I have a truck, regularly use it as a truck, and don't drive it around empty that often. But I live in the country on 2 mostly unimproved acres, surrounded by quite a few more acres of family property, and I need 4WD to get around my hillside depressingly often for as dry as it is out here (loose dry dirt is just as bad as mud for getting stuck). And my wife's family does antique car meets (1920s stuff), so we tow those to meets, and we're planning a 5th wheel in a few years once kid(s) are older - so I've got a truck, use a truck, and plan to keep the truck. That said:
So... since then, I a) bought a sports car as a third car! b) sold the sports car a year later only losing $400 to depreciation, c) sold the hatchback to my sister (she LOVES it!), d) bought a RWD monster truck... and then e) traded the RWD monster truck for a 4WD one, losing a whole bunch of money on the trade.
Are you counting new vehicle registration fees? Depending on the state and age of the car, registering a car after a sale can be more than depreciation in terms of cost. There's a big "moving around vehicles" cost, and with used cars, my experience is that the first six months is expensive because you have to fix stuff the previous owner didn't notice (or didn't fix, knowing they were going to sell it - either way is the same result).
My wife likes that we own a truck, because we use it for buying cheap (and free) furniture, and for bringing home firewood. But she doesn't like driving it, because it's huge. Plus she comes home over lunch 2 days/week, and visits her parents over lunch 2 days/week to walk our dog. So it's good that she's driving a 7 year old economy sedan that gets ~32+ mpg.
That's an argument for a light trailer, not a truck. It certainly sounds like a trailer would work for what you need, though if you're going to push the 2000 lb tow rating of many small cars, you should really get something with trailer brakes. I've towed 1500lb with a Subaru Outback through the mountains with no trailer brakes, and it isn't something I care to do regularly.
Otherwise my favorite solution would be to own a really old (or at least, "reasonably old" truck) that is just used for "real truck things" when needed.
That's certainly an option if you're mechanically inclined. Paying someone to keep an old truck running is painfully expensive, doing it yourself can be absurdly cheap. If you are going to maintain it yourself, get something bog standard and common - a Mazda rotary pickup would be a bad idea, an old Ford Ranger or F150 would be a great idea.
Another thought is that the $1k+/year I'd likely save driving a hatchback vs a truck more than makes up for any additional heating oil costs I might incur from having less firewood available.
I'm under the impression that firewood, delivered, isn't that expensive for the heat value delivered. If you're on heating oil, you might benefit from getting your furnace replaced as well - the older oil burners are painfully inefficient. But you can do the math with how much wood/oil you go through and how much they cost.
But, in general, it sounds like your problem is "moving bulky things," not "needing a tow vehicle." If the use case is just being able to move large things on occasion and the weight isn't that huge (firewood does tend to get heavy in a hurry), a trailer and a tow vehicle will work fine. If you're heavy, get trailer brakes and the proper wiring for it.
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Not exactly the person that fits the mold of your question, but I have rented Home Depot/UHaul trucks for a day multiple times.
Part of the feasibility of that will depend on how far away those are. Living a good bit out of town, at least for me, "Drive into town, rent a truck, haul stuff back, dig it out because it got stuck, drive it back into town, come back home" is not a thing I'd care to do on a regular basis.
Plus, most trucks nowadays are stupid. Crew cab with a pointless 5 ft bed? Who thought of that?
I'd wondered about those for a while, and someone pointed out that they're great tow vehicles. If you need a vehicle capable of towing fairly heavy but don't need the bed space (a new F150 can be configured to tow over 10k lbs), those make sense. However, a tow vehicle that's used for heavy towing is fairly obvious - either you've got a gooseneck hitch in the bed, a set of rails for a 5th wheel hitch, or a beefy rear hitch - and for any of those, you'll almost certainly have a round 7 pin connector for trailer brakes/lights/etc somewhere near the hitch as well. If it has none of those, it's not being used to tow.
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I also find it funny when people here boast and suggest towing with vehicles not rated to tow. If you're towing 1500 lbs with a car not rated to tow, and you get in an accident and injure or kill someone you are very potentially fu****, and rightfully so. This is a very dangerous and illegal and people toss the idea around here like they're smart when they are really just TOO cheap and putting others lives at risk because of it.
Seriously. The concept of tow ratings and GVWR (Gross Vehicle Weight Rating) is pretty regularly ignored here, and it's bad advice, and a bad idea in general.
If you're getting tow rating advice from someone who has never towed and just believes the marketing material, you're going to have a bad time. Towing at or slightly below tow ratings is fine, if you're towing through Nebraska and Iowa. It's somewhere between a bit expensive and downright stupid through the mountains. I'm set up to tow around 14k, and I really wouldn't want to pull much past 10k except very locally on my truck - and at 10k, it'd better be a 5th wheel. Pushing the limits works on occasion, but there's no margin of error, and if you're coming down a mountain at or above the tow rating and the trailer brakes quit (which happens for a wide variety of reasons), you'd damned well better be able to maintain control of your trailer and get it safely stopped without the trailer brakes - because if you can't, the chances of someone dying get very, very high. And it might not be you. Insurance and courts won't look kindly on someone who was towing 15k on a truck rated for 10k who lost control on a grade and killed someone.
The same is true for loading a hatchback up with firewood/rock/etc. You can exceed gross vehicle weight on most small cars with four adults in the seats, and stuffing them full of heavy stuff pretty much guarantees you're over, badly. Just because it fits doesn't mean it's wise.
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Get a used shifter cart and race it to get your performance-car thing out of the way.
Motorcycles also do a very nice job of fixing that. I know exactly when my interest in fast cars died completely - the day that I ended up racing an older Camero with some work, with a motorcycle that was older than me (500cc of
fury). And we ran dead even. And I knew that I had a heavy, underpowered motorcycle.
