Calling all former full-size pickup truck drivers

Next June when Hurricane season kicks up again. Fear, and lack of refineries will drive gas up again. This discussion will seem humorous by then. There is no way you will see $1.50 gas for very long. Mother nature will see to it. Plan for the future, Don't dwell on the past..

OUscarb

 

I have a 9 year old Dodge Ram , I still have it because I need to tow a large gooseneck Horse trailer. Now instead of driving it everyday I only need to drive it about 6-8 times a month.

I do about 100 miles a day. The car payments on the Prius, insurance and gas per month is less than what I was spending on gas for the truck per month.

I love the way the Prius handles in parking lots, my friends and parents like riding in it better than the truck. I am not creating as much polution and I am using less resources. I can carry more cargo in the hatch area and back seat of the Prius than I could fit in the cab area of my truck so the Prius is better for carrying items that need to be inside the passenger area.

 

This is slightly off your specific topic but I went from a Suburban to the Prius for the summer. Gas consumption went down $130 per month from last summer to this summer. I carried mostly light bulky items that would fit in the Prius. I didn't actually sell the truck until a couple months after we got the Prius, but more on that in a minute.

It obviously has less room, not as nice a ride and no towing capacity. Would I like to have the truck? Sort of, but I ultimately solved that in a different way. I feel better driving the Prius than the Suburban. Environmentally and at the gas pump. So it really comes down to how much you are willing to sacrifice for what you get. You know it is not going to be a step up in functionality, but it will certainly be a step up in ecology.

I carried gas in the second container, as mentioned earlier, that worked just fine. I also got on of those plastic mats that you put under an office chair and cut it to match the cargo area. Then when I fold down the back seat for hauling, I put a blanket over the folded rear seats. It wasn't ideal but it worked.

Now my ultimate solution. After driving the Prius around for a few months and letting the Suburban rest, I was impressed enough with the technology I ordered a Highlander Hybrid. I got it a couple weeks ago, it comes real close to the mileage I was getting on the four cylinder compact I was driving, when I couldn't get my wife to let me use the Prius. I have a utility trailer that I wanted to keep, for now, and the Highlander can tow that. If I decide to dump the trailer, I think I could live with a Prius as my transportation. I know I can, the question is would I want to?

Good luck in your quest.

 

Don't just assume that. Do you have anything to back up your statement?

I (and I have nothing to back this up with either) heard of a Prius in an accident where an 18 wheeler T-boned it and instead of the Prius taking the full force of it, it actually rolled, which reduces the forces against it. All 4 passengers were fine.

Remember, the Prius has dual front and curtain air bags, something many of the large trucks don't.


As far as trading the truck. I went from a Jeep Grand Cherokee. I fortunately can borrow my Dad's Yukon for towing or if I really need extra room, but the Prius has handled everything I've needed it for so far.

 

I'm in your shoes. I have a 1999 F250 superduty diesel. Currently 102,000 miles, getting 18.3mpg. It's costing me about $550+ a month just for fuel. Every 40 days, a $20 oil filter, $30 in oil, and this is if I do the job myself.

I drive 130 miles a day to work and fill up every 4 work days at $85 to $100 a pop.

Here's my chart I started a little under 2 months ago with projected comparrison to the Prius when it comes in January.

http://d.spicher.home.comcast.net/prius/mileage.htm

I bought it new in August 1999. In Nov 2000, I caused a headon with a chevy car in an intersection. My airbags didn't go off, the car was totaled. The big rig wins those, don't kid yourself about the Prius or any other little car 'absorbing' the crash. The people absorbed their airbags, and they were ok. My seatbelt got tight, but not really much worse for me than just a seriously hard braking. My pickup needed a new tow hook and a new bumper, the car was totaled.


I could keep my pickup if I want to. Like someone else said. I can park the pickup, make the car payments, insurance and gas all for less money than I spend right now just on diesel.

The thing I don't want, is that big pickup sitting in the driveway month after month when we need it for hauling a load of mulch every month or two. Pretty soon, sitting there it's going to need new tires $650+, two new big batteries (originals still after 6.5 years), and monthly insurance even if I put it on the mothball plan.

The up-side of getting rid of it would be to plug the $12k or $14k I might get for it into the car, then pay off the rest of the car fairly quickly.

You can rent a pickup from home depot for $50 or so... I'll make up that $50 a number of times by not buying tires, batteries and insurance for the pickup.

If I recall right, there is a very small square tube thing on the back of the Prius that could be used to host a small platform carrier to which a couple gas cans could be strapped 4 or 5 times a summer to bring gas from the station to the house. (anyone know about this as rumor, truth or false?). Not having the gas cans inside the cab is very high on my list of issues with this trade out.

The last reason... I grew up on a wheat farm. One time in my life I moved from a pickup to a ford explorer and then back to the pickup. I wish fuel was $1.50 so the Prius just wouldn't make that much of a savings and then I could just go merrily on my way to 200,000 miles for this pickup. I'm still running the original serpentine belt at 102,000. Original tranny oil, original antifreeze. Not exactly the ford schedule maint plan, but what a rig. I did change a blinker bulb yesterday.

