That's the thing, it's not the trucks themselves that are the problem. It's the size of them these days and their perception as a do-it-all vehicle. Theres just no reason the average truck user needs to sit 5 feet off the ground unless they're hauling something in the ballpark of a 75-foot luxury camper on a regular basis. Not to mention the height of the hood and headlights, the ubiquitous extended cabs which kinda defeat the purpose by shortening the bed (Hauling the family and their stuff is what mini vans and station wagons always were for), those trucks with permanent covered beds parading as SUVs... Regular consumer vehicles and work vehicles alike seemed to get by without those things before the 2010s and not much has changed since then, unless you count the need to compete with the size of what everyone else is driving.

But good luck finding a light duty low-to-normal-rise truck with a full size bed that does just what you need for occasional use without the compromise on efficiency for daily driving if that's what you so choose. I'm beginning to think that all this marketing around trucks isn't actually about selling them to people who need trucks to use them as trucks 🤔

Last thing is there aren't any real incentives to reach better fuel efficiency on truck platforms. It doesn't cost nearly as much more to develop and manufacture them as customers are willing to pay for them- trucks make up to 90% of profit for a company like Ford. Plus they're a loophole in US emissions policy. So more thought and funding could be put into making them more efficient, but that's not what the buyers are buying them for and that's not what the government is incentivising for, so the industry just goes "meh, just make 'em bigger, add some tech gimmies, and then go heavy on the marketing so we can squeeze more out of the customers this year than we did last year".

Whew sorry that was a bit of a rant... I just have a permanent bug on my shoulder when it comes to what capitalism has done to transportation in the US.