If you want to buy a pickup truck in the U.S. these days, you mostly play by one rule: Go big or go home.
Gone are the days when buyers could choose from an array of compact, low-price trucks like the Chevrolet S-10 or the Dodge Ram 50. A decade ago, automakers abandoned their small pickups, opting instead to lean in to more expensive trucks that were bigger, longer, heavier -- and more profitable.
Now, they are curious to find out: Will buyers consider a small pickup truck again?
Slate Auto, a Jeff Bezos-backed startup, will sell a roughly $25,000 all-electric truck later this year that is smaller than a Toyota Corolla. Next year, Ford Motor plans to introduce a four-door, somewhat larger EV truck starting at $30,000. Ram, the pickup brand owned by global automaker Stellantis, aims to bring a compact pickup called the Rampage currently sold in South America to the U.S.
"There is a space at the bottom of the market for these smaller vehicles, " said Sam Fiorani, vice president of consulting firm AutoForecast Solutions.
Space is one thing. But whether demand will be there is the question.
Over 20 years ago, compact pickups with two seats and a single cab -- meaning little to no space behind the driver and passenger -- represented about 4% of all pickup sales in the U.S., according to car-shopping resource Edmunds.
The lone success story in recent years has been Ford's Maverick four-door pickup, introduced in 2021. The Maverick reset the standard of what's considered compact: the bed is shorter than the one-size-up Ranger, but it remains longer than tiny trucks from prior generations.
Still, it has found an audience. In 2025, Ford sold about 155,000 of the trucks, up 18% from a year prior.
That growth has propelled sales of compact trucks since 2021, from 1% to 6.7% last year of all pickups, according to Edmunds, which includes the Maverick and Hyundai's similarly sized Santa Cruz in the category.
Yet automakers sold 1.4 million compact pickups -- more than half of total pickup sales -- in their heyday of 1986, the Journal reported in 2004. In 2025, the Maverick and Santa Cruz represented only 180,550 of the 3.1 million pickups sold in the U.S., according to Motor Intelligence data. (Ford's Maverick has also handily outsold Hyundai's truck.)
The big sellers are full-size trucks like Ford's F-150 and Chevy's Silverado, as well as midsize pickups like the Toyota Tacoma.
Rich Klaben, a dealer with Ford and Jeep-Ram stores in Kent, Ohio, pines for the smaller Ford Ranger that his family dealership used to sell in droves in the 1980s and 1990s.
He thinks his buyers would come along for the ride if Ford considered making a slimmed-down pickup again. "If it's cheap, there is going to be a buyer for it," Klaben said.
Ralph Caruso, 76, currently owns a 2008 Ranger with an extended cab that provides small fold-up seats in the back. He purchased the truck after an accident totaled his older Ranger, which he also adored.
"Just something for human-size stuff that could go into normal situations without any drama," Caruso said. "The old Ranger fit the bill perfectly."
Klaben doesn't think Ford has assembled enough Mavericks to keep up with demand, particularly the fuel-efficient hybrids and the lower-priced, bare-bones versions, which start around $29,000, he said.
A Ford spokesman said the fact that trucks like Ranger and Colorado have gotten bigger over the years is what prompted Ford to offer the Maverick, he said. "It gives our customers options," he said.
One potential hangup for designing a cheaper truck today: door count. Industry analysts say that most consumers today want four full-size doors.
Most pickups with two doors are either full-size or heavy-duty trucks, industry data shows. Slate's aggressively priced pickup, which starts at $24,950, has two.
"Because this only does have two doors, I'm a little bit reserved about it being a huge hit among just the everyday consumer," said Robby DeGraff, an analyst at the research firm AutoPacific, about Slate's truck.
Ford's forthcoming EV truck will offer customary features like an infotainment system and four doors, even as the company aims for a $30,000 entry-level price.
The interest in compact trucks has drawn attention from other manufacturers. Toyota, which also sold a popular compact truck until it began upsizing, has weighed bringing a smaller pickup to the U.S., executives have said.
"We can't avoid looking at the Ford Mavericks and the Hyundai Santa Cruzes out there," said Sam De La Garza, Toyota North America's senior manager of truck product planning. A two-door, two-seat version of its Tacoma accounted for 4.5% of the truck's sales last year.
"It's certainly something we wouldn't want to walk away from," De La Garza said.
Write to Christopher Otts at christopher.otts@wsj.com and Ryan Felton at ryan.felton@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 29, 2026 05:30 ET (09:30 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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