Honestly this is absurd. These death machines shouldn’t be legal in europe. That thing doesn’t even fit in the parking space, even though the parking lot has the biggest spaces in the whole city. The Golf Polo is so small in comparison, it could even hide in front of the engine hood of the truck.
EDIT: It’s a Polo and not a Golf, I don’t know my cars, sorry for that!
Both of them are used to transport mostly a single person at a time. Even the small one is too big.
Fuck cars, not just big trucks. They all tuck, they all are responsible for the harm done.
But you forgot that the truck can be used to haul 4 pieces of lumber twice a year!
And only costs 1000x more than it would to rent a trailer for a day twice a year.
Exactly!
The Lowes near me you can rent a whole truck for like $20 + gas
Or, carry the same 4 pieces of lumber all year long and cause me anxiety everytime I’m driving behind.
How do Europeans get stuff for their house around? Like do appliances just get delivered as part of buying them? Or are there other companies that specialize in that sort of thing? Genuinely curious.
This question baffles me because it seems like a total non-issue to me as a European. How do Americans get stuff for their house around? Do you not have delivery or truck/van/trailer rental services, and are all your appliances (and not just fridges/freezers which are apparently hilariously big in the US) so American-sized that you can’t fit them in an average family hatchback/crossover/SUV? Or do you regularly move all of your stuff from one house to another?
Dude, as an American I had all of my appliances delivered. The Home Depot guys showed up with a box truck. It’s free delivery too so why would you even need a truck…. In fact, you can get a lot of stuff delivered for free or very cheaply from Home Depot.
The truck in this picture is so shiny it’s clearly a vanity vehicle. I’m guessing it’s owned by a member of the US armed forces judging by the star on the side? American military personnel are known to bring their vehicles with them from the mainland, to Japan or Europe.
You rent a truck or pay for delivery just like 80% of North Americans do.
Also how often do you need to haul furniture, the rental cost will never come close to the price difference between a car and a truck.
I hate that you’re being downvoted for asking a genuine question about cultural differences. Do better, Lemmy.
Yes companies deliver. This makes me wonder about something I’ve never thought of: do American shops not do this?
Aside from the free delivery of appliances others mentioned, I believe it is an EU law that a store that delivers whitegoods must also take the old one and properly dispose of it.
I ordered a new fridge lately. The delivery was free (I paid the extra €25 to have them install it and plug it in) and I had to clean the old fridge out before they arrived, but they took the old one down the same 3 flights of stairs they carried the new one up.
UK here. Yes you order an appliance and it gets delivered, and in some cases installed, by the retailer. If you have a plumber or kitchen fitter maybe they will collect it for you in their van. I’m sure you could save a bit of money on shipping if you collected it yourself, but not many people have the means to do so. And this way, if it’s damaged in transit, the retailer are liable.
Where I live in the States, all large retailers include free delivery and removal of your old appliance as part of the purchase of a new dishwasher, fridge, etc.
Even my new water heater was delivered and old one hauled off for free
Of course doing all that myself probably would’ve been cheaper, but I’m not a plumber, and doesn’t occur enough for a huge daily driver vehicle to make sense. Obviously they make sense as work vehicles for contractors etc but most people with a big truck don’t actually use it for those needs 99.9% of the time
In the U.S., giant trucks, which I refer to as shit wagons, outsell cars. Apparently car makers can charge huge amounts of interest to redneckistan cretins who want a $60,000 shit wagon.
Lithuanian here. My brother in law brought a refrigerator and a standard size washing machine in his ~2006 Mazda 3.
Seats can be folded or sometimes removed altogether, you can drive with your trunk not fully closed, just make sure everything is secured well and anything protruding from your car is marked with reflectors or bright coloured strips of cloth.
Hire a trailer? That’s what I do here in Australia with my small car. It can tow a trailer with appliances and furniture just fine.
You can also hire small removalist trucks that you can drive with a standard license if you have a lot of stuff.
Basically, yes. Appliances are delivered and installed, usually free of charge (read: the price of delivery and installation is just calculated into the price of the appliance). Same for furniture.
Most home improvement stores either offer a (paid) delivery service or you can rent a small van/truck to get your larger purchases home.
Trailer hitches are quite common too, allowing you to tow a simple trailer (which you can either buy or rent):
…how much house work do you ACTUALLY do? You can’t pay an extra $50 for delivery for that new washing machine you buy once a decade? I owned a house for fifteen years before downsizing and moving into condo life, and never once thought to myself gosh I wish I had a 6 ton gigantic truck to get stuff for my house around.
Uh… Ever heard of trailers?
In Sweden many lumberyards, furniturestores and shops for appliances got trailers you can borrow for free. For people living more remote it’s amazing what you can pack into a Volvo. That and you likely have a neighbour with a trailer.
