u/Drzhivago138

Seeing a post of a Model A pickup earlier got me thinking: how did the OEMs decide that pickup beds would be certain lengths? A lot of early light-duty trucks had pretty small beds by today's standards.

8'x4' seems pretty obvious for being a match to the length and width of a lot of building materials, but not every brand offered it. GM and Dodge were still making 7.5' beds on their 1/2 and 3/4 tons in the '50s and early '60s.

And why 9' for a one-ton? If the shorter bed was 1.5 less than 8', why not make the longer bed 1.5 more?