Maybe the global COVID-19 pandemic actually did affect the way peoples' brains operate, or maybe it is just a function of the stratification of society due to wealth condensation, but the amount of sheer nastiness both on the roads and online, when it comes to the number and usage of trucks on the road, has increased noticeable over the last four years.
It used to be that having a work truck was mostly the domain of people who did that weirdest of all things... work. They people who used to own trucks for work, were the people who actually did real work in the real world. The people who actually do need trucks to actually do real work in the real world still need those trucks. However, especially over the last four years and with the demise of sedans and hatchbacks, the number of 'people' (and I use the term with some trepidation, as most of them are bought by ABN holders through business accounts) who buy trucks, and never ever use them for any work at all, has now eclipsed genuine workers who use trucks.
I had a general sense of this when I was looking into the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries' data sets and was curious and a little saddened that less than a quarter of vehicles sold today, are 'private' sales. The means that more than 75% of all are 'business' sales. The unsaid truth that the data does not bear out though, is that these are not really for business, are they? Even Blind Freddy can see that people plough private vehicles through businesses for tax purposes; which means that they expect the rest of society to effectively subsidise their lifestyle. Of course, given that everyone is inherently selfish, we already could have guessed that.
What's worse is that the result of people's selfish desire to own a truck, has started to tilt the curve of pedestrian deaths, and motor vehicle deaths back upwards. We could have already guessed this as well, as trucks tend to be more body-on-frame machines than unibody monocoques; which means that the energy in an accident is not dissipated through the bodywork of the vehicle but through the soft bodies of humans. Then again, we could have guessed this to because even the automakers knew that the kinds of people who were likely to buy trucks are less likely to have empathy for other road users.
However...
Feelings are not facts.
Feelings are not data.
The way to test a hypothesis is to actually go out and collect the data and see if it supports your theory; so me, being both curious and somewhat of a numberphile (data is beautiful), I went out and collected a data set by looking at was a"Work" truck and a "Not Work" truck for the month of April.
I can now definitively say that most trucks/utes on the road are not used for work.
I will not go into the truck/ute terminology debate for the simple reason that it is no longer useful. As Australia has lost its car industry, the need to defend what was uniquely our own, no longer exists. At any rate, in taking the details for this particular data set, I saw no Commodore Utes or Falcon Utes for the month of April. Therefore, trying to argue about a category when there were no things in it, seems less than useful. However, since I want to be correct, I shall call of of these things 'trucks'.
In deciding what was "Work" and "Not Work", I decided to take a pretty broad criteria for defining them. This for me was a hideously generous test of evidence. If the truck in question even had so much as one tool on display, or chequerplate boxes, or any kind of fitting where it could conceivably be used for carrying pipes, lumber, or other building materials, then it went into the Work category. If on the other hand, there was no evidence that the truck had ever been used for work, then it went into the Not Work category. Basically, if it looked like it would do Work then I assumed it would; if it looked like it would never do Work then I assumed it would be a Not Work truck.
Since my survey was purely based upon what I passed, on the road, whether driving, or as a passenger, in a car, on a train, or on the bus, then I assume it was a pretty random kind of survey. Also, since my commute goes from Marayong in Sydney's west, through to Mosman on the Northern Beaches, I can also say that my survey cuts across a broad range of socio-economic fortunes, ethnic groups, and trades and professions.
Here is the raw data:
Here is the organised data:
Immediately you can see that there are two obvious offenders; these are the Chevrolet Silverado and the Dodge RAM. In no circumstances where I saw one of these, did I ever see anything that would indicate that these things were used for work. One point deeper than this (and this doesn't form part of this data set), I also never saw anything that would indicate that these things were used to tow anything. I can conclude from the data that I have collected, that anyone who has either a Chevrolet Silverado or Dodge RAM and claims that they are using them "for work", is very much likely to be lying to you. In fact, they are priced so high, that the people likely to have such things in a work organisation are probably also likely to lodge Indivudual Tax Returns with the industry code 111111, which means that they are Managers.
At the other end of the data, is the Toyota Work Mate, which I decided to mark as distinctive from the Toyota Hilux. Hilux is a broad name that covers a bunch of stuff, but the distinction between Hilux and Work Mate is well worth making. A Work Mate is highly likely to be used for Work. I am quite frankly surprised that there were 3 which didn't appear to be either used for work or capable of such. I suspect that these three may have had either removable chequerplate boxes and/or were kept special. There are some people in the world who are fastidious in keeping their things nice.
