Single Cab vs. Extended Cab vs. Crew Cab Pickup Trucks - Uses, Differences, Terminology

On the one hand, the five-seat layout means that you can accommodate your kids or friends in the back, where you'll find seating for three. As for the bed, securing your cargo with a tonneau cover is a must for those who use crew cabs as family cars.

Due to their body-on-frame construction, said truck genre is adequately good at hauling and towing. For go-anywhere capability, just add four-wheel drive and the right kind of rubber boots to the mix.

The truth of the matter is, there are many other cabin-box combos than crew cabs with regular and short beds, with said trucks being used for a mind-boggling variety of jobs. Before going into them, we first have to talk about how we actually got here.

Trucks through the ages

Prior to personal transportation by means of internal combustion, we relied on horse-drawn wagons. Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler are credited with designing and building the very first internal combustion trucks in the 1890s, followed by a handful other European manufacturers. In truck country, Autocar was the first American manufacturer to produce a commercially available truck in 1899.

A precursor of cab-over trucks due to its engine-under-seat design, the Autocar delivery wagon came with either five or eight horsepower, along with a payload capacity of 700 pounds. Make that 318 kilograms for those who prefer the metric system. The next big milestones in the history of trucks? Ford Motor Company debuted its first truck – the Model TT – in 1917, then Benz & Cie. rolled out the world's first diesel-fueled truck in 1923.

When it comes to cabin styles, International Harvester introduced the oh-so-popular crew cab in 1957. The Big Three in Detroit followed suit with four-door trucks of their own, as follows: 1963 for Chrysler's Dodge brand, 1965 for the Ford Motor Company, and 1973 for GM's Chevrolet brand. They weren't a big success back in those decades, but crew cabs really came into their own at the beginning of the 2000s. Ford's 2001 model year F-150 SuperCrew popularized this cab style with the peeps that previously wouldn't have even considered a truck as their main vehicle.

The F-150 SuperCrew retailed at $26,915 for the 2001 model year, whereas the 2001 Toyota Avalon used to be $25,845 before taxes and options. Adjusted for inflation, those MSRPs convert to 49,285 and 47,325 buckaroos. With prices these similar, does it come as a surprise Toyota discontinued the Avalon over worsening demand while the F-150 SuperCrew continues to sell like hotcakes?

Single-cab trucks

Having covered the basics, we can turn our attention to cab options – beginning with the single cab – and box lengths. Also marketed as Regular Cab by the Ford Motor Company and General Motors, single-cab trucks come with seating for either two or three people.

The latter configuration implies a 40/20/40 split-bench seat, with the middle seat being a little tight for most adults. For model year 2025, the Detroit Big Three all offer 40/20/40 split-bench seats for their light-duty trucks. Unfortunately, the Ram 1500 is not available as a single cab. As such, the only three-peep single cabs available to configure as of this writing are the F-150 Regular Cab, Silverado 1500 Regular Cab, and the technically similar Sierra 1500 Regular Cab from GMC.

When it comes to combinations, the F-150 Regular Cab is exclusive to the work-oriented XL grade. Starting at 38,710 dollars, the most affordable F-Series available for 2025 can be had with two bed lengths. The options are 6.5 or 8 feet, with the longer box coming standard. The 6.5-feet bed, on the other hand, adds $1,360 to the final price of the vehicle.

Moving on to General Motors, the single cab is limited to the Silverado 1500 WT and Sierra 1500 Pro grades. Just like Ford, prospective customers are presented with two bed lengths for this cabin style. Standard Bed stands for a 79.44-inch box length. The online configurator lists the Long Bed with 98.18 inches. But in stark contrast to Dearborn's favorite son, Chevrolet asks more freedom eagles for the Regular Cab Long Bed (from $39,195) rather than the Regular Cab Standard Bed (from $38,995). The GMC build & price tool also shows a $200 premium for the Long Bed, with the Sierra 1500 Regular Cab retailing at 40,295 and 40,495 bucks, respectively.

With the Maverick and Santa Cruz being crew cabs by default, we have to touch upon the slow death of the single-cab mid-size pickup. There is no such thing in the United States of America, partly due to the higher payload and towing ratings of single-cab midsizers and partly due to falling demand. Be that as it may, this species is sufficiently popular in other parts of the world. For example, Standard Cab is what the single-cabbed Ranger is called in the Kingdom of Thailand.

We also have to remember Isuzu, whose single-cab version of the D-Max is referred to as the Spark in Thailand. At the moment of writing this piece, neither company offers chassis-cab versions of the Ranger Standard Cab and D-Max Spark. Put simply, a chassis-cab truck implies a cabin and no bed, for a chassis cab is meant for upfitting. From an aluminum tray to a service truck with a crane, there are tons of possibilities.

Extended-cab trucks

What does extended imply in the context of an extended cabin? Obviously enough, it's the next step up from the single cab. For most adults, rear-seat legroom is not merely enough because extended-cab trucks feature smaller wheelbases than crew cabs.

As far as terminology is concerned, the extended cab is known under many names, including Super Cab, Double Cab, Quad Cab, King Cab, Access Cab, and so forth. Adding to the confusion, Double Cab is what Ford Thailand calls the largest cabin available for the Ranger, with said cab style referred to as SuperCrew in the US of A.

Extended cabs feature either front- or rear-hinged doors. The Frontier King Cab is the perfect example in regard to rear-hinged doors, while Ford's F-150 Super Cab, GM's Silverado 1500 and Sierra 1500 Double Cab, Ram's 1500 Quad Cab, and Toyota's Tundra Double Cab feature conventional doors.

If the seat bottoms fold up, the main reasoning behind the extended cab is the dual-purpose rear cabin area. Otherwise, the extended-cab truck can be described as being a good mix of utility, comfort, and footprint. Door length is the easiest way of telling an extended-cab truck apart from a crew cab, for the rear doors are shorter than the front doors.

The Frontier King Cab S 4x2 is the most affordable extended-cab truck on sale right now at $32,050 sans freight and extras, with its crew-cab equivalent starting at $33,450 for the 2025 model year. Nissan offers a single bed length for the Frontier King Cab, whereas the 2025 Toyota Tundra Double Cab is available with either 6.5- or 8.1-foot beds.

What about the American brands? Ford's F-150 Super Cab is only available with a 6.5-foot box, meaning that both the Silverado 1500 and Sierra 1500 Double Cab offer a longer bed. It's called Standard Bed, and similar to the Single Cab, it measures 79.44 inches, therefore converting to 6.62 feet. The Ram 1500 Quad Cab is only available with a 6-foot 4-inch box, meaning 6.33 feet. The most affordable light-duty truck with a double-cab setup is the 2025 Ram 1500 Tradesman Quad Cab 4x2. Upgrading to four-wheel drive is a simply ludicrous $3,850 over rear drive.

Crew-cab trucks

To understand how popular the crew cab is, Tesla and Rivian didn't even bother developing extended- or single-cab versions of the Cybertruck and R1S. The same applies to the F-150 Lightning, Silverado EV, Sierra EV, Hummer EV, Ram 1500 REV, and the Endurance from the now-defunct Lordstown Motors Corporation. Following its September 2023 bankruptcy, Lordstown reemerged as New York City-based Nu Ride Inc.

As mentioned a few paragraphs earlier, the compact crossover-based Ford Maverick and its direct rival from Hyundai are crew cabs as well. Not even Honda could make a case for a lesser type of Ridgeline, which is considered mid-size due to its three-row Pilot and two-row Passport crossover underpinnings.

Nissan keeps it simple by calling the crew-cabbed Titan Crew Cab, while Toyota uses the Double Cab designation for the Tacoma and CrewMax for the Tundra. The Big Three in Detroit, meanwhile, use SuperCrew and Crew Cab for their largest truck cab options.

The biggest selling point of a crew cab over a four-door extended cab is – not surprising in the least – the longer wheelbase that results in more legroom for the rear occupants. Take, for instance, the F-150 SuperCrew 6.5-foot Styleside versus the F-150 SuperCab 6.5-foot Styleside. Compared to 157.2 inches (3,992.88 millimeters) from axle to axle for the SuperCrew, the SuperCab makes do with 145.4 inches (3,693.16 millimeters).

In other words, the crew cab is noticeably better for the rear passengers over the extended cab on a long-haul drive. However, crew cabs are limited in one particular area, that being how much stuff you can throw into the bed. Because of the full-size cab, the box comes in standard and short, with short meaning 5.5 feet being 1,676.4 millimeters in metric vernacular. The mid-size Ranger, which is SuperCrew only in the US, offers a Styleside cargo box with an inside (at floor level) length of 59.6 inches or just under 5 feet.

The Maverick, which is the nation's favorite hybrid truck alongside the F-150, measures 54.4 inches or 4.53 feet. Although it's dimensionally close to the Ranger's bed, cargo box volume differs. In addition to length, don't forget about the width between the wheel houses and the inside height of said boxes. Given the aforementioned, the Ranger is rated at 43.5 cubic feet (1,232 liters) versus 33.3 cubic feet (943 liters) for the Maverick.

While on the subject of crew cabs and their beds, the Chevrolet Silverado EV and GMC Sierra EV brought back a feature introduced by the Chevrolet Avalanche in 2001 for the 2002 model year. That feature is the Multi-Flex Midgate. Two panels at the rear of the cab can be folded down together with the rear seat backs and bottoms to create a longer cargo area for accommodating longer bits and pieces. It provides a little over 9 feet between the cab and tailgate versus just under six for the bed itself. With the tailgate down and the load stop in place, it's a whopping 10 feet 10 inches.

Which is better at what

If towing capacity is the highest priority, torque and lightness are the name of the game. As per Chevy's trailering chart for the Silverado 1500, the inline-six Duramax 3.0-liter turbo diesel achieves 13,300 pounds (6,033 kilograms) in the Double Cab Standard Bed 2WD and Crew Cab Short Bed 2WD. Had it been available in combination with the Regular Cab and Standard Bed, chances are that Chevrolet may have improved the Silverado 1500's rating to 13,500 pounds due to the lower weight of the Regular Cab versus the Double Cab.

For payload, the gross vehicle weight rating is the most important detail of the bunch. The Silverado 1500 Regular Cab Long Bed 2WD with the 2.7-liter turbocharged inline-four gasser offers the highest payload at 2,260 pounds (1,025 kilograms). As you might have guessed by now, the capable work-truck recipe is rather simple. Chassis cabs are meant for more specialized jobs. Think repo trucks, which feature a hydraulic-powered stinger arm with wheel cradles to support the tires. The chassis cab is also perfect for camper conversions, especially if it's a single cab with a torquey turbo diesel powerplant.

The final use case we're going to cover is the all-rounder, as in the truck with the greatest versatility among its peers, the pickup that's used as the main vehicle of an individual or household. Without a shadow of a doubt, that all-rounder is the crew cab. Those looking for frugality have a few hybrid options available, with the Maverick Hybrid topping 37 miles per gallon (6.4 liters per 100 kilometers) with front-wheel drive. As for off-the-beaten-path capability, you should start from the Maverick Tremor and Ridgeline TrailSport up.