The market for pickup trucks and SUVs is like a sad, old country song right now. “If My Truck Could Run on Tears,” could be the lament of anyone with a cargo bed, thanks to four-buck-a-gallon gas.

Full-size pickup sales have fallen from 14 percent to 9 percent of the market in a matter of months. Buyers are fleeing to smaller cars, in what Ford sales analyst George Pipas calls the most dramatic market shift he’s seen in three decades.

Dealers and automakers are getting clobbered, with GM and Ford shuttering truck plants and Toyota and Nissan considering switching U.S. truck plants to build more efficient models instead. Sales of GM trucks and SUVs dropped 37 percent in May, and Ford announced a two-month delay in the launch of the 2009 F-150 pickup, citing a need to first draw down current inventory.

But while these are tough times for the real truck folks — contractors, landscapers and rural owners — there’s a silver lining to all this gas-price gloom. It’s suddenly become clear that many Americans can get along just fine without their three-ton, gas-guzzling friend. The myth of the pickup is dead. The SUV fairy tale is over. It’s a reality check, and ultimately that’s a good thing.

Haulin’ Hot Air?
As I’ve mentioned in previous articles on MSN, Detroit engineers have a dismissive phrase for big pickups and their owners. They’re known as “air haulers,” because 99 percent of the time most of the trucks drive around with empty beds. These owners have now discovered that hauling oxygen — or 60 pounds worth of hound dog — at $4 a gallon isn’t worth the cost.

For years, truck manufacturers hyped the myth, insisting that owners really needed these behemoths for towing boats, trailering horses, whatever. But that’s cattle manure, and the manufacturers always knew it. For every guy who’s actually chauffeuring a pair of ponies there are 50 urban cowboys who are all hat and no cattle, to use a handy Texas phrase. These guys aren’t hauling anything but their egos.

Turn on any Sunday football or baseball game and check out the truck ads for American myth-making at its best. You’re guaranteed to see cowboys roping steers and chugging up snowy mountainsides. Pickups slogging through ankle-deep mud with bulldozers hitched to the backs. How many people, outside of Wyoming, have even seen a real cowboy at work? How many people do you know who tow bulldozers around?

SUV Fallout
The same goes for SUVs. Jim Taylor, general manager of GM’s Cadillac division, offered a frank assessment of the market during our recent dinner in New York. Taylor was in town to show off the Cadillac Escalade Hybrid, a gas-electric version of what has been one of the most conspicuously consuming sport utes on the market. “People who had no real use for a truck,” Taylor explained, “where it was just fashion and image — that’s over.”

But Taylor says he’s convinced that larger families and people who do need space and capability will gravitate back to trucks. “There’s a core group that’s not at all interested in switching to a smaller car,” Taylor said. “But the 28-year-old kid who would have bought an Escalade, he might be switching to a sports sedan instead.”

It’s clear that those in the media who are gleefully pronouncing the SUV and pickup dead have it wrong, and some have been making those predictions for more than a decade. Even in the pits of this remarkable sales crash, full-size pickups are still outselling all hybrid models combined — by nearly four to one.

Yet it’s equally clear that many people who bought plus-sized pickups for the image could get along just fine with a smaller one. An interesting item went largely unnoticed in the recent sales reports. Toyota’s Tacoma pickup — among the best of the current midsize trucks — saw an eight percent uptick in May sales.

Many folk who have serious home-improvement chores can hire out delivery or rent a pickup truck when they have a job to do. And for hardworking people who really can’t live without their trucks, there are some bright spots in the gloom. With both Ford and Dodge readying redesigned versions of their top-selling F-Series and Ram pickups, they’re flat-out giving away their current 2008 trucks to make room for the new ones, cutting $10,000 or more off list prices.

As with big-rig operators who are struggling, at some point the truck-driving landscaper or contractor is going to have to pass the price of gasoline to the customer. Whether or not you drive a truck, you’ll likely shoulder some of the fuel-cost burden to keep your lawn tidy or your house looking good.

It’s in everyone’s best interest that automakers come up with a better, smarter breed of pickup. A similar market shift has been going full force as people dump old-school SUVs in favor of car-based crossovers that go farther on a gallon.

With a little imagination and a lot of engineering, carmakers can come up with pickups that work hard but drink less, and still offer enough of the macho-man styling that’s made them an American staple. Do that, and pickup lovers can sing a happier tune — and still have room for that hound dog in back. (MSN Auto)