I'm going to see the tax credit with my swap, plus $4000 to $5000 a year in fuel savings, probalby another $250 a year in oil change savings. Insurance is a wash.

At that point, I gotta ask myself. Is my lifestyle such that I can let go of an additional $8000 in 2006 to keep a 7 year old pickup at which time next november will have 150,000 miles on it?

The Prius does seem to save me some bucks in my long commute situation.

I do realize that I will be sucking several thousand dollars of worth out of that new Prius. I would be sucking slightly less out of this pickup.

Put it on paper, run the math. If your math turns up like mine, it gets pretty comfortable to make the move.

 

I do not miss my F150 I save 110 gallons per month. Multiply that times the current cost of gas and you have my monthly gas savings. I also save an additional 100 dollars per month in tires, brakes. oil changes. tranny service and repairs.

 

I also have a 2003 F-150 SuperCrew pickup but it sits in the driveway and is driven no more than a couple of days each month to charge the batt, clean the rust off the discs, get all the oil and grease moving, and fetch building materials from Lowe's and Home Depot.

Our combined family fuel bill had crashed throught the $500 US per month barrier back in August and was still climbing when we bought the Prius - a mere week and one-half before hurricane Katrina made land over New Orleans. Now the fuel bill's down to a managable $275. NICE!

We are keeping the truck, however, mostly because we'd lose on our investment big-time if we tried to sell it now. We've also hung onto the travel trailer (which is paid for) and intend on using it for many years into the future so the truck still has a place and reason for existence.

Do I miss driving the truck? No, not really. I cringed every time I turned the key in that thing, knowing that I was torching my bank account and needlessly burning through hundreds of gallons of gas, not to mention all the pollutants that were going into the atmosphere.

I look at the F-150 as a tool in a bag of tools. I don't use it very often, but it's there when I need it.

As for the Prius? Now there's a car to get excited about!

 

I'm inclined to doubt this (though, believe me I hope it's true). My father was rear ended by a Semi on a bridge in Orlando in heavy rush hour traffic. He was traveling about 50 and the Semi about 60 mph. The Semi DESTROYED his maxima. The trunk was practically smashed under his seat. Golf clubs were a total write-off . The remains of the car slammed into a truck that was in front. Dad was knocked out by the force of the impact. If anyone had been in the back seat they'd have been killed for sure. In a side impact it seems like the results would be pretty grisley. The impact side passengers would almost certainly be dead. I just don't see how the vehicle could absorb that kind of energy. The initial impact would be devastating. Though perhaps there was no trailer full of goods to contribute to the truck's momentum. Basically, unless you're in an M1 (tank) getting hit by a semi is going to ruin your day SUV or otherwise.

 

The 2 scenarios are a bit different though. Getting hit from behind is quite different from getting hit on the side. The point of the story when I heard it is that most vehicles, would likely just slide along the road, being pushed, while the prius just rolled.

 

Listening to a talk show yesterday on KGO in the San Francisco Bay Area, the guest was talking about Toyota running tests on the 2007 Tundra Hybrid in Texas right now. He was speaking about many changes in the technology and moving forward to expand hybrids into other applications such as trucks. Ford and Toyota are working to bring hybrids into the main stream of the truck lines, according to the guest.
olcorral

 

Yes, I miss my 02 F-150 SCrew immensely. It killed me to have to get rid of it, but it was killing me even more at the pump. Don't get me wrong, I love my Prius, but if I could have afforded it, I wouldn't have sold my truck.

 

If we could afford, wouldn't most of us (at least the posters in this topic) have both our Prius and former SUV's or Trucks?

I wouldn't have kept my Jeep, but I wish I could afford to have a pickup as well as my prius.

 

When I originally bought my Prius, I did keep my truck. It eventually became a driveway ornament, as I also kept it parked unless I needed to haul something nasty. I sold it outright and used the money for the down payment on the FEH, when I traded in my Prius for it. If you want a truck for the little light duty crummy stuff you mentioned, I'd get an old 80's jap truck for about the price of dirt, and keep liability only on it. The liability policy should actually help lower your overall insurance bill, unless you are already insuring more than one vehicle without the truck. I'll eventually be doing the same thing. I do miss my truck, but only becuase it was the best domestic vehicle that I'd ever owned.

 

I traded in a 2001 Dodge Diesel Quad Cab 4x4 w/8' bed. Needless to say the everyday savings on fuel alone have saved me a small fortune being gas is now at $2.09 and diesel is at the $2.52 range. 16mpg on the truck compared to 49-54 on the Prius. I have put my old truck back in service, but only use it maybe twice a month. It's been 6 months and I really don't miss having to warm the diesel up forever to get heat. Even plugged in I had to drive around for a 1/2 hr to get it to operating temp in the winter. I only work 5 minutes from home.