I am not even european but all of my big appliances (refrigerator, stove, washing machine) were delivered to my home by the store I bought them from, either free of charge or super cheap, I can’t remember. I’ve also bought bricks amd had them delivered to my doorstep.
Actually, we do have trucks and SUVs and pickups, too. Though they are usually a bit smaller than an F150 or RAM 3500, so we often use trailers if we need to transport larger items.
Folks living in the center of big cities (which I personally believe are a bit overrepresented in this sub) often live in flats where stuff like dishwashers and washing machines are already provided, so they don’t need to transport that, or even don’t need/have a car at all. For those, there are delivery services and light trucks that can be rented.
Wagons can hold a huge amount of stuff. For everything else there’s trailers available at most manned fuel stations and also loaner trailers available for chains selling large items.
If we do want a transport vehicle it will almost certainly be a van. Trucks are very rare where I am in Sweden.
Most household appliances I have ever bought fit in a Polo or similar sized cars, if you wrap the back seat bench.
For > 1.8 m and < 50 kg stuff I use a rack.
To be fair – the older generations of Polo were on the smaller side of compact cars. I’ve used VW Polo Variant, Mitsubishi Wagon R, Mercedes A, Hyundai I 10 and modern Polo myself.
If my car is too small, I ask family/friends/neighbors or rent a van.
Most shops that sell big appliances offer a delivery service as well.
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I think they are called hatchbacks in english(Kombi meine ich). You can fit most appliances into there when you fold the seats. That’s how my parents always transported large things. For even larger things we just got a trailer.
Since I don’t have a car I usually just get things delivered. And the guys who deliver it just drive vans.
Yeah, part of the business.
They often charge based on delivery distance or area, but we’re not a massive country. Odds are you’re within 10 miles of the shop.
We get large appliances delivered. Stuff like washing machines or smaller refrigerators easily fit in medium or large hatchbacks. I’ve comfortably transported a washing machine, crapload of fruits and veggies from the countryside, and my 20 kg dog in my Renault Laguna hatchback once.
New appliances are usually delivered, yes. Big stores have their own delivery service, others use the national postal service or one of the many private ones.
For moving old furniture, there are specialized companies (mostly small sole proprietorships) that come to your house with a van, load your stuff, and drive it to a new location. Or you can rent a van or a truck (I mean an actual cargo vehicle, not what you see in the picture).
American here. All of my appliances have been delivered. Sometimes I even pay to have them installed.
how often do you move your appliances around?
but yeah most often they deliver it
Not often. But I do buy some here and there. Fences. I have a dog and a little boy. We build stuff.
I have a dog and build stuff and we have a little Toyota Yaris lol
I once fit all the building materials for a super king bed in my little Yaris which still impresses people over here. Absolute worse case scenario, I could get a man with a van to haul something I defo couldn’t haul for like £20, but I’ve never had to. Places like b&q or wicked (uk equivalent to like home depot or lowe’s) will deliver next day for cheap too, so it’s a non issue.
Here it takes more coordination. Especially for lumber stuff. Now and days I fit most in my Integra. But there are time I wish I had more capacity.
At the moment maybe it does, but that’s something that could change. I grew up in the US and I genuinely don’t remember trucks being so huge when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s. My dad had a work truck and the trucks now would eat that thing for breakfast.
Those old Toyota small sized trucks were perfect for short jots. But they are no longer sold.
Ah yes, activities famously absent in the rest of the world where people drive normal sized vehicles.
“I like having a huge monster of a vehicle and this outweighs the negative impact of my choices for me” is a perfectly fine thing to say instead of scrambling to come up with weird reasons one might want to own a giant car.
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Polo is not the only car in Europe. Europeans use cars that i believe Americans would call station wagon. Those cars used to be used widely in US as well AFAIK until car producers figured out they can sell you more expensive cars by making it bigger.
I own “station wagon” car, it’s dwarf compared to these monster trucks but i can make 6.6 ft long double bed in the back where two people can sleep comfortably. I transported single bed sized furniture with that car and it uses approx 1 gallon of gasoline per 62 miles.
Don’t let me start on trailers. Every European car even smallest ones can tow reasonable sized trailer with “dirty” or too bug cargo to fit inside a car. All you need is hook installed once in car life time.
Also if you buy new anything in Europe, most shops will make sure you get it delivered at your doorstep and won’t trow it at your front yard when you are not there. It has to be given “from hand to hand” often even requires verification of receiver.
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You’re very generous lol
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The golf will also get farther with the same amount of fuel. Way farther.
That’s a Polo, the Golf is a tad bigger
In the States, the same choads that drive tankmobiles tend to complain about fuel prices and how it’s all big gubmint’s fault for stealing their fun (fun being defined as the ability to do 95 mph on the interstate and still pay under $50 for a tank of gas).
