Have your eye on a gas guzzler? It's a good time to buy

[warthog1984]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Needing a truck is one thing, but you could probably take a typical big pickup today, and while keeping the bed the same size, trim off at least a third of the weight & frontal area. The result would do the same work, and be cheaper to buy and fuel - but it wouldn't serve as a substitute for a little thing that a lot of the owners probably haven't seen in a while :-)

That was the original idea behind the "midsize" Dodge Dakota. Retain the fullsize Ram's 1/2 ton rating and ground clearance while shrinking everything else.

It worked pretty well given the available tech and OTS components, especially with the extended cab option. Than the G2 Dakota ran into a serious bloat problem and became nearly as big as the Ram.

[sailordave]

My co-worker wraps his hay in the large round bales. He loads them on a flatbed trailer and tows them with his Silverado. He repairs small to large tractors which he can tow with his truck. He doesn't tow the large combines. He also uses his truck to haul dirt and gravel to reserface his gravel road and other projects around the house. My folks keep their Dodge Caravan for plywood since my dad does carpentry. However, his Caravan doesn't get any better gas milege than a pick-up truck large enough for whole sheets of plywood. I agree that many people are buying trucks and SUVs just to ride around in. But don't you go around saying there is no need for pickup trucks and SUVs just because you seem to hate them. There is a need for such vehicles. If all the roads in Europe were as wide as they are here you'd see a lot more full size pickup trucks and SUVs doing work. There's just too many roads there that are too narrow for such vehicles.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by msirach

I rented an 8000lb trackhoe 3 years ago and pulled it home on a trailer with my 2wd Nissan Frontier CC.

Guess we have a little misunderstanding about what constitutes serious earthmoving equipment. I think serious starts around e.g. a D7 Cat, which weighs in at 25 tons or more :-) Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpillar_D7

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by sailordave

But don't you go around saying there is no need for pickup trucks and SUVs just because you seem to hate them.

Now who's saying that? What I'm saying is 1) the great majority of jobs for which a pickup is needed (or even useful) can be done just as well, and at less cost, with a pickup that's a good deal smaller than the US "full-sized" pickup; and 2) the makers have been adding a lot of extra sheet metal &c to bulk up their trucks, making them appear larger (and get worse mpg) without increasing their useful load at all. Can you disagree with either?

Nor do I hate pickups: as I said, I've got one, and it comes in handy for hauling firewood or building materials, or for the few days in winter when the snow's too deep to play snowplow with the Insight.

[Chuck]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

...or for the few days in winter when the snow's too deep to play snowplow with the Insight.

Can't resist: know of a guy that tore his Insight up and among other things attempted to use it as a snowplow.

[sailordave]

james, read back and you'll see I was referring to Wayne who said because Europe and Asia don't seem to need pickup trucks and SUVs then we don't need them here and any work done by pickup trucks and SUVs can be done by those narrow minivans of europe

[kwj]

I had a first year Ford Ranger, 2 L, 4 speed manual. Great vehicle, geared for loads. Once I bottomed out the springs with a load of shingles, and had to split it into two loads. That vehicle was great as a new home owner, carried my washer and dryer, a 21 cubic ft. refrigerator/freezer, mulch, stone, concrete blocks, beds (and mostly for my neighbors). Great vehicle for making new friends. It even had two places in the back where I could place a couple two by sixs across the bed so I could carry 4x8 sheets of drywall and plywood. It got good gas mileage, but was crummy in the snow on crowned roads going up hill.

By the way Jamesqf, what kind of MPGs are you getting with your vehicles? You have an Insight, and a Frontier. Both purchased used I understand. Good deal on the Insight, you just don't see any for sale these days.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by kwj

By the way Jamesqf, what kind of MPGs are you getting with your vehicles? You have an Insight, and a Frontier. Both purchased used I understand.

Insight is currently 70.7 mpg for a bit over 5 years and about 80K miles. Not quite as bad as it looks, since most of my driving is in the Sierra Nevada, going up & down mountains and over passes in winter snow (I ski a lot), which really kills mpg. In the summer I get around 80 mpg tank average.

The pickup's an '88 Toyota. I've never really tried to get an accurate mpg measurement on it, since I don't drive it much - one time since March, I think - and when I do it's either hauling stuff like the aforesaid logs piled cab-high, or driving in deep snow or really rough dirt roads. But a ballpark guess would be 20-25 mpg overall.

[ILAveo]

I got busy and sort of lost track of this thread. It sure sounds like a bunch of us enjoy exceeding our payload ratings--which sometimes I do too, but I don't enjoy it much ever since I broke the springs in my Escort wagon hauling railroad ties--which might also have had something to do with its later transmission trouble too. I'll be more specific about my examples.

A big pickup typically can pull (by which I mean is rated for) 20,000 lbs. and has a payload of one ton. The F350 where I work pulls all of that probably only about every two months, but once you figure in the lift gate, toolboxes and their contents, the bed payload probably gets exceeded every week. They learned they needed the big truck the hard way about 10 years ago when the frame of one of their towing S10's broke in two just in back of of the cab. The F350 will accommodate pulling a medium sized backhoe (don't know the weight) with some support equipment like a spare bucket or a hydraulic concrete breaker in the bed.

For short hauls, like around a farm, my rule of thumb is that if you're careful (accelerate slowly, make slow turns, stay off side slopes, park pointed slightly down hill, etc.) you can safely approximately double the payload. When I've done much more than that (e.g. put 6 tons on a 2 ton flatbed) the trucks had pretty squirrelly steering and braking. I occasionally put an estimated ton of wood (half a cord of oak) or, um, compost (a little less than 1 cu yard) on my Ranger, but I don't drive far or fast overloaded that way. If I regularly had to haul those loads I would probably upsize my truck the way my neighbors have because overloaded equipment doesn't last (see previous Escort and S10 anecdotes.)

@ jamesqf: Around here people who are trying to make money raising livestock generally use the round bales. Horse and other hobby livestock people usually use the square bales. The pasture/hayfield across from my house is hayed into round bales, but my younger son gets a few odd jobs stacking the small bales--I'd say around here it's about a 70-30 split between round and square bales which usually weigh about 50 lbs. They load a lot of square bales on a trailer, but I've never stopped to count so I can't estimate their loads.

@ Wayne: You can't look at my family's vehicles and believe I care much about being first up the mountain or making a big impression, but I still have fun--some of the stuff I've tried may be a little nuts in other ways.