Pickup Truck

A pickup truck is a light or medium-duty truck with an enclosed passenger cabin and an open cargo bed at the rear, called a ute in Australia and New Zealand and a bakkie in South Africa. The type emerged in the early 1900s; the Galion Allsteel Body Company built hauling boxes on modified Ford Model T chassis in 1913, and Ford introduced a factory steel-bodied half-ton model in 1925, priced at $281, of which 34,000 were built that year. Originally a work vehicle for farming and construction, the pickup shifted in the 1950s toward lifestyle ownership by American consumers rather than practical work use, and by the 1990s fewer than 15 percent of owners reported work as the truck's primary purpose. Pickups now account for about 18 percent of new vehicles sold in the United States, the Ford F-150 has been the country's best-selling vehicle every year since 1982, and full-size pickups generate more than two-thirds of the global pre-tax profit at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis despite being only about 16 percent of their North American production.