4 ms·
Not debating the practicality here, but even if you need your truck to do something only once in the entirety of your ownership, it needs to be capable of this
by bear141 2y ago
Not debating the practicality here, but even if you need your truck to do something only once in the entirety of your ownership, it needs to be capable of this all the time. Towing, crawling, etc.
- mlyle 2y agoI disagree. I've never had a vehicle that does 100% of whatever I'd want a vehicle to do. At some point we need to make tradeoffs and accept that we'll either have limitations or need to solve some problems in a different way. Letting something that is 1% of operating hours for a device drive requirements strongly is often a mistake. With some obvious exceptions because e.g. I cannot choose when I am going to engage in maximum braking and defer it to a different vehicle.
- conductr 2y agoThey do make trade offs. Just not the same you might make. The F350s are limited on where they can park and are a pain in the ass to drive around a city. Some people tow stuff more frequently than they go into the city though, so it probably is a reasonable trade off to them. Also comes with some other perks like comfort and more beefy off road capabilities. Something that is valuable in rural areas even without towing. I tow stuff about a dozen times a year and live in a city. I drive a Tahoe because not being able to tow when you want to is a pretty big inconvenience even though I’m a single occupant driver 90% of the time and it’s way bigger than I “need”. Turns out it’s quite comfortable and I just like it, even if I wasn’t towing ever. I went years of renting vehicles just to tow. It sucks in a lot of ways. No one just wakes up and thinks “I’m going to tow some stuff”. You’re doing it for a reason, there’s probably a high amount of labor involved in that reason, trying to do it all in the rental window or find an appropriate vehicle on the day you need it. Is a challenge. I’ve set rental reservations then it rains so I can’t do the work I needed to. Clear skies tomorrow but have to wait a week for another rental to be available. It’s a hassle. Another thing I struggle with is my towing needs fluctuate a lot. Earlier this year I was doing a construction project and ended up needing to tow stuff practically every day for 6 weeks. If I tried to do that any other way than owning a capable vehicle, it’d have been logistically challenging. Trying to time vehicle rental with trailer and equipment rentals would have dragged the construction project out to easily triple the time just by adding delay, probably much longer. Not to mention the cost of it all. Which the bigger vehicles do cost more, but they are assets even if depreciating. When you rent it’s pure expense. The rent cs own calc can flip quickly.
- mlyle 2y agoSure. I'm not saying it's completely unreasonable. Here the person was saying "once in the entirety of your ownership". If it's really once in the vehicle's life, then you really should rent something else when you need this. I understand renting vehicles to move stuff is a PITA. I've used the hardware store's trucks several times and it adds a lot of anxiety to a project (though I've never had a really tough time with availability).
- conductr 2y agoAh I think he was making a point about the need being Boolean more so than a literal meaning of once. You said 1% which probably matches up to my usage of the tow feature. All good though, those rentals are definitely the most available but they rarely work for me as I usually need more time. They design it to be highly available for short store-to-home trips. Occasionally I still rent, sometimes I need a bigger truck than I have due to weight.
- ultimafan 2y agoI bought a truck for similar reasons (was tired of constantly having to rent/borrow cars to tow or haul/pick up something that doesn't fit in a "normal" car). I got a lot of utility use out of it over the years and I do honestly agree, even though I now almost never have to use it for anything truck-related I'm still very happy with it, it's very comfortable and reliable. I'd buy another one in a heartbeat. The convenience of knowing I can spontaneously throw anything I want in the back without ever thinking or planning about it in the rare cases I do still occasionally have to is just the cherry on top at this point.
- conductr 2y agoI think most truck drivers have a similar story and just continue buying trucks after because they’re so convenient even if the demand is super low for actual truck stuff. The comfort part is hard to discount too as is the increased visibility* and the fact that people choose a vehicle as a fashion statement. * yes I know tall trucks are less safe for pedestrians and near distance visibility is reduced. That’s a low frequency occurrence for me, not a lot of pedestrians where I am, and is not something I even consider during purchase. Visibility in traffic and car centric places is so much better.
- _proofs 2y agoi am sorry but i do not understand. if a car advertises that towing is a feature, and that the truck should be dependable in its features (which is literally Ford branding), and then towing only worked.. one time (barring extenuating circumstances) -- it most definitely is a product which failed to deliver. a lemon, so to speak.
- mlyle 2y agoI'm not talking about towing being advertised as a feature. It's that choosing a vehicle based on something you need to do once every 5 years is not a great way to choose a vehicle. There's not even a single vehicle that I could choose that would meet all of my different use cases for 5 years. It's better to pick something that fits the 95% use case best, and figuring how best to plug the gaps for the other 5% of the time.
- vel0city 2y ago> but even if you need your truck to do something only once in the entirety of your ownership I'd just say rent something for that one off time in its entire ownership. Otherwise, I'd be daily driving a 26' box truck because I moved apartments every few years. One time I had to ship a few pallets of stuff across the country. I guess I should have just bought a semi-trailer truck as a daily driver.
- bluGill 2y agoI can rent a box truck for moving easially enough, and generally I know far enough in advance that I can reserve it. However I've never found a truck I can rent to two. Sure I can rent trucks, but they come up with a large pile of fine print which says I cannot two. Even those box trucks cannot tow, or can tow but only their trailer which has specific restrictions on what you can use it for. Oh, and the trailer they allow you to use has surge brakes which are terrible.
- vel0city 2y agoI've rented trucks to tow a few times over the years. Enterprise truck rental has trucks for towing, just a weight restriction. But to be honest the vast majority of times I've needed to rent a truck to tow something it's because I was renting something towable. I can't imagine I'd bother renting some equipment from one place just to rent a truck from someplace else. In fact, it's not like one needs some giant truck to tow many things. The vehicle I've owned that had the most use out of its tow hitch was a Ford Focus. I've gotten a bit of use from my midsize crossover which has 5,000lbs of tow capacity. More than enough for a small boat or jet skis or a small trailer.