What Is a ‘Regular Cab’ Pickup Truck?
Have you heard fans of pickup trucks refer to their “regular cab” and been confused about what exactly they meant? “Regular cab” is classic slang for a two-door pickup truck with no rear seats. It is also called a standard cab. The name made a bit more sense back when a two-door truck with a single bench seat was the default pickup configuration, and the four-door “Crew Cab” was a rare option. But today, regular cabs make up a fraction of pickup truck sales.
What does Regular Cab mean?
A regular cab pickup truck has two doors and one row of seating (CarMax.com). This is often a bench seat with three seat belts, but a regular cab truck could also have two bucket seats. You may also hear it called a standard cab truck. It used to be the “standard” or “regular” option, but is now rare.
Regular cab trucks are cheaper to manufacture and thus, cheaper to buy. They also weigh less and are therefore more fuel efficient. For this reason, they have been popular with fleet operators for decades. Finally, they are easier to park than club cab pickup trucks. Despite these benefits, regular cabs account for a fraction of modern pickup truck sales.
Toyota and Ram don’t even offer a regular cab variant of their current generation pickup truck. To buy one, you’ll probably have to special order a Ford or General Motors truck, or opt for the Ram 1500 “Classic.”
Some folks seek out the old regular cab, short-bed pickup trucks to modify. One group into these trucks is muscle truck enthusiasts who want straight-line speed and prize the configuration’s low weight. Another group is off-road enthusiasts who are seeking a lifted truck with a tight turning radius.
What is a Regular Cab vs Crew Cab?
While a regular cab pickup has two doors and one row of seating, a crew cab truck has four doors and two rows of full-size seats. It was originally a rare option for trucks transporting work “crews.”
Now the pickup is a common family vehicle, and the crew cab is the most common configuration. But once upon a time, the crew cab configuration was a rare option selected by buyers who needed a truck to transport their entire work “crew.”
Regular and crew have been the most common cab configurations throughout truck history. But there are multiple cab configurations between regular and crew, all of which feature a smaller second row of seats.
What is Regular vs Extended Cab?
In 1973, Dodge introduced a middle ground between its regular (two-door) and crew (four-door) cabs: the extended cab had two doors and ample space behind the bench seat for tools or two passengers on inward-facing jump seats. Since then, every automaker has experimented with some form of the extended cab.
Today, both Ram and General Motors offer a cab with four front-hinged doors and a rear bench seat that is smaller than in a crew. These are the quad cab and double cab, respectively. Ford offers a “Supercab” with rear-hinged rear doors and a small back bench seat.
My colleague Thom Taylor reported that by 2020 regular cab pickups had almost no sales: with 3% of trucks ordered with regular cabs. Meanwhile, crew cabs accounted for 85% of 2020 truck sales. The rest were extended cabs or smaller four-doors.
Next, learn what a square body Chevy truck is or see a modern regular cab truck reviewed in the video below:
