If you combine Sierra and Silverado sales, Ford, GM and Ram pickups are the biggest-selling vehicles in Canada by some margin. Living in rural Manitoba and working in agricultural engineering, most of my colleagues drive trucks and often rib me for driving a Civic and assume that it's slow, noisy and uncomfortable.
My BIL's all have their own businesses and use trucks for their jobs, which is fair enough and my FIL farms so uses his (a 2013 Silverado) for his job too. I'm originally from the UK, where you can't buy anything like an F150, Sierra/Silverado or Ram, so coming here and having the opportunity to drive a full-size truck was a new experience for me. Getting to drive something with a V8 had some novelty and when I drive a truck, it's normally in the spring/summer and I need it to do truck stuff like dump runs and collecting large purchases. For this reason, I have considered purchasing a truck in the past, plus when my parents visit from the UK, there are 6 of us including the children, so I can see some merit in a 6-seater full-size truck.
However, this last weekend, I had a fireplace and an area rug to pick up from town and my FIL had a curling match a bit further afield, so it suited both of us to swap vehicles and I used the truck as my sole vehicle for the weekend and by the end of the weekend, I actually came to the conclusion that un-Canadian as it sounds, I'm not really a truck fan and couldn't wait to get my Civic back!
So what didn't I like?
Well firstly, I'm only 5'8", so feel a bit like a child driving a big truck and climbing up into it isn't the easiest thing for me to do!
Secondly, when cornering and braking, I'm always very conscious about the massive inertia and weight. Just touching the brakes doesn't produce the deceleration that I would get in my car and it always takes longer to stop and I have to brake harder than I think I will. If it were to start sliding, which isn't unusual in this icy weather or get out of shape, then I think that I would panic a bit and not necessarily be able to catch it, whereas in a car, I think that I could 99% of the time. So despite the 4WD and chunky tires, I feel more confident driving the Civic in icy conditions. The truck also had a pretty choppy ride compared to the Civic.
Thirdly, Saturday morning was cold and frosty. I remote started it 5 minutes before I left home, as I would with my car and when I got in, the windshield was still frozen and the cabin took ages to heat up. In 5 minutes, my car would have been defrosted and warm.
Fourthly, parking and manoeuvrability. I had to go to the mall and the parking lot was quite busy. Normally I would park closer but due to the size of the thing decided that parking in front of the abandoned Target store would be a better idea. Walking a bit further and getting some exercise wasn't necessarily a bad thing and it wasn't too cold but if it had been and I had lots of shopping to carry, it would have been a bit of a PITA. I later went to the supermarket, which was also busy and thanks to the turning circle of an oil tanker, had to back up and hold up traffic to make it around a corner that my car or a smaller SUV would have managed in one go no sweat!
Fifthly, practicality. Yes, I was able to transport my purchases (after all that's why I borrowed the truck) but the box got wet and when I went into the supermarket, I had to leave my $700 fireplace unsecure in the back (fortunately no-one took it). I wanted to park in the middle where less people would see it but the parking spaces were too tight, so I had to park on the edge where it was more vulnerable to the casual thief.
Sixthly, running costs. I averaged 16L/100km (double what I get in the Civic) and used $40 of gas on one trip. $40 of gas would typically do that trip 5 times in the Civic. My boss lives in town, doesn't need a truck for work and yet has a 2nd mortgage on a truck and pays someone with a car to drive him to work because the truck uses too much gas. I have never understood why he doesn't just sell the truck and get a nice car/SUV that he could actually use!
Performance? Yes, it is marginally faster than the Civic I expect but for over double the power (5.3 V8) that doesn't seem that great. It seems like a bit of a waste of a nice engine, as in a decent car, it would be properly quick. For me, diesel seems to make more sense in a truck.
OK, so unsurprisingly it was harder to park and used more fuel than my car but it wasn't that quick. Yes, it got the job done and I would never have been able to fit those purchases in my Civic but then a smaller wagon/van/SUV/crossover would have too, been easier to park, used a lot less gas and my purchases would have been secure. For that matter, I rented a VW T5 Transporter cargo van (diesel of course) in the UK once and it was lovely to drive, did 40mpg and had a huge cargo area, so it's a shame that you can't buy anything like that here.
For me, I like the idea of a truck more than the reality then. For 99% of my use, it is worse than a car, especially in town. I can see if you really work your truck, loading it up and towing why you might love it though.
I prefer the older trucks (pre-2004), as they are a bit more honest about their utilitarian purpose and a bit less about showing off! I review vehicles for the local newspaper and will be reviewing the new GMC Canyon and Toyota Tacoma next year, so maybe a smaller truck will make more sense to me?
Am I alone in not really being a truck guy?