Just imagine those people being forced to pay European fuel prices…
Just yesterday I got gas for our car at a convenient price of 8.2$/gal (1.98€/l). E95, no idea how that compares to whatever the hell they sell on across the pond.
The last fuel station I saw on Sunday had E95 for €2.389/l - at a motorway in the Netherlands.
Not with a flat tyre.
The car doesn’t have a flat tyre, it’s actually in the parking space unlike the truck…
I’d wager a sizeable number of half-ton pickup trucks are used solely as people movers, i.e. the bed and towing capabilities aren’t utilized. In many countries, trade workers more than manage with light vehicles, like kei trucks in Japan, so I think they’d work for the average weekend warrior too.
What always gets me is how shitty pick-ups are at transporting things.
A percussionist I know has a double cab van, I think it’s a Ford transit. It can haul 3 timpani, a drum, tubular bells, a bass drum and other smaller stuff all in one trip. And then it still has space for 5 people. Try doing that with a pick-up.
As a bass player, a VW Touran can fit two double basses and two people. Can’t do that in a pick-up.
Those are roughly the same size as a 150 though, aren’t they?
Why is a behemoth of a van OK, but an equal sized pickup isn’t?
Because pick-ups are truly unfit for purpose unless the purpose is to increase your confidence and sense of safety on the road. We are always gonna need utility vehicles for specific purposes. A percussionist is not hauling drums on the train.
You could easily do what you said with a pickup with a canopy though, while still having the towing and off road capabilities.
Can you forklift a pallet from the side? Nope the tub design doesn’t allow it unless you have a tray design.
Can you load a large ladder on it? No ladder/timber rack.
Is it good off-road? Perhaps, but the tub design over the rear tyres and back bumper make the departure angle poor, you’ll need rock sliders or a lift.
I think I’ll stick to wagons and vans.
You can put a roof rack on almost any vehicle, just BTW.
Show me how you transport a ton of gravel in your car please (and remember, a ton is more than the towing capacity of the vast majority of cars, so no cheating!)
The places around me will deliver it for quite cheap so the uh, 2 times in my life I need that I’ll just do that?
How often does the average person haul tons of earthen materials around?
And what do they use to deliver it?
Never a pickup truck, that’s for sure. Usually a tilt bed truck in my experience. Not something you’d generally want to drive unless you’re moving gravel.
Professional delivery truck with a lifting bed to slide the earth off the back easily wherever you ask them to
A specialized vehicle, not a crappy pickup truck
In my case multiple times a year… plus construction material, furniture, motorcycles… In the end I need to haul heavy shit multiple times a month.
Yet, people would take pictures of my SUV and call me an idiot with no respect for driving a big vehicle… With a 4 cylinders that has a fuel consumption that’s the same (or better) as AWD cars that these same people don’t criticize???
With a 4 cylinders that has a fuel consumption that’s the same (or better) as AWD cars that these same people don’t criticize???>
The fuck you talking about?
More weight = more gas needed to move said vehicle… how can this be possible? Unless your making shit up.
All highway, 8.2L/100km, mixed, 9.5L/100km.
AWD cars with similar power (so mostly V6) are higher than that, even more so if I include towing capacity in the comparison.
What’s the car?
Just do a little bit of research into the fuel efficiency of various sized vehicles, the correlation is not direct and some larger vehicles get better gas mileage than smaller vehicles strictly due to efficiency. A small inefficient motor and a large efficient motor may yield the same mpg, but the large efficient motor is extracting more power from the same fuel source. And that’s not even getting into diesel versus gasoline…
Most of your fuel use goes towards overcoming aerodynamic drag, especially at highway speed.
Yeah and a larger vehicle will create more drag… So what’s your point?
I think its fair if people call you an idiot for buying an SUV to haul shit - there are far better vehicles for the job.
Yes, better drive a truck instead of taking my trailer with me just when it’s necessary, so I take more space and have worse fuel economy 👍
I mean with reasoning skills like that I’m not sure you should be qualified to drive either of those things lol
I have a small trailer. Towing capacity of my 2003 Subaru WRX is 1500 lbs. So I guess two trips? Truth be told, that’s why I have the trailer. For when I need to move a decent volume of random crap for work.
I don’t think the people here are complaining about pickups when used for work, but they are shit vehicles for daily driving. And, this is my personal opinion, crew cabs are usually not utilized to transport workers. More than not, I expect they are because they think they’ll take the family or kids in it. Even then they usually drive without any passengers.
I get that a lot of workers don’t want to have two vehicles, but pickups are not good daily drivers.
By picking up a phone and calling a company. Checkmate
Two words: commercial van. Seriously, they’re great.
Do many trades genuinely work out of Kei trucks? I feel a lot of people here don’t understand just how tiny they are.
headlights shouldn’t be allowed that high on road vehicles, blinding menace on wheels.
