pilot), and they have 3 children. They also have a camper and a boat. All 5 of them can pile in that truck, and they can take their boat/camper out for a weekend or week or whatever.
All of that aside, there's a subculture here around trucks, just like there is one around American muscle cars, Jeeps, small Japanese cars, or plenty of other types of vehicles. Trucks honestly are a great platform for a lot of cosmetic mods because they are body-on-frame, and the suspension is amenable to lifting if that's what's wanted. Not everyone who owns a truck mods it by any means, but it's really common in some parts of the country(especially down south and in the rural midwest).
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