ute

A ute is Australian (and New Zealand) slang for a utility vehicle: a pickup with a tray or cargo bed at the back. Tradies, farmers and weekend campers swear by them.

What ute means

In Australia, ute covers everything from the classic car-based coupé utility, a sedan front with a built-in tray, to today’s four-door pickups like the Toyota HiLux and Ford Ranger. If an American would call it a pickup truck, an Australian calls it a ute.

Utes are part of the culture. Country towns hold ute musters where owners show off their vehicles, and the ute has long been a symbol of rural Australia.

Examples

• “Chuck the esky in the back of the ute.”
• “He drove the ute straight from the farm to the pub.”
• “We need a ute to move the couch. Who’s got one?”

Where it came from

Ute is short for utility, and Dictionary.com dates it to the early 1940s. The body style itself is an Australian invention. According to Wikipedia, in 1932 a farmer’s wife in Victoria wrote to Ford Australia asking for a vehicle she could drive to church on Sunday and use to take the pigs to market on Monday. Ford designer Lew Bandt answered with the coupé utility, released in July 1934.

Australia’s home-grown car-based ute ended in 2017, when Holden stopped building the Commodore ute. Pickups took over, and the name moved over with them.

Related terms

• Servo: a petrol station.
• Arvo: afternoon.
• Bogan: a rough, unsophisticated person.
• Thongs: flip-flops.

More words from down under are in our Australian slang guide.