I have a large family and we drive a Transit 350 van.

One day we needed to move a pair of beds and mattresses. We asked my father in law to help us since he has a F150. But it soon became apparent how much more we could fit in the van (with the two back seats removed) than we could fit in the truck, which couldn’t even fit one mattress in the truckbed without hanging out the back of the tailgate.

From what I’ve seen my van is far superior to a truck in almost every need I’ve had. It can carry more stuff and it can do so in the rain keeping the cargo dry.

The one thing a truck could do that my van can’t is pick up a scoop of mulch or gravel dumped from a loader.

I know someone who insists that a pickup truck is more practical and her example is "you can lift a bookshelf over the side of a pickup truck instead of having to put it in the back like a van". Apparently it's more practical to lift something like 4 feet off the ground to the side of a pickup truck bed instead of like 1 foot to the floor of a van

Vans are work trucks. Pickups are poser trucks.

And it's not just the field of view, it's how the impact occurs. On a lower, sloped hood you bounce over the bonnet instead of a head-on bang with a higher, vertical, one.