I can rent a box truck for moving easially enough, and generally I know far enough in advance that I can reserve it.

However I've never found a truck I can rent to two. Sure I can rent trucks, but they come up with a large pile of fine print which says I cannot two. Even those box trucks cannot tow, or can tow but only their trailer which has specific restrictions on what you can use it for. Oh, and the trailer they allow you to use has surge brakes which are terrible.

I've rented trucks to tow a few times over the years. Enterprise truck rental has trucks for towing, just a weight restriction.

But to be honest the vast majority of times I've needed to rent a truck to tow something it's because I was renting something towable. I can't imagine I'd bother renting some equipment from one place just to rent a truck from someplace else.

In fact, it's not like one needs some giant truck to tow many things. The vehicle I've owned that had the most use out of its tow hitch was a Ford Focus. I've gotten a bit of use from my midsize crossover which has 5,000lbs of tow capacity. More than enough for a small boat or jet skis or a small trailer.

You’re making a lot of assumptions based on your reality. I usually tow heavy stuff. I max out my half ton truck limit frequently and even have to rent a 3/4 ton or 1 ton. That’s f150/1500, f250/2500, f350/3500.

It might only be a few times a year, I need to move or rent some heavy equipment (excavators and skid steers and lifts mostly). Sometimes I tow a trailer that when empty would exceed your vehicle’s limit. UTVs is a huge hobby in the US and they weight about 1500 lbs each, usually tow 3 of them and trailer is 2500-3000 itself.

My folk live in a rural area and do this stuff weekly. Yet, when you/the GP above (complaining about all the F350s with not trailers) see them, they’re likely not doing that but they came into town for something. You’re sampling is off because you never go where they are when they use those features the most.

No, my sampling is knowing people who have trucks and yet acknowledge they never tow anything. My sampling is having someone tell me they needed a giant truck because they had a third child and need the interior space compared to their old compact sedan, a truck they use to commute to their job selling insurance. My sampling is seeing rows of giant lifted trucks in an urban apartment parking garage night after night for years without ever seeing a lick of dirt on them. I'm sure they're just constantly out towing excavators to their downtown urban apartment.

They didn't just come to town or something, they live there. They work there.

Your sampling is off because you never go where there's crowds of people who absolutely just have a truck as something to commute from their urban apartment to their office job. You never bother seeing the urban cowboys going to their finance jobs.

You have sampling bias. I've known a lot of people who live in apartments who use their truck for truck things often. Many construction workers live in an apartment. Many of them get out to the country on weekends...

A vehicle is expensive. A second vehicle is a lot more expensive. Renting a truck is expensive. If you need a truck just 5% of the time it is overall cheaper to just drive a truck for everything than to have two vehicles or try to rent.

You have sampling bias. I've known a lot of people who never use their trucks for truck things. "But sometimes I put things in the bed!", acting like there's no way to fit a bicycle or a tent in a hatchback. Many office workers live in an apartment and own a truck. Many of them think they'll end up pulling a boat or a camper sometime (they never will), but in the end still just go to the same bars and clubs and other things in the city.

Spend some time in urban Texas and see tons of people who LARP as a cowboy while commuting from their zero-lot line house to their office job. They'll tell you they need a truck, but probably won't be able to point to a single time other than moving a couch that one time a couple years ago where it was actually necessary.

A vehicle is expensive. But tons of people don't pay attention to their costs. They'll drive around town at 13mpg and spend thousands a year more on fuel, tires, maintenance, and more while never really using the capacity of the vehicle they massively overbought because "it's comfortable". What percentage of people would you realistically expect to know how much they spent on fuel and maintenance on their car over the last two years? How many would have any idea how much that could be cut with a smaller car?

I'm not denying people in rural areas probably have a far higher likelihood of actually using trucks as trucks. I'm pointing to all the people in places like Plano who act like a giant truck is an essential thing to own.

And it's hilarious so many construction workers think they personally need a truck for their job. Some of these are those people I personally know who think they need a truck. They're usually not using their personal trucks to actually do any construction work. Most would be able to go to their jobs and back home in a Civic. When they're at the job site they're using the company trucks to actually do the work. A friend of mine "needed" a truck for his home construction business, a business he owns, but in the end never actually uses that truck as a truck. He drives it to the job site, gets out, hops in his International, and uses that to actually haul stuff.

For any of his employees, why would they even want to just donate their personal truck to someone else's company's use? Probably the most expensive thing they own, and they're just going to put the most demanding and high likelihood of damaging activities on it for their employer's benefit. Nope, instead they often show up in beater Camrys and what not.

And like I said earlier, another friend said he needed a truck because he needed a vehicle that could seat 5. That was the reason. Sure, need a truck for that.

I get so many people on places like HN trying to tell me these people just don't exist or are somehow very rare. And yet most people I personally know who drive massive body-on-frame SUVs and pickups are these kinds of people. Few people I know who own trucks actually use their trucks as trucks. Only a few actually do things like haul salvage engine blocks and transmissions (something where you really kind of do want a bed to crane it in and out) or actually routinely tow something.

> Yet, when you/the GP above (complaining about all the F350s with not trailers) see them, they’re likely not doing that but they came into town for something.

I don't live in town, I don't work in town. I ride my bike and run and drive in rural New Mexico.

I just checked, I drive my truck just a few times per month, and it is still cheaper to keep it (paying taxes and maintenance) than to rent the correct vehicle for my rare needs to drive. Renting is expensive, but I did discover enterprise truck rental which I didn't know of before isn't too far from my house. Plus by owning my own truck I have it when I want to go.

Of course I ride my bike most places. There are a few trips every month I make not in bike range though. If like most people I drove a car to work, then a tiny compact car and rent a truck when needed would make sense. But for me I drive to little that a large truck that does anything is cheapest (I've had the truck for 15 years)

The only trailers I can find for rents have surge brakes (or not brakes at all - and thus too light duty for what I want to haul). I'll keep my trailer with electric brakes just to avoid those.