TRUCK / LAURIE NOMENCLATURE

I was prompted to write this, as many persons were confused with an ad that I had for a pick-up truck bed liner, regarding the type pick-up truck application.

There are two types of pick-up truck beds; the type having the greater cargo space, wheel-wells on the inside of the bed and a flush exterior side. The other type, the earlier of the two designs, having the wheel-wells on the outside with a flush cargo-area side panel. These two types are/were made in full-sized, mid-sized or compact.  

Pick-up trucks are basically of three size-models. The terms, "full-size", "mid-size" & "compact" refers mostly to the width, but all proportionally vary in length. However, the lengths often are optional among all three models. The full-sized pick-ups come in two standard bed-lengths--6.5 feet and 8 feet (2 meters & 2.4 meters).

Pick-up trucks are not truly trucks; so, to avoid confusion, you should refer to them not as "trucks"--but as "pick-up trucks".

Trucks are larger, about 1 1/2 ton and up. The tonnage term doesn't refer to the weight of the pick-up truck, just a reference to the payload capacity--but not the exact enumeration of payload weight. Probably, it did long ago. You see, a "half-ton" pick-up can carry more than a half-ton (1000 lbs) payload.

Some of the older pick-up truck makers were Dodge (Fargo in Canada), Ford, GMC/Chevy, IH (International Harvester), Willis (Willis-Knight) and Studebaker

Highway signs such as those seen on parkways, stating "NO TRUCKS", aren't meant to include pick-ups as they are really not trucks.

This misnomer, referring to pick-up trucks as trucks, exemplifies the error of reference to an SUV as a truck. SUV's are really a type of heavier-chassis station wagon. I say that they are mini raised-roof station wagons with over-size wheels.

By the way, these larger-than-often-necessary wheels and tires are fuel wasting, because of inertia--the resistance to the stopping and starting of a mass. This waste is exaggerated by poor driving habits such as "racing" to the next stop thus wasting built-up energy through the application of the brakes.

Richard Stuart Otto, 17 May 2006