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Pick up: is a light duty truck having an enclosed cab and an open cargo area with low sides and tailgate. Once a work tool with few creature comforts, in the 1950s consumers began purchasing pickups for lifestyle reasons and by the 1990s less than 15 percent of owners reported use in work as the pickup truck's primary purpose. Today in North America, the pickup is mostly used like a passenger car and accounts for about 18 per cent of total vehicles sold in the US.

The term pickup is of unknown origin. It was used by Studebaker in 1913 and by the 1930s pick-up (hyphenated) had become the standard term. In Australia and New Zealand ute, short for utility vehicle, is used for both pickups and coupé utilities. In South Africa people of all language groups use the term bakkie, a diminutive of bak, Afrikaans for bowl/container, due to the cargo area's similarities with a bowl and container. 

Truck: (or lorry) is a motor vehicle designed to transport cargo. Trucks vary greatly in size, power, and configuration; smaller varieties may be mechanically similar to some automobiles. Commercial trucks can be very large and powerful, and may be configured to mount specialized equipment, such as in the case of fire trucks and concrete mixers and suction excavators.

Modern trucks are largely powered by diesel engines, although small to medium size trucks with gasoline engines exist in the US, Canada, and Mexico. In the European Union, vehicles with a gross combination mass of up to 3.5 t (7,700 lb) are known as light commercial vehicles, and those over as large goods vehicles.