Im not a truck person, but if someone actually uses their truck to haul shit around then that is by definition not a pavement princess.

A pavement princess is a truck or an offroad vehicle that is never used for any of the purposes it was engineered for, like hauling shit or driving offroad.

Also, hauling lumber with a truck is infinitely better than the dumb shit people do to haul lumber otherwise, simply because theyre too lazy to rent a truck for a day. The other week I saw someone with a few 12ft pieces of lumber sticking 6ft up and out the sunroof of their audi a4. Just fuckin rent an appropriate vehicle, its not that hard

I have a wagon but the appeal of a truck is no vertical limit, so you wouldn’t have to disassemble, say, a snowblower with a non moving handle to bring it elsewhere.

The appeal would be higher if the bottom of the bed wasn’t ten feet off the ground

like somebody else said, if the loop is just on the hatch instead of on the body, there'd be a spot to hook onto lol. like on most hoods that I've seen, where the receiver is fixed and the hook is on the moving part.

but yeah agreed on the truck not being necessary. I've hauled a lot of stuff in smaller cars than this, and safely. I wouldn't drive this on the highway, but 15 minutes home on busy (so not high speed) stroads and residential streets? absolutely. this was an unusual load (typically I either have the hatch closed or use the trailer, been quite a while since I needed to have the hatch open tbh, many vehicles ago), but it was still perfectly fine. I made sure to say the incantation and perform the accompanying gesture before I left.

I loved my A5 Sportback for its utility. Though not a wagon, it was as long if not longer ...around 4.7m iirc and could squeeze lots of stuff in as long as it wasnt too tall while also being wide.

not gonna work for 16 footers lol

also not rated for much mass unfortunately. although tbf those are very conservative ratings due to load variation possibilities

none of the times I've had to do this have been with a vehicle where the hatch latch had a spot to hook onto, they've all had the receiver on the hatch and the loop on the trunk floor

how does that keep the hatch down?

depends on what your concern is. the strap tension load isn't harming it at all (mostly internal forces), and the inertial force of the load in regular driving is more or less in line with what it would experience in a crash with somebody in the seat, except much lower load

there's a little bit of twisting on it when hitting bumps due to the unsupported middle of the boards, which is admittedly not great, but I'm not concerned at that at all because I pretty much never have passengers back there, so the chance of having a passenger, crashing in a way where this has been weakened enough to fail, and for it to fail in a way that makes it worse for the passenger is just not something I'm care about lol

gen 3 outback, a car generally severely lacking in interior features

it's a piece of shit now but I guess I'll keep it until it falls apart because there's not really a replacement for it lol

trying to get a 2015ish Elantra Touring for when it does die