• ysjet@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    Am I reading this right and it only offers 1000lb towing capacity? Isn’t that kind of utterly useless?

    • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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      15 hours ago

      If you need to tow something, sure. The vast majority of people who own a pickup don’t tow jackshit. That goes for urban and rural areas.

      • CoffeeJunkie@lemmy.cafe
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        9 hours ago

        And this will not fit all requirements of all people all the time. Nor does it intend to. But my god, trucks are such a practical platform & they used to be a lot smaller. The Asians do the tiny utility trucks…so well. But noooooo, Americans simply can’t have anything small, or affordable, we won’t allow small trucks to enter market. 🙄

        It fits most cases, and a change 60-75% in the right direction is better than a 0% change in the right direction, cranking out oversized & overpriced trucks that don’t fit our lifestyles.

        There are lots of men not entering relationships, lots of couples not having children. This is perfect for daily living & daily tasks. Long-distance trips? Fuck no. But how often are you doing that? Price is right, if it’s cheap-running & simple & reliable – what are we waiting for?? Let’s go, the Toyota Stout isn’t coming to save us anytime soon. Let’s go with this tiny truck until then.

    • CoffeeJunkie@lemmy.cafe
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      15 hours ago

      Oh, not at all. Not at all. Now as a full-fledged TRUCK, and hauling, yeah it’s pretty pathetic. But the truck platform that this uses is clean, simple, and fucking brilliant.

      A lot of non-truck city people like to cite some damning statistic, something-something-87% of truck owners haven’t hauled anything significant in the past year. Correct, and I think most people simply don’t have that need. The number of oversized trucks I see, that go from home to cubicle work to WalMart & back home again… 🙄🙄🙄

      Full-sized trash cans don’t fit in a car very well. But they fit nicely in a truck. This truck can “haul”…all kinds of bulky, awkward shit that doesn’t weigh much. I’ve got a lot of that in my life.

      I could use this as a nice, basic farm shuttle vehicle. Chores. Daily driver to & from work. Camping even, obviously light tent camping. Drive-in movie theaters. Parties. “I don’t have room in my car for [junk] .” Well, throw it in my truck. Problem solved, yay 🥳

      It’s electric, so you could even drive it part-time & fully recharge it with the fucking sun.

      I adore the standard cab, small, working man’s truck. It is not kind of utterly useless, it just doesn’t allow you to be the manliest man that ever manned, bro. Lift kit & shoxxx for offroading, bro. Best in class for towing, bro. Extended cab, bro. It runs on endangered species of owls, bro. …you can keep all that. I’ll take this. 🤗

      • Y|yukichigai@lemmy.sdf.org
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        15 hours ago

        Full-sized trash cans don’t fit in a car very well. But they fit nicely in a truck. This truck can “haul”…all kinds of bulky, awkward shit that doesn’t weigh much. I’ve got a lot of that in my life.

        Yep, furniture especially. A Queen-size bed is bad enough, but at least you can tie that onto the roof of most sedans. A table and some chairs? Some dressers? Doesn’t matter how light they are, you run out of space real quick, and that’s assuming you’ve got your Luggage Tetris skill maxed so you can cram everything in perfectly.

        …or you could just set it all in the bed and put a net over it if you really wanna make sure it won’t go anywhere. I know which one I prefer.

      • ysjet@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        Fair enough, I guess I’ve been considering my own use case, which is moving lumber.

    • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      I have an older Ranger. I don’t do much truck stuff. The bulk cargo area is the draw, not the weight capacity. The heaviest load I carried was 800lbs of plywood, which was 15 sheets or something. I have a 4x8 trailer that can also help haul bulky household goods for moves, a motorcycle, lumber, or furniture. While the trailer is rated for 1700lbs payload and weighs 300lbs itself, I have never put more than 500lbs on it, despite filling the 4x8 floor stackef 4ft high. I made the trailer before getting the Ranger, so now they’re redundant and never actually hauled together.

      If you’re already towing, this probably isnt the truck for you. If you aren’t towing, it provides an option to tow something if you have to. The reason I chose the Ranger is because it’s cheap, gets good fuel economy, and has the capacity to grab full lumber sheet goods on my commute home. While I could find a 30mpg car for the same price, I’m still in the mid 20s. Maybe I could spend 30k on a newer F150 V6 and get similar, but then it costs 10x what I paid. Bulk space and handling scratchy cargo is the main goal. I think of the Slate as being what the Ranger should’ve been now.

    • Fondots@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      Yeah, for towing that’s basically useless unless you’re only using it to tow around a wood splitter or something.

      That said, my family has had a 1993 Ford ranger for many years. I’m pretty sure even with the 4-cylinder engine it still has a towing capacity several times that much, but we have never towed anything with it. We have gotten a lot of use out of it as a truck though, moving furniture, camping gear, small loads of firewood, trips to the hardware store, etc.

      I can also potentially see this being big for certain fleet vehicles. Growing my dad worked on a military base as a civilian in their wastewater treatment plant. Part of his job involved driving around the base once a day or so to take water samples from a couple places. The public works department had a couple small trucks, Chevy S10 I think, that he’d use for that. They got used by other public works employees, never for anything particularly heavy duty but they did occasionally tote around some bulky tools, equipment, materials, but a significant amount of what they used them for could probably have used a golf cart. I’d be amazed if those trucks went 10 miles most days, they sat most of the time, kind of a perfect sort of situation for them to sit on a charger.

      • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Ranger fam unite! 4cyl towing is only 3500 I think. Less than a car+trailer because that’s what people always ask about in the ranger community. And that’s with the proper frame hitch. The bumper is like class 2

        • Fondots@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          It does only have the bumper, I’ve never looked into it because we’ve never needed to tow anything. We have the long bed so anything we’ve ever needed to haul fit in there just fine.

          I love that truck. It has yet to hit 100k miles because until the last couple years my parents had 3 vehicles and especially now that they’re retired they never really go anywhere anyway.

          And for a 32 year old truck, it still gets pretty decent gas mileage, pretty damn close to 20mpg, the new rangers don’t beat that by much.

          It’s not without its downsides, it’s rwd so it’s kind of shitty on anything but dry pavement unless you have some weight in the bed, and it’s 0-60 time is probably best stated as “eventually,” but it’s done everything I’ve ever needed a truck to do.

          If Ford came out with basically that exact truck with a modern engine to get better gas mileage but otherwise kept the performance the same, it would probably be my next vehicle. Wouldn’t mind AWD/4wd too but I could live without.

          I really like the maverick but the small bed is kind of a deal breaker. I’ve heard some rumors that they may add a midgate in a couple years to open the bed up into the back seat so if they do that I’m probably sold.