What Happened To Simple, Affordable Pickup Trucks?

Pickup trucks are an integral part of America’s history. Henry Ford is credited for developing the first pickup truck and actual coming up with the term “pickup.” The vehicle he came out with that term was the 1917 Model TT that cost just $600 new (the equivalent of $11,600 today).

Trucks have come a long way since then, and not necessarily in a good way.

The premise with Ford’s pickup was pretty simple, he wanted to give farmers a simple, rugged vehicle to help carry goods across fields. But the vehicle also had to be able to go to church on Sunday. The premise of the machine sounds simple enough – engine at the front, two seats in the middle, and a pickup body at the back. After coming out nearly 100 years ago, the idea of a pickup truck has caught on like wildfire.

The Ford F-Series, as everyone knows, is the best-selling vehicle in America and has been for some time. And when you draw parallels from the first pickup truck on the road to Ford’s most recent, it’s easy to see why. There’s an engine at the front, two to six seats in the middle, and a small or large bed in the back. As far as practicality goes, a pickup’s hard to beat.

When I was growing up, one of our neighbors had an older Frontier King Cab that was hilariously simple. It had seating for two at the front, tiny seats that folded out of a cubby in the back, which I would routinely have to squish into, and a five-speed manual transmission. When you needed four-wheel drive, you pushed a smaller lever and all four-wheels received power. It was all very simple.

Simple isn’t a word I would use with modern pickup trucks. The 2019 GMC Sierra and Sierra Denali were recently unveiled, and the latter can be fitted with a freaking carbon fiber bed. And it’s not just GMC that’s forgetting about how simple pickup trucks once were.

The new Ram 1500 has a 5-inch touchscreen with Bluetooth and voice command as standard. What else is standard? Keyless entry, power door locks and power front windows. While that may sound nice to some, it all just sounds like unnecessary items that could go wrong sometime down the road.

Powertrains have also become incredibly complex. Both the latest F-150 and Chevrolet Silverado 1500 come with 10-speed automatic transmissions. While automakers offer naturally-aspirated engines, the majority of motors now have turbochargers and even a mild-hybrid setup. It’s all so complicated.

The worst part about modern pickups, though, is their price tags. Pricing for the latest and greatest haven’t been released yet, but all of the previous model years of the Big Three cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000. That, though, is for a stripped-out, how-much-can-you-live-without model. Good luck finding a $30,000 pickup at your local dealership, though. Because when dealers know they can move pickups that cost $100,000, which is just absurd, they don’t stock a lot of cheaper examples.

Pickups have become overly complicated and way too expensive. So when Bloomberg reports that the truck market that’s gone unfazed for the past few years saw a decrease in sales in February, we can’t say we were really surprised. People can’t afford a simple pickup truck anymore, because the idea of a simple pickup truck just doesn’t exist. The problem will only get worse, as pickup trucks get smarter, lighter, and even more capable.

That’s probably why consumers are willing to pay a large amount of money for lightly-used Toyota Tacomas, like this one on Bring a Trailer or like this one. There’s something honest about a bulletproof pickup with cloth seats, a manual transmission, and a simple engine.

We may not have been very comfortable in my neighbor’s old Frontier, but it got the job done, one way or another. And it never gave us any heart (or pocket) ache. I wasn’t surprised, then, when my dad wanted a pickup, he went over to Nissan with the neighbor and picked up the cheapest Frontier Crew Cab they had.

Modern pickup trucks can tow yachts while ensuring your backside is nice and cold, which is a far cry from hauling hay bales. Times change and progress waits for no one, but I wish pickups would go back to being simple, uncomplicated machines. They were just better back then.