Chassis Question

[Johnielse]

just curious if anyone can explain why American trucks have massively long chassis'?

 

Better ride quality? Easier to back? Harder to find a park?

 

What's the reason behind it?

[DJMar]

Because you can't put a 4 door cab and 6 foot bed on anything less than a 19 foot frame.

On a more serious note, if you want to go down a rabbit hole, read up on US CAFE standards and what happened with them in 2011.

[Carmak]

DJ is spot on with the CAFE standards change. It allows more fuel consumption for larger vehicles. 

Additionally, Americans tend to buy trucks buy the foot, a longer truck can command a higher price because of the perception that you are getting "more" truck.

Lastly, except in a few of the large cities America has lots of space, so a long truck is not really difficult to use. I live in a rural area in the central part of the US (Iowa), and I have a truck that is 6.5 meters long that I use to pull an enclosed car trailer that is 8.5 meters long. I have traveled to many parts of Europe and Asia and my truck would be ridiculous in many of those places but where I live it is considered normal. Please understand I only drive my truck to move loads, I daily drive a minivan  .

[Ace-Garageguy]

Another thing to remember...the majority of new, huge, high-dollar pickup trucks in the US, particularly in urban areas, are rarely if ever actually used as "trucks", but rather are displays as status-symbols ($80-$100,000 in some cases) or "lifestyle/fashion statements".

As such, bigger is obviously better.

 

Edited 4 hours ago by Ace-Garageguy

[iamsuperdan]

Are you asking about pickups or big rigs?

 

With big rigs, the cabover design  was popular when there were length restrictions on trucks. Shorter cab meant you could have a longer trailer, thus carry more load. 

When the length restrictions disappeared, there was no longer any need to have short cabs. 

And of course, this lead inevitably to Bill's peacock analogy above.

 

[Tim W. SoCal]

2 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

Another thing to remember...the majority of new, huge, high-dollar pickup trucks in the US, particularly in urban areas, are rarely if ever actually used as "trucks", but rather are displays as status-symbols ($80,000 in some cases) or "lifestyle/fashion statements".

  It used to break my heart, yet crack me up when I was running the Service Department at a Powersports Dealer... These guys go out and spend $60K-80K on a new top-of-the-line pickup truck, then spend another $12K-20K for a 8"-12" lift, big, wide off road tires, Flowmaster mufflers, etc. They would also buy a new dirt bike at the same time. Now these guys weren't the most mechanically astute, so when they needed to replace their dirt bike tires (at the dealer because they wouldn't get their hands dirty) they would pull the wheels from the bike and, since they couldn't remember where the wheel spacers went, they would put the spacers on the axles and install the axles into the hubs. Now, with their super spiffy high-lifted trucks, they could not reach over the bed sides or even access the back of the bed with the tail gate down without using a ladder, so they threw their wheels onto the floor between the front and rear seats. As they traveled, the wheels would roll across the truck from side to side, causing the exposed axles to deeply scratch and scar the leather upholstery on the front of the rear seat and the backs of the front seats. Yep, tear up the interior of your truck, all for the illusion of being "cool"...

[espo]

20 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

Another thing to remember...the majority of new, huge, high-dollar pickup trucks in the US, particularly in urban areas, are rarely if ever actually used as "trucks", but rather are displays as status-symbols ($80-$100,000 in some cases) or "lifestyle/fashion statements".

As such, bigger is obviously better.

 

So very true.