Home Forums Gear Hunting Trucks and Four-Wheel Drives If not a truck...What?

It's hard to call any of the new full four door pickup trucks "trucks". Comfy for four good sized passengers, really decent fuel economy, but no payload to speak of, and only enough room in the bed for a shoe-box if you use a shoe horn......

Couldn't imagine being without a K 5 blazer...

They do still make them with both 4 comfortable seats plus a good payload. I have one, a 3/4 ton longbed Dodge. However, there are drawbacks. It's 23' long and won't fit in any standard garage. When in town, I park it well away from the crowds as it's turning radius isn't like a Smart Car. That long wheelbase sure makes it a dream on the highway, though.
The car makers try to keep them under 20' so they'll fit in garages. So, the longer the cab, the shorter the bed. A lot of people don't want to mess with a long one like mine but I really like it.

As noted above, just because you can pull something with a smaller vehicle does not mean that you can stop it or turn it in an emergency. Typical case here in KY is long downgrade, lots of traffic, come around a bend, and suddenly everything in front of you is sitting at a standstill. At some point (under 7K lbs?) the trailer is not required to have trailer brakes, so, it is all on the tow vehicle to maintain control. Your tow vehicle either has the azz to manage the emergency case as well as the normal case, or, you're gonna have a sucky day...

I am going thru the same thought process as OP at the moment. Have had multiple 3/4 ton 4x4 Dodge diesels in the driveway over the years. Once Class 6. Almost all standard cab long bed. Considering getting either a Dodge or Ford, 4x4, half ton, short bed, nicely appointed with four full doors to have plenty of room for four full size guys. And enough chutzpah to handle under 7K lb loads without changing my underwear when traffic gets sporty. Two planned road trips per year. One to CO for elk. One to WKY for ducks. Otherwise people hauler, tool hauler for mission trips, and bad weather / backup commuter for work.

Worked for Toyota for 15 years. They make good vehicles. However, the current Dodge and Ford 4x4 1/2 ton trucks can be configured to get as good fuel economy as most of the Taco 4x4 trucks. And you have a full size truck. The full size Tundra trucks are nice. Had a chance to get one once as a company vehicle. But, passed specifically because of the fuel economy. So focusing on the full size, four door offerings from Dodge and Ford...

Just my dos colones...

Most states require brakes on anything over about 2k LOADED. Idaho is different. They require them on any trailer over 1500 EMPTY. That's dumb. You can get a an empty trailer with tandems that still weighs under 1500 but can carry several tons. You can get a loaded trailer that weighs 6 or 7k and still not need brakes.

Not sure of all the rules and regs. That was the reason that I put the question mark. However, still see a lot of trailers going up and down the road with just the flat 4 pin connectors. OR, nothing connected at all.

The equipment rental companies around here are starting to rent the 10K-14K dump trailers. Waiting for some yahoo to load one of those up behind a half ton truck and pile it up. Some of these guys have never pulled anything bigger than their little red wagon. Buy a new truck, and then think they can drive / tow / trailer as well as a 40 year OTR driver...

Most of those rental trailers have surge brakes. When you step on the brake, there's piston in the trailer hitch that's compressed by the momentum of the trailer. It's a hydraulic brake so no electrical connection is needed. All of UHaul's heavier trailers use them.
We have an equipment rental place here that won't rent you anything on a trailer if you don't have the truck to safely pull it.

It sounds like you need a Subaru.

My last 3 Silverados with the 5.3 liter motor have consistently gotten over 20 mpg on the highway, usually between 21-22. I don't know that the smaller V-6 trucks best that by very much. Now maybe the new F-150 diesel will be better and still able to tow are decent amount?

It reads like what I should be looking for is at least something with rear wheel drive with a decent frame and enough weight. I do see a lot of Suburbans pulling trailers out on the road and don't they use the same frame as a four door 1500 or 2500 pick up? Here again I'm not talking about pulling a 26' travel trailer up a mountain at 8,000 feet, just a 10' aluminum v-nose box trailer with maybe a hundred pounds of tongue weight. Given that the weight of the engine is over the pulling wheels on a medium sized fwd SUV, wouldn't another hundred pounds or so on the back axle with a trailer more evenly distribute the weight of the pulling vehicle? What about an all wheel drive SUV vs a front wheel drive for pulling?

i was going to suggest that but knew i'd catch some grief. my subaru outback is a great hunting vehicle for PA. granted i haven't towed with it but they are rated for 3000 lbs.

If you've never had the experience of using a vehicle that is maxed out towing a load in anything other than perfect slow acceleration, slow deceleration I can understand why you're questing the recommendation of more than enough vehicle. If you had the experience most likely you wouldn't be questioning.

Small SUV's, crossovers or whatever you want to call them are compact unibody sedans with a different body shape and sometimes AWD vs. FWD. If you carry four adults and load up the back of it with gear you can feel that the engine and suspension is being taxed. If instead you pull a 3000# trailer which with a correct tongue weight will be 300# on the tongue you're going to experience the tail wagging the dog.

If you're talking about a 1000# gross weight trailer/load with a 100# tongue weight, no problem. But you did state 3000# gross weight and that is an entirely different animal.

No way would I pull a 3k trailer with a Subaru.

I've driven a Nissan Murano for almost 1yr. 260HP V-6 zips the thing around pretty darned well. That said, I wouldn't be pulling anything with it, I don't think the CVT would last long if you did. I had a Subaru Legacy for a work car for about 3yrs and I wouldn't tow with that powertrain either (2.5L 4cyl/CVT).

We rented a Nissan Murano out in Montana two weeks ago and it worked well enough for what we used it for, but I did not see a trailer hitch or any trailer hitch on most vehicles that I see out on the road today. Those big V-6's are putting out over 300 hp these days and my 5.4 F-150 is only rated at 330 hp. True enough I have never maxed out that Featherlite v-nose, but the truck sure doesn't seem to know that it is pulling something from what I can tell. My 3.8 V-6 Buick has a hitch too which is kind of rare, but it only pulls the 5x8' utility trailer.

I had a Frontier with a 260hp/280tq 4.0 v6 and now an F-150 with a 320hp/390tq 5.4 v8 and there is no comparing the two with equivalent loads behind them. Generally speaking, hp is pretty irrelevant for towing.

You lost me on that. You can't compare 260hp to 320hp (I assume you mean that 320 is far better than 260) but hp is irrelevant for towing?

Peak horsepower tells nothing useful about how a vehicle will perform as a platform for towing, what is more important is torque, and especially low rpm torque.

The old 12 valve cummins 5.9 liter diesel made ~220 hp, well down on the frontier's 260 hp. But, that engine made 440 ft/lb of torque and made that torque across the rpm range. I can guarantee a vehicle with that engine would handily out tow the 260 hp V6.

Yes, that was my point. Torque is far more relevant when talking about towing, and not just peak numbers but how the torque is distributed across the powerband

The torque converter on an automatic helps a whole bunch too. "Ol Blue" was a cab and a half F-150 with the 5 liter (302) with a 5 speed manual and 3.5:1 rear end. It was totally worthless for low end torque and for pulling something. My neighbor has the same old 5 liter in his large van only with an automatic transmission and he towed his very large like 26 foot travel trailer out to the east coast and back. He isn't real mechanical, so he probably didn't know that he shouldn't have pulled that much with that van, but he did and it did it. Low end torque is why I got the 5.4 engine and the six speed automatic in my next F-150.