How's Everyone Doing in LTL Right Now?

It be great for me. I have no car payments just by beater ford ranger

 

I am a team driver at Estes out of Orlando and freight has been down over here. We do turns to Nashville everyday from Orlando. My co-driver does the night shift on the way up to Nashville and I do the drive down to Orlando during the day. Freight has been down for sure in Nashville. We used to be in and out of there but we now have to wait up to 7 hours for a load sometimes. The dispatchers say there is not enough freight coming in. I do see a lot of runs being cut next bid and winter is going to be especially harsh since it slows down even more

 

Well for me, I always wanted a daily driver to commute with so I can keep miles off my Veloster N and keep it fresh for track days. I don't street race, I'm not an idiot.

I was initially just looking to get a used jalopy for a couple grand, but then I thought "what if I could tow my Veloster to track days instead?" So I started looking at pickups. I always wanted one as a kid, now I'm old enough to get one.

I wasn't raised in a family that likes American cars, so Chevy, Dodge, Ram, Ford and Jeep were out. Honda's Ridgeline isn't body on frame so that's out. Nissan has the Frontier but it's a Nissan, so obviously not. All that's left is Toyota. I hopped in a Tundra and the sheer size alone turned me off. I don't need a land yacht or 10k lbs of towing capacity. The Tacoma however caught my eye. Big but still easy to drive, has enough towing capacity for my car and a theoretical open trailer, and I really enjoyed test driving one last month. Plus I really like the muscular blocky styling. Every other midsize truck looks too smoothly shaped, and the Frontier just looks like a car on the inside to me.

So sometime next year I plan to get into a Tacoma TRD Sport. AFTER I get my money in line.

 

What's wrong with Nissan? My Titan had a quarter million on it when I sold it(been kicking myself ever since), and I never had a single problem.

 

if you plan on towing anything other than a lawn mower, i suggest a larger truck. pulled a 2 horse AL trailer empty and it was all that 21 tacoma wanted. then put 2 horses in it and were basically limited to 55 mph on the interstate. it was terrible.

great trucks but they won't safely and confidently pull anywhere near their "rating".

 

The 21 Tacoma with the V6 right? Its 265 lb/ft of torque doesn't come in until 4600rpm. You basically have to wring its neck to get any kind of towing power. In my opinion that's not exactly the kind of engine you want in a truck.

The 24+ Tacomas may have a 4-cylinder turbo, but peak 317 lb/ft of torque comes in from 1800 through 3700rpm. Much lower in the rpm band. There's a car review channel on YouTube that tested both the third and fourth generation Tacomas from the Eisenhower tunnel down to Denver and back with mtow. Both trucks were capable of doing it. The 24 did a bit of gear hunting for a minute, but the 21 taco was screaming bloody murder near redline.

Also I'd only really be towing my car twice a year, and I live in California so I don't imagine I'd be traveling much faster than 55-60 anyway.

 

Older Nissans aren't bad when it comes to reliability and pure utility. My first car was an 05 Sentra and I had it from 72k to 188k miles, half the time with leaking cv boots and it never gave me any trouble. After I got another car, my dad sold it to a coworker of his and it reportedly went a total of 318k mi before finally dying.

It's Nissans post 2007 I have a problem with. Sure the VQ, VK and VR engines are also impossible to kill, but their Jatco CVTs are time-delay grenades waiting to blow. Though Nissan's trucks operate a traditional automatic, the switch to CVTs and their unreliability signals to me that Nissan as a whole has stepped backwards in terms of build quality.

Growing up in the back seat of a Camry, and recently buying a Grand Highlander for my wife, Toyota to me is a known quantity. And the Tacoma depreciates much slower. There's a Toyota dealership 20 mins from my house offering an SR5 lease for $170/mo. A similarly spec'd Frontier offers the same lease for $338.

 

Newer Nissans besides the GTR are garbage. Right when the VQ era ended is when it went to crap. I have a 2001 pathfinder with 167k miles. Runs like a champ and I think it’s on its original water pump. My daily. I was into Nissans in the 90’s and early 2000’s. Worked on a lot of them.

 

You pretty much mirror me. I was active duty and we had access to many American made vehicles. The Chevies were constantly in the shop, while the Fords were close behind and the interior felt cheap. The Dodge did ok but I don't like their trucks. The Honda Ridgeline looks awful with that downward slopping bed. Nothing looks like it and pretty much everyone knows what you are driving when you pass them. I don't know much about Nissan other than I would rather own an old Datsun as a beater truck to get me around town.

I used to own a FJ Cruiser which was based off of a Tacoma chassis. The turn radius was great and the thing was so super reliable. I did look into a Tundra as well, but you are right, that thing would handle like cruise ship, and the last thing I need is people laughing and pointing at me cause I am doing a 15-point turn trying to get into or out of a parking spot at Home Depot. I think Tacoma is the way to go, although I really want to get my hands on a Hilux.

 

Funny, my colleague just called me wanting to sell his '21 Tacoma for a brand new one. He has a 2% interest rate and only has $8k left on his current loan. I don't think he has kept up with what is going on in the financial sector if he thinks he can go out and just finance something. I think making any major financial changes right now is a terrible idea given everything that is going on.