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Love trucks, just the mileage is just not conducive to my daily driving habits... I love the visibility of a truck - better than sitting in a small car, riding on the ground. And these days, outside the "leftover" panther Ford's, everything sits on the ground...
I never understood why they are so popular. I never understood why people told me: "Every male should have a truck at least nce in their lifetime"
Then I got one.
They are fabulously useful. They are tough and once you have a few scratches in them, you do not really worry about them like a car. You can haul anything. Not just appliances, dirt, mulch, gasoline, power tools of all sizes and dirtiness, a new tree from the nursery, a dead deer, rocks, manure, hay or straw, chickens, seaweed, dirt, old radiators for scrap, bags of trash collected by volunteers during a community clean up event, 55 gallon drums of water, a generator, gravel, logs, dogs, even frogs. You can haul junk to the dump and an out of gas snow mobile to the pump. Camping and sports equipment, bicycles, broken lawn mower or roto tiller (working lawn mowers and rototiller too). There is a ton of stuff you really cannot transport in any other vehicle.
Plus with 4x4 you pretty much never ever get stuck in anything.
Now I say, every man should own one at least once in his life - and then you will probably never not own one. (Women too, but it seems to be more of a man thing. However my daughter after driving a ranger for a summer decided a small pick up is her ideal vehicle. You would have to ask her why.
As to types Dodge Ram has the best ideas built into it (except maybe Avalanche/Escalade). Chevy and Ford seem to be the best made and toughest. Fords tend to be cheaper but a little bit less nice. Frequently you will see construction contractors provide Fords to their employees but buy a Chevy or GMC for themselves. They tell me Ford has the best total cost of ownership for their work. Chevy may be a little nicer, but they cost enough more to buy and maintain/repair that the Ford makes more sense for them. Some tried Toyota, but they were not practical for regular tough use. Unless something changes my next truck will be a Ram Laramie or laredoor whatever their fancy one is called. I may be taking a risk with quality control problems, but the little innovations and much better styling are worth the risk to me (unless GM or Ford start copying some of the Dodge Innovations.).
Oh and your kids can use them for homecoming and similar parades. You can fit a lot more people/stuff in the bed of a truck than you can into a convertible.
Trucks are COOL. I bought my first pickup in 1993 a FORD F150 4x4 with a 5.0 in it. Iused it for near 10 years as a daily driver and to tow a 18' boat. It was a regular cab short bed so there wasn't alot of room in it. In 2002 I traded up for a F150 4x4 Supercrew Lariat with a 5.4. It has all the options and I still love it and it is a good thing since to replace it today is about $65,000 !!!!!!!! YEAH shocking. I use the truck to tow a 20' boat and even though it has a small bed I have picked up loads of lumber, firewood, mulch, dirt and of course moving things (junk). The truck is not my daily driver though, for that I have a JeeP wrangler. The Ford 5.4 engine uses a lot of gas getting about 18 MPG. I did look at new trucks and was disappointed, yes they had a lot more HP and torque but the MPG were near the same, under 20.
If you are thinking about a truck take a hard look at your needs, what can you get away with as far as towing your RV goes? Iti is dangerous to overload the towing vehicle but do you really need the F350 which is a huge gas gulper. Can you afford to have another vehicle so you can park the truck unless you need it?
Trucks are great and there are loads of options. When I used to sell them we built the truck for the client depending on what they wanted to do with it. If buying new find a dealer that knows trucks and talk turkey.
Trucks are COOL
My only gripe is that Ford lies about their tow capacity. When the Toyota Tundra came out and boasted 10800 lbs towing capacity, the next year’s Ford F150 model magically had better tow capacity numbers than the Tundra. Check out this review where the 2009 5.4L F150 came out last: 2009 Full-Size Pickup Truck Comparison Test and Video on Inside Line
Tow capacity has always been like that. There's little regulation into the calculation (outside of the pending lawsuit the manufacturer wants to face if/when someone decides to haul at/over the max), so it's no surprise the numbers float up or down depending on what the other guys are doing.
If you find that annoying, try comparing treadwear ratings on tires. I swear, it's like the tire manufacturers throw darts to figure that one out.....
Mike
Last edited by whiteboyslo; 05-13-2013 at 11:30 AM..
I hate trucks. They're ugly, unnecessarily wasteful (especially when you see one person commuting in them) and usually the WRONG choice for 80% of the driving a person will do. All the stuff already mentioned (minus hauling a Big boat) I've done and continue to do with my little VW Jetta and a trailer.
Yes, I own one ~ and add less than 3000 miles a year to it. If it had ANY value on the used market, I'd sell it and buy something better suited to my needs, but trucks over a few years old/100k miles seem to be worthless. Thankfully we also own a 48mpg car (that sees ~20k miles a year) and several motorcycles (those see another 7~10k a year combined).
A truck, in and of itself (once you remove the idiot owners, and yes I fit into that because I was dumb enough to buy a truck instead of something better suited to my needs) is a great vehicle for a small number of specific tasks. Very easy to rent when needed.
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