Echoing the OP a little bit, even though I currently drive a pickup, in a perfect world I'd have a single-cabin type vehicle, i.e. a wagon of some type. IMO a wagon type vehicle is simply more useful and versatile for what I do. The biggest advantage of a wagon type vehicle is that you can use the same space for either passengers or cargo, just depending on whether you flip the 2nd row seat down, although that depends on whether the manufacturer was smart enough to create a vehicle with a completely flat load deck - which unfortunately, most modern manufacturers don't do.
My 2 4runners were particularly annoying in this regard. It wouldn't have been that difficult to create a flat load deck but for reasons of cheapness, I'm sure, Toyota decided that it wasn't important in the 3rd and 4th gen 4runners.
By contrast my GMT800 Suburban was magnificent - I could remove the 3rd row, drop the 2nd row and I had an 8' long perfectly flat surface for cargo, sleeping, etc. It was a beautiful design (that of course, they threw away to turn the Suburban into a giant mini van. Don't get me started on that...) My gripe with a pickup is that the "bulkhead" between the cab and the bed means I can't really have a long, unobstructed load deck in either one.
The only reason I drive a pickup now is because the large SUVs have left the "utilitarian" users like me behind, so if we want the utility of the truck we also have to have the limitations of the pickup bed design.
As I said in my first post, all choices like this are SOME kind of compromise. I decided to compromise on the cabin space in order to give myself the capability of the truck, and I'm willing to accept the limitations that compromise entails.
