Lt CHEG
Platinum Member
The reasons why I would consider upgrading are two fold. First off, although most of my towing would be with the light snowmobile trailer, I am planning on towing my tractor and brush hog around doing some brush hogging jobs for a little extra cash and also helping out family and friends with my tractor. Also I've got a buddy that I used to supervise when I was still working as an engineer that is always looking for someone to do water and sewer lateral replacements with him. It's usually an easy $400 profit for a Saturday morning. I would be using the trailer that I am looking at buying to pull a rented, or maybe even eventually purchased, mini excavator. Either my tractor or half of the rental mini excavators that I have access to would be able to be pulled by my truck, but it would be pretty much right at my tow limit of 9,500 pounds. So for those cases, even though the towing would be probably only twice a month for not more than 20 miles at a time, a heavier duty truck would make towing a little easier.
Secondly, although I love my current truck, possibly even more than my last one, it just is not getting the same mileage that my last one got. It's the same 5.3 motor, although the horsepower has been increased to 315 from 285, and I use synthetic oil just like the last one, but I've never gotten better than 17.5 to 18 mpg on the highway unloaded. My last truck used to get 20 on the highway under similar circumstances. It should be broken in by now with 6,800 miles since I bought it in March of 2009. I've seen and heard of people getting better mileage than that unloaded at speeds of 70 to 72 with current diesels and I've heard and seen some footage on youtube of the new 2011 Super Duties getting as much as 26 to 30 mpg on the highway. Since most of my driving is unloaded or at least only having my ATV in the bed unloaded fuel economy is important to me. Plus towing the sleds, I got much better fuel economy with my last truck too. I just hate putting any more money into the oil companies pockets than I absolutely have to so fuel economy is important to me. Maybe I'm off base but if I can get better fuel economy with a new truck it may also be enough to put me over the top.
As for NY's crazy laws that's part of why I refer to this as the communist state. I'm not too concerned about DOT stuff as I'm always very cautious when towing anything and I drive fairly new good looking stuff. I'd be lying if I said that I haven't gotten a professional break from time to time as well. BUT DMV gets their pound of flesh no matter who you are and I'd rather not pay more to register and insure a truck than I have to. I am envious of your state and many others that aren't so draconian towards those who work in order to fill the coffers for those who don't. At the end of the day though, this is home and I'm happier here than anyplace else I've ever been.
any way, the sales man i had was awesome,told him i wasn't here to buy but wanted to take some pics and just look it over. He said cool and gave me a complete tour of the truck. We went over the all the interior feathers, man there are a lot way to many to list but i'll list a few that were different. There is a tutorial on the display screen that teaches you how to hook up a trailer, thought that was weird but i guess we all learn some where. There are all sorts of power points in all sort of places. the nav screen is awesome, tells you where there is traffic, shows the weather, heck you can even buy movie tickets with it (didn't know cars did that). The seats were comfortable, and my loins were nice and cool with the a/c blowing through the seats. you can set up multiple trailers so it will remember you goose neck settings your tag trailer, enclosed or what ever you have. just scroll through and pick the trailer you want to pull. There was more but hard to remember it all.
