I've done nothing but get more and more impressed with this truck over the last month. My wife finished up with college in Atlanta back in May and landed a job out in Arizona (where I'm posting from now) ~ so a move was in the works. But we also had just gotten married, so visiting my family thaqt couldn't make it to the Hawaii wedding and showing her the country (she'd only been in the edges of a few states arround GA in 25 years) so we set up a 3700 mile route that took us from GA through TN and into St. Louis. Onto the Twin Cities in MN, then over to WY and MT before heading down to AZ. Since she has a military job and we get compensated for moving ourselves I had to take empty and full weights. In the end, I was towing 1700lbs bed weight (some of that was tongue weight from the trailer) and 3800lbs trailer weight ~ basically prety damn close to the rated limits. With a few exceptions (going over passes and steeper hills) the cruise kept me between 65 and 75mph and between 12 and 13mpg for economy ~ that's with the A/C on the Entire time. The truck only complained once on the whole trip, and that was in WY where I hit road construction going up to a 9600' pass and couldn't get the tranny locked into a gear - the A/T Oil light came on after about 4 miles of creeping along in first and went off in less than a minute after I was able to pull over and shift into Park.
All this on a '97 w/ 120k miles... I've made this trip before (with less weight) using a Dodge van as a tow vehicle and it puked and died on me (blown engine) after only a couple mild/moderate hills.
I've been wanting a T since about '96 and it's nice to know that I've been wanting a quality vehicle the whole time. I can't imagine any need to upgrade as I'll never be towing that much again... well, maybe if the rumors of the hybrid Toy truck that gets 30mpg are true I'll go that way...
Just had to preach to the choir. I'm in a perfect place for some off-roading now (N. AZ ~ by Monument Valley) and look forward to been equally/more impressed with this trucks abilities there too.
