That's the key people are missing, it's classic upselling. You're not comparing "nothing" to "truck" you're comparing "ok I get this vehicle that does X" to "or I get this other one that does X+Y".
This is the real reason the SUV has eaten everything, because the so-called "crossover SUVs" and other small ones are just fancy hatchbacks, and a car with a square butt will always be more useful than a similar sized car with a trunk.
The question was a large truck, but there’s also a complication here which might be fading with high interest rates: low rates, pandemic shortages, and improved wages meant a lot of buyers went upscale and that pushed the average truck sale price north of $60k, with a lot of luxury models in the $80k range. That’s what I had in mind for my comment.
