This person might be a little confused as those beds are definitely not the same length. They might be consuming the mid-size truck 4.5ft bed as the length of that Silverado. I’m being generous to that smaller truck if it has a 4.5ft bed, but the Silverado has a 5.5ft bed standard and also has a wider bed. Specifically greater than 4ft between wheel wells making transporting of standard sized plywood and drywall super easy. Carrying 6 people too is also something that smaller truck isn’t doing, nor is a high towing capacity like 15k pounds. Does the average America need that? Most likely not, but to claim they’re the same is disingenuous.
You can tell the about size by the tire. Considering a standard 5.5ft American truck bed could easily accommodate 4 tires laying down flat and still have plenty of left over space both width and length while this truck seems to struggle with one. Again, 4 tires could fit in the small one standing up, but this comparison is apples to oranges. Both fruits, but different categories.
Towing capacity, payload weight, carrying 3 more people, bed width, drivetrain?
I think many trucks are way too big, and it's silly to own a big work truck if you just use it to go to the grocery store but it's really about so much more than bed size.
When my little 4-cylinder truck wore out in 2021, I looked so hard for one of the little kei trucks. But all of the ones I could find were $20k, or they were $15k and needed a lot of work to be driveable. And none of them were within 200 miles of my location.
I ended up with a used base-model F150 which only cost me $12k. It had 81k miles on it. As near as I can figure out, it started life as a rental truck for a hardware store called "Menards". It has an 8ft bed, no carpet, no power locks, no power windows, no back seat, no touchscreen, and no color LCD screen in the gauge cluster. I use this truck for a small farm that my wife and I run, so it doesn't get driven every day.
Note how the kei truck is still taking up a parking space, and that the "need" to provide such spaces makes the entire street wider than it otherwise could be.
I say that not to excuse the "full size" monstrosity in any way whatsoever, but to remind us all that this is "fuck cars," not just "fuck big trucks." ALL cars ruin cities, not only the big ones!
I really like my 2003 Ford ranger. It's small, but can still haul enough that it works perfectly fine for when I'm picking up dirt for my garden. But also it's definitely not fuel efficient in the way that I'd want it to be. I wish they made something that size but newer.
Not the same bed width or volume though. Not the same comfort level in the cab or crew capacity. Definitely not the same towing capacity. It's silly to buy the bigger truck just to drive around town, but there are plenty of legitimate reasons to get one.
Yeah, but what if you needed to haul a team of volunteers to do disaster relief with a 9,000 pound trailer filled with water and food and then use the empty bed to haul debris away while rescuing survivors from the flood waters?