Home Forums Gear Hunting Trucks and Four-Wheel Drives Ford Ranger vs. Toyota Tacoma

Truck beds are rather awkward to build a skid for that's for certain.

I've kinda settled on ARE commercial shells for my trucks as they hide the sprayer and containers from the snowflakes.

I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 240k on my 08 tundra.

Put a new transmission in it last fall. That's been about it. I drive the piss out of it. Just got back from a 4 day ~2500 mile work trip to Washington, Oregon and then back home.

Your Tundra has years if not a decade of life left in it the way it appears you drive. I would stick with it.

No offense to anyone on here, but I am amazed at people who are looking at purchasing brand new vehicles at what they cost these days, to concern themselves with fuel economy or whine about gas mileage.

Reality is, when you are spending $30k on a little truck or $80k on a full-sized truck, pissing and moaning about fuel economy is nonsense.

Thanks for the insight. This is the longest I have kept a vehicle. I am fortunate that my recreation area is not too far from home and that I do not drive it for work.

I'd rather buy an Tacoma with a 100K on it than a brand new Ford or Chevy.

Before my tundra, I had a Nissan Titan. Both these vehicles I personally put about 150-170k miles on. I buy pickups used for mid-teens $. And drive them until they are pretty much done. My Nissan I literally drove it until the wheel came off. Bad axle broke, luckily just as I got home from a 3K mile roadtrip.

Most any vehicle with mileage in the low 100's should be good for another 100k if it has been reasonably well cared for to this point.

Best of luck to you.

I totally agree with your point. And to add to that sentiment, most trucks in a particular class weigh about the same, the engines have similar efficiency, and they have similar drivetrains (and efficiency). Guess what? There isn't really much difference from one make/model, in terms of real world MPG assuming that they are using the same type of design (i.e. can't compare hybrid to a non-hybrid) or technology (vintage is important here). Under the same use conditions.

Anyway, the similarities show with the owner submitted data on Fuelly. Of course, assuming that it is honest data which I really don't have a reason to doubt on the whole.

I disagree. With gas prices above $4.00 here, it makes a ton of sense to want to keep costs down and that fuel bill just keeps coming at you. Every little bit helps when you're biting off a $1,000+ month payment and registration fees to boot.

Definitely depends on the individual.

That said, in my mind, if a couple MPG is a deal breaker then buying a $30-40K+ vehicle would probably not be in my best interest financially. Checking Fuelly, it looks the Ranger model gets roughly 20 MPG for mixed driving. The Tacoma model roughly18 MPG. Let's just assume that they are for similar configurations, or just accept the data for what it is which is a representation of what is purchased and voluntarily reported on.

That 2 MPG difference, for 15k miles in one year, means that the Tacoma needs 83 more gallons of gas than the Ranger. At $4/gallon, that is $333 extra to drive a Tacoma. That is over one year, or $28 per month. If I spend $30K+ on a truck, and $28 breaks the bank for one month, it tells me that I shouldn't be buying a new truck.

The trap is to get caught up in highway MPG, or some anecdotal reports on high fuel efficiency. I like the user reported data from Fuelly but we still need to realize the limitations. That said, there are hundreds of thousands and sometime millions of miles being reporting. I think the BS gets filtered, unlike a friend/relative/co-worker who claims some ridiculous fuel mileage that can simply be an outlier in the distribution of data.

I am also somewhat biased, as I paid cash for my most recent vehicles but can sympathize with payments. For me, I no longer own motorcycles, and don't have a boat, travel trailer, vacation home, etc. So a little extra gasoline for one rig is no sweat. Even if it were double or triple the $28 per month.

Check my math though, as I could be completely wrong.

Can I borrow $333?

Buy a used truck and save thousands!

Have you looked at the price of used Tacoma 4X4s ?

You could probably save a bundle on a used Ranger.
There is a reason for that.

I just purchased a new Tacoma.
I am very happy with it so far (4 days, 110 miles)
I cannot wait to pull this thing in to hunting camp this fall.
I camp and hunt with several guys I have known since high school almost 50 years.
Everybody will come over to check it out.


If I pulled in to hunting camp in a Ford Ranger, they would start laughing, and ask me if it was a rental ?

No offense to Ford owners.
Out west, elk, mule deer and blacktail country, it’s not uncommon to need a vehicle to take you rock hopping over miles of boulder fields and up steep mountains covered in decomposed granite.
Many of the trails (I use that term loosely) are too narrow for a full size truck.
You see all kinds of 4X4s on the easier trails but once you get into the rough stuff, the only thing you see are Toyotas and C J/Wrangler Jeeps.

Did you just buy a new Tacoma?

Hadn't heard....

Need more Toyota pics.

Where is Tikkanut?

I've bought nothing but.

Tired of wrenching on stuff in the busy season.

Both Tacoma's are gone

replaced mine with this '03 Lexus LX 470 (100 series Toyota Land Cruiser)

Before I ordered a new one, I looked at used.
Two-year-old Tacoma’s with 50K or less are selling for the same as new, or a grand less.
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