The GWM Ute was also mostly a set of actual work vehicles; which makes sense as they are at the cheaper end of the market and I honestly do not know of anyone who would buy a GWM Ute as a status symbol. The sole GWM Ute which I saw as a Not Work truck, had no defining features which would have indicated that it ever went near any kind of building site ever.
The middle of the road set, are the Ranger, Hilux, D-Max, Amarok and curiously LDV T60. These all tend to be Not Work vehicles and together make up 65% of all trucks in the set. This is reasonably consistent with the monthly sales figures put out by the FCAI and VFACTS, with Ranger and Hilux taking turns swapping the No.1 monthly sales spot.
More than half of all of the trucks that I saw and noted for the month of April, were Not Work trucks. Furthermore, there also seemed to be a general trend that the more expensive that a truck was, the more likely that it was a Not Work truck. Actually, this is reasonably consistent with the general remuneration of society anyway, as wages tend to be apportioned more to management, than the people who actually do the real work of business. What are we to make of this?
The biggest broad trend is the one which has been happening in front of our faces. The general SUVification of everything has in fact already eaten the entire lineup of most sedans and hatchbacks of most car companies, save for a few examples where there are legacy hot-hatches and sports cars which are left over as halo pieces and now the ESTification of everything else, has begun.
The SUV or Sport Utility Vehicle, is notable for the fact that they are never used for sporting purposes, and they have less usable utility than a comparable station wagon. The intrusion of bigger suspension towers in an SUV, means that not only is there less usable space but that space is in fact harder to get at for most people.
The EST on the other hand, or Emotional Support Truck, has mostly taken the place of what used to be the performance version of sedans and hatchbacks. You can not buy a Holden Commodore SS anymore. You can not buy a Ford Falcon GT any more. There is no more Nissan Silvia to be had. What replaced these things? The Ford Ranger Raptor and the Toyota Hilux Rogue. The fact that they are clownshow abominations of things to drive is neither here nor there. The people who buy these kinds of things, aren't actually the kinds of people to care about how nicely their EST drives.
The prime reason why someone buys an EST, almost exclusively appears to be that they are a nasty selfish piece of work and they do not give an iota about any other road user. They like to use the excuse that they need them "for work" but the truth, which I now have the data for, also proves that to be a lie as well. Having said that, these nasty selfish pieces of work who do not give an iota about any other road user, also do not give an iota about making the general public subsidise their EST through tax advantages like asset write-offs, depreciation, and charging their private usage as business expenses. They know that the ATO is never ever going to actually look at their truck; so they feel perfectly entitled to charge taxpayers 30% of the expenses of their vehicles via tax advantage.
If someone says that they need a big truck for 'work', then the likelihood is that they do not. I find it also curious that those same people will then admit that they need their big truck to tow either a boat or a caravan; neither of which are work either but the expense will be charged through the business, so they do expect society to subsidise their lifestyle. Or rather, their imagined lifestyle, as the number of times that people actually tow a boat or a caravan is less than one per year. "Do you have a caravan?" is a nice follow up question, to which the answer is highly likely to be "No." The absolutely hilarious thing is that the standard towing vehicle in Europe is the Volkswagen Golf. You do not need a big truck to tow a caravan.
There is also something of cognitive dissonance going on, as the actual reason why people want trucks (and SUVs) is to cart their around family in, despite the fact that they almost certainly grew up in a family which had either a sedan or station wagon. Carting the family around is also Not Work but the expense will be charged through the business, so they do expect society to subsidise their lifestyle there as well.
If I wear my accountant's hat for a second, I will tell you that the most cost effective method of vehicle ownership is to buy the cheapest vehicle that your ego will allow, and then use that for the intended purpose. If you are a tradesperson, get a Toyota Work Mate or a GWM Ute with fold down metal sides if you need to cart around things like a cement mixer or moveable plant; or get a Toyota Hiace, Hyundai Staria, or Ford Transit van, if you have loose tools that you don't want stolen. A van is the ultimate work vehicle for a tradesperson because a van is the most Work of all the work things.
Spending more than $50,000 on truck which you also use to cart the family around in and pretend that you might want to tow a boat or caravan, is in principle, stupid. Not only have you bought a less useful thing than had you bought a station wagon, but you have a thing less actually capable of doing work in. One of my clients was exceptionally happy when I told him to get a Great Wall V240, so that he could use the rest of the money to buy a Toyota 86. An 86 is orders of magnitudes more fun than a truck.
If you tell me that you need a truck for 'work', my next question will be "what kind of truck do you have?" which I will then run through the matrix of data in my mind. I have a small but reasonably useful data set which shows that most trucks/utes on the road are not used for work. I can and will judge you because now, I will know that you are likely lying. Not only do you not need a truck for work, you are not going to use it for work.
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