4WD vs 2WD
I'll be shopping for a new (or new-ish) truck shortly for pulling a medium size trailer or 5th wheel. It seems like the vast majority of 3/4 and 1 ton trucks around here are 4WD, with jut a few 2WD...
Forum Discussion
I always get a 4x4 for a tow vehicle. In about 1991-ish, we were pulling a travel trailer to the mountains. It had been raining on and off all day. When we got to the campground it was after dark. We got our paperwork and drove to the campsite. I had a 2 wheel drive Ford truck. I started backing into the slightly uphill campsite and the wheels started spinning. I tried several times and eventually got a reverse running start, in the dark and rain, running totally on memory.
Around that same time we took that same truck with a cabover camper in it. We stayed in a little seasonal campground, also in the mountains. We didn't know the campground at all but, were looking for a secluded spot. There was a little dirt road in the camground that headed up the mountain. It looked like a beautiful place to camp. I drove up that little drive that turned into a path to a nothing. The incline got really steep. We concluded real quick that there was no place to turn around. The right front wheel slipped off of the side of the hill and it was about 100 feet to the bottom. I let off the brake and let it roll and the wheel came back up on the path. It was not bloody fun at all getting back off of the mountain. Although 4x4 is no cure for the curious it would have eliminated some of the slipping and sliding.
Since that time.. We were at a conference, in the mountains, and some friends invited us to eat breakfast with them. They gave us directions which were as clear as mud. We found the address and turned. It was a red mud driveway that wrapped around the side of a mountain and, of course, I made another wrong turn that put me down a logging road at a real steep angle. My wife was, as she has had the opportunity to do many times, freaking out. It looked like we were in a real fix. I engaged the 4x4 and we crawled right back up that hill and made it for breakfast.
In other words, I need 4x4 because I will try any road. My life is a series of bad decisions..LOL.. I know from experience that needing it and not having it sucks. The rule at our house is we always have at least one 4x4.
Around that same time we took that same truck with a cabover camper in it. We stayed in a little seasonal campground, also in the mountains. We didn't know the campground at all but, were looking for a secluded spot. There was a little dirt road in the camground that headed up the mountain. It looked like a beautiful place to camp. I drove up that little drive that turned into a path to a nothing. The incline got really steep. We concluded real quick that there was no place to turn around. The right front wheel slipped off of the side of the hill and it was about 100 feet to the bottom. I let off the brake and let it roll and the wheel came back up on the path. It was not bloody fun at all getting back off of the mountain. Although 4x4 is no cure for the curious it would have eliminated some of the slipping and sliding.
Since that time.. We were at a conference, in the mountains, and some friends invited us to eat breakfast with them. They gave us directions which were as clear as mud. We found the address and turned. It was a red mud driveway that wrapped around the side of a mountain and, of course, I made another wrong turn that put me down a logging road at a real steep angle. My wife was, as she has had the opportunity to do many times, freaking out. It looked like we were in a real fix. I engaged the 4x4 and we crawled right back up that hill and made it for breakfast.
In other words, I need 4x4 because I will try any road. My life is a series of bad decisions..LOL.. I know from experience that needing it and not having it sucks. The rule at our house is we always have at least one 4x4.
