Tiny-trucks making a return?

I was recently given the opportunity to staff and manage a production shift for a long time vendor who was backlogged on orders and losing ground. I accepted conditionally, pending placement in into a gig more in my wheelhouse.

The work is ship-through light duty upfitting for class 2 trucks. We are producing trucks for a large fleet customer, the kind of operation that buys trucks 300-500 at a time. My crew is doing simple installs; tool-boxes, tonneau covers, power inverters and the like. What is noteworthy isn’t the equipment we are installing but the equipment it is being mounted on.

These are trick trucks, not the optionless beaters that were so prevalent in fleet at one time. Crew-cab, OE backup cameras, power-seats, power mirrors and locks – your proverbial Sunday-go-to-Meet’n truck.

The irony enters stage-left with the domestic car manufacturers announcing that they are considering reintroducing the compact pickup in the domestic market. Yes, this is the same industry that has been telling us for decades that we needed tricker, bigger, better, more deluxe equipment. And they have done a remarkable job of that sales job based on what we see on the road today. As I said above, even fleet customers are leaning this direction. Fleet managers are pragmatic, if they believe a vehicle will resell for more at end of life with more do-dads, they buy more do-dads.

So, what drives this interest in re-penetrating a market that was abandoned years ago? Mom and pop America seems very content in their trucks that came with individual zip-codes, oil prices are falling as domestic production increases, and now we have a taste for trucks that drive more like Cadillacs and Lincolns than work vehicles. I would hypothesize that it is federal fuel mileage standards that are pushing the buttons right now.

You see, there is no free ride. It takes fuel to accelerate a 6400 pound living-room on wheels. And like it or not, Detroit knows that they are against the wall on trying to eek any better mileage out of their passenger car offerings to make their averages go up.

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe there is a place for a tiny-truck as I had very successfully used one myself during my contractor years (a second-hand Rabbit pickup, remember those?). But after years and years of brainwashing us into believing we needed bigger/better/tricker trucks, the ad campaign to get this market shift off the ground is going to be fun to watch!