I currently have one of these as a rental and your take is dead on and your complaint is not petty; it was one of the first irritating things I noticed about the car.

My thought too.  While a Prius is surprisingly roomy ... these things were amazingly roomy.  Plenty of dog room.

Correction, the Sportage starts at $23k and does the Niro hybrid.

Kia Niro. Starts about $23k but can be had less probably if used.

Exactly. Usable passenger volume is almost equal to that of a RAV4. 

I almost always took travel time over mileage. It wasn’t even that mileage compensation was bad all of the time, but travel time was a rate I could neogitate depending on the type of work, location, etc whereas mileage was fixed in any situation by the federal rate

Yeah I worked for a good while as an independent interpreter driving large distances across New Mexico. I got around the crap compensation for using my own car by padding out my travel time rate, that usually brought me up to what I thought was more fair 

Traveling nurses are almost universally independent contractors that have no access to things like company cars or benefits. You get a tax deduction as a 1099 worker for using your own car for work purposes, but it's not very good

Kia Niro gets my vote. Reasonable amount of space (hatchback) and 50+mpg.

I think it would have to be, at this point. Transit Connect at 174" length it’s just a little smaller than the “original” Chrysler minivan, but it’s more than two feet shorter than any of the “minivans” available.

Agreed, my wife drives a 2016 Fit and has about a 45 minute commute. When new, the driver’s seat was so uncomfortable for her that I seriously looked into aftermarket Recaro options. It seemed to “break in” after a while and she’s OK with it now at about 50K miles. This seems to be a common problem with entry level…

Uhaul car trailers can’t use a weight distributing hitch as it would interfere with the surge brakes. David’s idea of using one would be valid if he used a standard trailer, but that would require the Gladiator to have a brake controller (I don’t know if it does, or just uses the 4-pin.

Unpopular opinion:

Of coarse the new Hybrid RAV4 will eat up a lot of Prius sales because “I need an SUV”

You know what? 12.4 mpg is an astounding number for that .cd and load. Im very impressed. Granted its flat land country so the only real strains once up to speed was aero drag but still. I got 11 towing a much smaller trailer with the GX470 a few weeks ago (granted with a LOT more elevation change).

The Prius V is the car most people need.

The logical answer is Prius.

This should be the only real answer here.

I have so many questions about the daily itinerary and pet labor laws. Anyhow, a Honda Element seems like a good fit.

C-Max is not a bad suggestion. My Dad has the PHEV version. The space is a bit limited, but the entry/egress on that thing is nice! My Dad is older, and has knee and back issues.