And there were trucks like this in the 80s and 90s - the F-350 could tow 10,000kg on a gooseneck trailer, and an F-450 could haul about 20,000kg on the same, all with a simple 7.3L Duramax diesel engine that was very close to being completely electronics-free.
And with alternative fuels and basic tinkering, you could almost eliminate the emissions issue by having it run on peanut oil.
Plus, almost anyone could repair almost any part of the truck with relative ease. The main block and transmission might be beyond the wheelhouse of most, but most anything else could be repaired or replaced using only a basic set of tools.
Now you have these monsters almost twice the size which, while having all the creature comforts you can imagine, are lucky to run half as many km before the first major issue crops up, and after inflation cost two to four times as much.
And repairing them is quickly becoming out of the question with even trivial things - replace the brakes by yourself, and the truck refuses to start up until the work has been authorized by the mothership via an encrypted handshake, requiring a $100,000 piece of software that can only connect to the manufacturer with a $6,000/mo subscription.
That is an absolutely terrible trade-off.
