Poll: Which Truck?

[goddessfarmer]

Assumption: Both will do the farm job.

Truck A: Dodge Dakota Club Cab - $25,506, 6850lb rated tow capacity, utterly useless back seat that will be removed for easy accumulation of crap, seats 2 (or 3 in a pinch) nearly identical to my dearly beloved 12 yo Dakota which goes everywhere on the farm.

Truck B: Dodge Ram 1500 regular cab - $21,274, 7500lb rated tow capacity, seats 3, 3" too tall to fit in barn cellar, 10" shorter front to back (good thing), better turn radius, more bed space, less tool space in cab.


[Poll #924307]

Comments

[tamidon.livejournal.com]

My father in law has one of these,and I know him enough to know he researched the hell out of it

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

what could $4000 buy you?

650 more pulling lbs, larger bed, more people inside easily? sound like wins to me.

raise the barn? ;> what else could be stored in the barn instead?

which has better mpg? does that matter? diesel?

which one has the better mean time to failure? or better consumer reports/etc rating?

but really, which one do you LIKE more. what else can you do to haggle that price down? trade ins? find another dealer? love that dealer? make'm work for it.

#

[marmota.livejournal.com]

I'd go with truck "B", although I don't agree with your checkbox options for why, so didn't select any. Higher tow rating, smaller, more maneuverable, and larger bed are all good reasons. A much lesser reason would be you sound rather attached to the old one... even if it's somehow a metaphor for aspects of your life, the map isn't the territory. It's just a truck, my $.02 is to go for the more sensible one. Not fitting in the barn cellar, well, would lowering the suspension cause other problems?

[frotz.livejournal.com]

My experience, which may totally fail to be useful or applicable, is that more bed space and a better turn radius are the things which would make my life better on a daily basis, and that "behind the seat" space may as well be more constrained because it fills up with random crap all to often anyway. Tow capacity is too often an overconservative game played on paper, but "more is better" wins in my mind there, too.

Pity you can't drop B 3".

[johngnassi.livejournal.com]

I voted for "You really like your old one" but I think it's important to fit in the cellar too - why can't I vote for both? They're not mutually exclusive!

[koshmom.livejournal.com]

Take the one with better MPG, J would like that one better.

Good thing I'm tall...

[chocorua.livejournal.com]

If I hadn't stood next to the Ram, Goddessfarmer might have not faced the height issue squarely. And she did so, measuring the beam in the upper barn bay today and discovering that the Ram is 1.5" too high for it, too. So it looks like the Dakota.

One of my little voices is still whispering "automatics don't stand up to abuse as well as manuals". The old one (stick) appears to have a tow capacity in the 5500 lb. range. The '07 stick has a 5200 lb. rating, the auto with the same engine is rated for 7100 lb. But how much of that applies to 70 MPH uphill fully loaded on the Interstate (2 horses in the stock trailer is well under that), and how much to our normal full-load use, hauling unbraked hay wagons at 30 MPH or less? Sure, a 3.92 rear end is good for torque, but so is 4wd low-range.

[totient]

My grandfather traded in his old Dakota for a new one and doesn't like it nearly as much. It's too big, he says, and drives that way. He wishes he'd gotten something else instead, but doesn't like the smaller Ford trucks either.