75% of truck owners tow 1/year or less?

[lostcause]

I want one of these as my daily driver, too. Heard a few bad things, but I loved my previous gas Tahoe. Couldn’t imagine how nice with a baby Dmax….

I've had the 1st generation 3.0 in a truck since early 2020 and I really have enjoyed it. Heaviest I towed was bringing my tractor home on a bumper pull car hauler - about 7k combined for 120+ miles. Towed like a dream and had plenty of power to do lane changes and accelerations up hills and out of corners. i averaged about 16mpg on the trip home. Empty I consistently got 30+ on the original tires when commuting.

Only hiccup in 4+ years was a code for a glow plug communication error. it went away in a couple restarts and never came back. I eventually had it in and the dealer flashed it and they said there was an update in there that could have been related to the code. My only issue has been the operator and mechanic. I have put it into limp mode twice - once for front brakes, and once for rear brakes. After doing it 100+ times I thought I was capable, but apparently I was wrong. You need to put the new ones into service mode before doing anything or it thinks it's broken. not a diesel issue, just a me issue.

Overall I couldn't be happier with it. I do plan on trading it sometime after the new year - ideally for the same thing. I'm gaining fast on the 100k mark, and I just don't want to play the repair cost lottery. I have no illusions that a modern emissions restricted diesel will be a lifetime of issue-free ownership.

 

[Paystar]

Even if I didn't tow and haul on a regular occasion....I am now only buying trucks for my wife. She just went through 3 cars and I'm sick of replacing springs, struts, brakes, sway bar links every oil change interval on our crappy roads.
Now that we have trucks, we both just drive and drive and replace nothing.

 

[Dftodd]

My trailers gonna be working overtime here in another week.

Daughter just bought another house, and put their current house on the market.

Closing on the 31st.

So.... I'll be hauling all their stuff for a couple weekends

 

[1 Old Man]

I bought my wife a 3.0 Duramax in 2023. It's been a great truck for her and she enjoys it.
MPG has been fantastic compared to my '03 Super Duty (she will no longer ride in my truck,
says it's too nasty and sits to high). I've used her truck to haul a couple of half full pallets.
It acts like there's nothing in the bed. A friend hauls a skid steer with his 1/2 ton 3.0 and he
said the same thing, acts like there's nothing holding it back.
Hoping this truck will make it to 150,000 or 200,000 with no real hiccups. I'm a maintenance
freak, so time will tell.

 

[sixdogs]

No one mentioned this but the accident survivability in a bigger truck, especially in a real world accident is much better than cars if for no other reason than height of truck and protective frame rails.

 

[WinterDeere]

No one mentioned this but the accident survivability in a bigger truck, especially in a real world accident is much better than cars if for no other reason than height of truck and protective frame rails.

I agree, you're probably right on this.

Crash test ratings is the best system we've come up with so far, for determining how a vehicle with perform in a crash. But they can't possibly capture all scenarios, they're just "pretty good" simulations. Auto manufacturers can "design to the test", making cars that do very well in these specific tests, but in the end there's something to be said for conservation of momentum.

BTW... people often wrongly quote "conservation of energy", but that's not applicable to a car crash. Conservation of energy relies on an elastic collision, where the objects bounce off one another without deformation, like billiard balls. Car crashes are generally inelastic collisions, in which deformation of the vehicle removes conservation of energy from the motion equations. Energy is maintained, but transformed into heat and deformation, rather than motion. Conservation of momentum puts a greater emphasis on mass, than conservation of energy (which favors velocity), meaning that generally speaking... the heavier vehicle wins.

The one strike against trucks, maybe balancing this "mass wins" principle, is rollover fatalities. I don't know the numbers there, but it doesn't take a physicist to guess that trucks must suffer more rollovers than sports cars. I will say, I personally know a lot more people surviving bad accidents today in all types of vehicles, than 40 years ago. Vehicles have definitely gotten much better, in this regard.

 

[Sprinkler Fitter]

I just hauled 30- 80lb bags of concrete mix home from homedepot on Friday in the one ton truck, poured it all yesterday in a hour with a rented mud mixer.

 

[bigtiller]

I just hauled 30- 80lb bags of concrete mix home from homedepot on Friday in the one ton truck, poured it all yesterday in a hour with a rented mud mixer.

I'm getting mixed signals here. Are you boasting or complaining?

For mixing & pouring 30- 80lb bags of concrete in an hour, I would mention my sore back and stiff shoulders.

 

[paulsharvey]

I just hauled 30- 80lb bags of concrete mix home from homedepot on Friday in the one ton truck, poured it all yesterday in a hour with a rented mud mixer.

Those mud-mixers really do look like a much better system than a wheel barrow, loader bucket, or old system mixer. Not cheap for sure though

Also, I've found 60# bags vs 80#, maybe over an entire yard, might be $1-2 different, so I tend to buy 60s now.

It used to be, I would throw 80s all day, and 94# bags of Portland were tiring; now, 80s feel like the 94s used too

 

[Rockbadchild]

first time I see this thread, this statement came out in other thread as well.

I have a 2012 ram 1500, I got it new I now have 220 000km (138500 miles)
I used to go mudding (real offroad) for fun with my truck once every couple year and every time I got new tires, I stop after blowing up a few CV shaft and rack and pinion (water gets in and blow up during the winter). I still do lots of gravel and dirt road driving (going to camp, fishing and hunting).
I tow often at least twice a month I would say, quad, sled, dirt bike, fire wood, hay, gravel, building material, rocks, camper trailer, and you name it I haul or carry in the bed sometime both.

My truck is a truck, it was brand new and I used it as such. I would say that 90% of the folks up north use their trucks as such but city folks is probably closer then 5% or less.