Am I the only one who finds the spare tire location an absolute deal breaker? You have to unload the payload, and lift up the payload bed floor in order to access the spare. Now, I suppose this doesn't matter much to Amazon. But I have had the experience of being out the back-country where cell phones don't work, miles from a highway, changing a truck tire by myself. If I had to spend 1 or 2 hours unloading the truck before I could get at the spare, that would be a huge issue. At one point I was seriously considering writing a deposit check for a Rivian. The spare tire location told me instantly that this truck is not for me -- the designers have no idea how trucks are actually used. The utter cluelessness of that design decision boggles me.
Honestly in this day and age, Amazon is better off having a service company come and change the tire so as to avoid workplace injuries and other liabilities. Most companies are able to bring spares from their stock.
Can't be too hard to just mount a wheel carrier in the bed, or swinging on the rear, and just use that spot as extra storage though. I don't know a single off-roader who doesn't mod their vehicle in similar ways to make up for perceived shortcomings.
If they are targeting sales to a small number of large fleets, this doesn't matter. In fleet operations, the driver will never ever be allowed to change a tire. This is simply not acceptable, insurance-wise. You will dispatch a second truck to handle the delivery and also a tire repair service truck.
An electric delivery truck is probably not even in the cards for small players, where gas or diesel is a better option all around.
That can work for punctures. The back-country that I go to regularly has granite rocks that can sometimes have a sharp edge. The particular tire I was changing was a 4-steel-ply contractor-grade truck tire, two weeks old, that somehow got cross-wise of a piece of split granite that put a 3 inch gash in it. Goop will not do it in that case. I am still amazed at the damage that rock did. But hey, that's life in the mountains.
Your local tire shop will not be delighted about this. I'm told the spray in gloop gets everywhere and makes changing the tire (removing it from the rim and installing a new one) hell for the techs.
