New Dually

Ordered a new pickup this morning.  I have been studying interesting topics related to GVWRs (you're right--actually boring).  When we are gone for 7 months, as we were last fall/winter/spring, we had to carry everything we could reasonably anticipate we would need.  That's a lot of stuff. 

And when we would load up with water, fuel, food, V-8, Diet Cokes, wine, etc., we were 500 pounds over the recommended limit for our new F250. 

Next year we will want to carry even more things.  We also had times where we needed four wheel drive to get to places to camp and hike.  Since those are the more remote areas, which is what we seek, we realized that we will eventually need this.

So we will take a loss on the new F250, but oh well.  It might be surprising to know that even with the money we spent on gasoline for driving almost 10,000 miles, we save money when we are on our road trips.  So we just spent what we saved.  Isn't that how it's supposed to be done? 

We are excited.  I have never ordered a car from a factory built to the exact specifications I wanted.  We spent a lot of time researching options, and found that we only needed a few additions to the base model to be functional and comfortable.  We added a heavy-duty alternator, skid plates, limited-slip differential, that kind of thing. 

But frankly, the cheap packages for the Ford pickups are as nice as the best packages for vehicles 20 years ago. 

Now we can carry our house to Arizona if we want to.  We'll probably stick with the camper instead, though, but now we have room for everything we want because of the larger back seat, and we can stay out a month or more in remote areas because we can load up with everything we might need.