Hey, German here. What the f*** are Americans doing at the other side of the Atlantic? Some of you already know this monstrosity. I did’nt. This is a Ford F650 Truck and when I stepped out of my Youtube Bubble I realized, it was marketed as the “biggest, baddest Truck on the road” for the everyday American. Are you guys serious?! Is the end goal really to drive a Monster Truck to McDs to get a McFlurry? Americas bloodiest wars have been fought in the middle east to secure oil, bombing nations to rubble. And all, for this bullshit? The excess, waste and decadence is mind boggling to me and people on Reddit seriously justifying this by “you know dude I’m 6,4ft. I don’t fit in any other vehicle” makes me go up the wall.

  • Beefalo@midwest.socialEnglish
    151·
    11 months ago

    The Ford F650 is part of a platform that, as you can see, is heavy-duty enough that you can put a proper dump bed on the back. It can be built many different ways, and the way that Ford will sell the vast majority of these trucks is that it will sell a cab and empty frame to another company, who will then build something else around it, some sort of heavy-duty thing that will see quite a lot of professional use, probably off-road more often than not. The massive ground clearance will look a lot more appropriate when this truck ends up where it belongs.

    These things end up with buckets on the back, and used for powerline maintenance, or the entire back end becomes a steel locker for a bunch of welding and fabrication equipment. Once it is specced out properly, the size of it will make sense.

    This model of truck is large and serious enough to also come with a proper, grown up diesel engine comparable to other heavy equipment engines in both weight and general durability. That it is the true purpose of the Ford F650, it is big and heavy enough to accept a respectable diesel engine for a proper dump truck, not the little baby diesels in the F150s, but one that is probably not available in anything smaller, a diesel that will actually last for 1 million km if maintained. It won’t even be a Ford engine, it will probably be a Cummins or another brand common in American heavy equipment, not passenger cars.

    I am not trying to flex when I say this thing isn’t a toy. The transmission for it probably isn’t available in any other Ford pickup. They’re too small. Most of them will not spend a lot of time in the commuter lane, they’ll be on job sites all day. Even Americans don’t really drive the truck in the picture. The thing is in a class by itself.

    Ford may as well sell a civilian version in case any Texas oil boys want the biggest truck on the block, but that just means adding a pickup truck bed to it, which goes with the rest of the cab in front. It certainly looks ridiculous. But somebody will want it to pull a really long horse trailer, so the bed back there is just a place to install a fifth wheel, the attachment point for a goose neck trailer. The owner will probably be somebody with a successful contracting business, somebody who can justify this thing as a proper business expense, since their other vehicle will say Caterpillar on it somewhere and has to also be towed on a trailer from job site to job site.

    That is what the Ford F650 is for, and can do, it tows other heavy equipment around on public roads. It looks a lot less ridiculous with a skid loader and heavy trailer behind it. Park it next to a piece of proper construction equipment and it looks like a baby toy. It is small by heavy equipment standards, so that makes it maneuverable on construction sites.

    The size of the current F150, the truck meant for average office workers to buy, that is the problem. It is unreasonable and no longer even fit for its original utility purpose. The modern F150 is too big, too expensive, and too cushy to be a farm truck, or a work truck on a job site. It is extremely common, overtall, and perfect for killing pedestrians.

    The size of this thing, the F650, is not actually an issue. It is huge for defensible reasons, and it just looks crazy when you try to spec it out for civilian pickup use, because that’s fuckng crazy. It looks striking in the marketing material, for sure. We’re discussing the beast right now. Victory achieved for the marketing guy who insisted on offering this spec. Now even the Germans are aware of the truck.

    But, oops, I can only assume that this entire “fuck cars” community is just the online version of those Just Stop Oil pricks, it’s all the idea of some PR firm who want to make public transport advocacy look like a position for shitty assholes with no respect for the needs of others. So I assume you don’t care about a proper explanation. I didn’t realize I was here when I started typing. Too late now.

    I wish Reddit would stay on Reddit, instead of growing into completely different websites like some sort of mold. But anyway, the F650 is not actually a problem.