Pickup has several meanings you'll encounter:

1. A pickup truck, which is a vehicle with an open cargo bed in the back for hauling things like lumber, furniture, or equipment. Farmers, construction workers, and people who need to move heavy loads rely on pickups because you can throw cargo right into the bed without worrying about fitting it through a door. The pickup truck is one of the most popular vehicles in America, loved for being both practical and rugged.
2. The act of collecting something or someone. When your parents do a pickup at school, they're collecting you after classes end. A store might offer curbside pickup, meaning you order online and drive up to collect your purchase without going inside.
3. In sports, a pickup game is an informal match where players just show up and start playing without organized teams or schedules. Kids playing pickup basketball at a park might choose teams right there and start shooting hoops, with whoever shows up joining in.
4. The small device on an electric guitar that captures string vibrations and converts them into electrical signals. Without pickups, an electric guitar would make almost no sound through an amplifier.

Less commonly, pickup can mean improvement or acceleration, like when a car has good pickup and speeds up quickly.