I also started to see more of these in urban areas of europe. Not a huge amount but still recognizable. I dont get why one would buy something like this. You wont even be able to find a proper parking spot for these.
100% they are buying these to “protest” the “green agenda” or some bullshit like that.
That’s not very strong in EU, it’s mostly for ego, people buy cars that they think look like the image they want to display.
That’s not very strong in EU
??? Thats just wrong lol
In which EU country is there a notable percentage of people buying big cars to protest the green agenda? Never heard of it in France. I do know a lot of people who buy cars for the image and the social status however.
Here in Sweden it’s certainly not an insignificant opinion amongst car enthusiasts.
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Towing and hauling larger than car type things.
Yes. Both cars fit the same amount of people but one driver is carrying a smaller package.
I see you know the driver of the truck. 😈
ayy lmao
I think the most absurd is, that even former basic cars like the Polo get bigger and bigger. Modern Polos seem to take up more space than a gen. 1, 2, or even 3 Golf - but with barely more space inside.
Effects are, they take up more public space when curb parking, perversely hindering their brothers to get through. Some just barely fit single garages built in the 50ies, totally inconveniencing the driver trying to get out. One’d thing people buying these would see these self created problems, but apparently not.
Ok but a lot of that space is taken up by crumple zones and the like, things that make far fewer people die. Euro NCAP legislation drives a lot of the change you are seeing, and a lot of it for the better.
Completely agree, Crumple zones, sound deadening, side impact safety bars, airbags, rollover reinforcement, even just the structure of the seats has changed dramatically over time. Sit in a mk1 golf or polo and marvel at the exterior coloured painted metal on the inside of the car, and now think, how was it ok to make a car with this little safety?
Crumple zones do not reflect the ridiculous proportions of that pickup truck.
The VW has perfectly fine crumple zones for a collision with another car of up to double it’s mass and size. They are also designed to give pedestrians a fighting chance of minimal injury in built up areas.
Due to the arrival of these pickups, all cars need to get bigger and more reinforced to deal with a collision.
Trucks are actually the vehicles that have increased in size the least if you compare the same models (same brand, same cab and bed), height is the only major difference that make them seem much bigger than the older models and that height is due in part to safety standards, including the capacity to hold 1.5 times their weight on their roof.
I hate how not mini the Mini is now.
I mean, the Mini Cooper S is really only 7” longer and 200lbs more than it was a decade ago, and the rest of the dimensions are pretty much the same. There are loud of other models they make which I do agree aren’t very small lol
a decade ago
That wasn’t a MINI either. The last really small MINI was produced 23 years ago. See also here: https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/mini-cooper-1990-3-door-hatchback-vs-mini-cooper-2013-3-door-hatchback/
They don’t see their big car being the issue. They complain about parking spaces so small these days that they “have to” use up multiple/park halfway on the curb/block the biking lane.
Yeah basically all modern cars have tiny interior volumes, even tho externally they are huge.
As a comparison, my 2014 Nissan Note can maximally carry 2012 liters. The 2023 Renault Espace - a label whose name literally means spacious - can only carry 1818 liters. And that’s while it’s 50cm taller, wider and longer than the Nissan while weighing a whopping 50% more.
I don’t know about interior volume, but the only modern cars that I’ve been in that I actually considered spacious on the insides are those newer Civic models. Like from 2015 or so. My friend has one of them, they’re decently compact from the outside, but my god the only time I’ve had that much legspace and headroom in a car was in vans.
Now, admittedly, you’re not gonna be hauling sofas and fridges with one, but as a people mover and grocery getter? Really damn good.
Exactly. I honestly think my 2 door saloon has more capacity than all these light SUVs.
I’m seeing these in London now. Why are we importing the absolute worst of US transportation fucks ups?
How else are you going to let people know you lost the genetic lottery?
Can you store up to 10 corpses on that Polo?
It seems like a lot of people here don’t understand that circumstances might be different in different places. This post itself assumes the only reason is to transport people, but the truck can do more than that.
If I lived in a rural place and needed something that could tow, transport, and go over tougher terrain, I could see the usefulness of having a truck around. Not everything is in a comfy city where everything is within a couple miles.
Now where I currently live, I’d never dream of getting a truck like that. So much hassle and the roads are too small. But I could see it being useful for someone else.
Get the Ordnungsamt involved, it’s illegal to park like that. It’s too heavy and big to try to park like a car.
Lol good luck with that. At least where I am the Ordnungsamt is beyond useless.
I see those pick-ups all the time and almost never are they properly parked. Just like in the picture lmao.
However, only a single car possesses the ability to signal your fellow drivers about the astonishingly delicate nature of your masculinity.
![[image] Both cars fit the same amount of people](https://feddit.de/pictrs/image/e42dc262-7043-4d72-b919-e2e83f8729d9.jpeg){kind=link}