We're getting a new truck! And I love it!! It's a lot more comfortable than the Pilot.

He said

So in the way we seem to have been doing things lately (read: impulsively), we've made another big change in our cavalry. As of Wednesday at 6:30pm, gone from our driveway will be our Honda Pilot, and sitting in its spot will be a 2017 Dodge Ram Rebel pickup truck! And, we're well aware you're probably thinking 'WTF?, I thought the reason that they picked Wolfie Too was that the Pilot could haul it'. And the truth is, it could, but just not as well as something with double the towing capacity (and engine). It was after my last trip down to Whitby to pick it from having a taillight repair done, that I noticed we were going through a lot more gas. And on top of that, I could see the engine working a lot harder and tachometer riding higher and higher.

Now, a pickup truck has long since been a dream vehicle of mine as I have always just loved the look and utility of them. But Danielle on the other hand was dead set against them. Dead. Set. I even tried to outwit her when we shopped for Pilot trying to convince her it was the better option even going so far as to use Emelia to help improve the numbers in favour of a truck. The reality was, I wanted her to be happy with the newer, bigger vehicle we were driving too, so the Pilot won out. Easily.

The tipping point for her was a couple things: She understood that we were going through a lot more gas, and as we had done some cursory shopping also understood that in order to get a SUV with similar towing capacity as a truck we were going to spend likely double what we would on a truck. So in the same way as much as we loved Wolfie and never could imagine needing more and did, the truck became a little more of a legitimate contender. After we started to look at the big two (Ford and Dodge) and she saw that the crew cab gave us all the comforts of the Pilot and all that we'd really be missing was the third row seat she was much more open to the idea.

What sealed the deal however was having the ability to get a significant discount on the price as we have family that works at the Chrysler plant in Windsor. Once Danielle saw the difference in price, she was one hundred percent less set against an ugly pickup truck. That savings allowed us to take a bit of a hit on the trade in value for the Pilot which was less than what we owed as we were only just approaching 3 years in. And in the end we walked away with a beautiful new truck with payments relatively close to the Pilot.

I don't know how or why it is we do it this way, but in the same fashion as Wolfie Too, we started this checking out a truck to moving to buying one in less than the two weeks ahead of heading out on another week-long camping trip. And like the trailer, we managed to want the most popular model of Ram truck at a time of year when they were very sparse. We had 3 dealers working to find us the colour and model we wanted and in the end luckily were able to get all we were looking for, in the colour we wanted, on a lot in London. So, unlike Wolfie Too and my rushed trip to Whitby the day before we left for camping, this week I will be in the city to get our new chariot.

And the funniest part in all of this has been seeing Danielle go from the person who was vehemently opposed to even the mere suggestion of a pickup truck, to someone who is as excited as I am about the new ride. It has a lot of really nice features, and is going to most of all make camping a whole heck of a lot easier. I don't think she's at the point where she wants to get a Dodge Boys satin jacket yet, but she certainly is okay with the added storage, towing power and of course most of all, the savings.

She said

We certainly like to make sure our to do list is always growing. As you can see from John's part of the blog the last couple weeks has been about getting thing going with upgrading our vehicle. The idea of this pained me more than I can express. First I don't like pick-up trucks. I don't like the look of them and they have never been my cup of tea. Now I will say I haven't loved everything about our Pilot but I did like some of its features. So when we started hauling the bigger trailer the idea was firmly planted that we needed to start thinking about a vehicle with more tow capacity.

This pained me, first we researched heavily trailers to assure that we found a trailer that had the features we wanted that was in the tow capacity of the Pilot. The trailer was within our tow capacity but once we added some supplies we were pushing the Pilot likely pretty close to that max capacity. You could feel that the Pilot was pushing the limit, none of this was good. We couldn't have this as a solution on the long term sadly. So add in that we are only a few years in our loan with the Pilot meant we would have to take a bit of a hit on the trade in. My financial mind was NOT happy about this. So what to do I knew we had to make a change so it meant we had to figure out what we could afford to offset the hit on the trade in.

So John who was beyond thrilled with the idea of truck purchases went right in research mode. We had looked at a few companies, some I hated the look of more than others, some others were eliminated for other reasons and we finally settled between Ford and Dodge. In the end the Dodge Ram won out. We started then going to dealerships to see and test out options, after a bit of back and forth we finally decided on the Ram Rebel. After a lot of calls and trying to find one with the features we wanted we finally found one at a local dealership and can pick it up Wednesday on route to get our trailer out of storage.

Another crazy week to get things ready for our upcoming week away, between work, Emelia's gymnastics training and getting things squared away with the new truck and get the trailer ready for the trip. This week is likely going to fly by like a blur, before we know it we will be on route to Wolfe Island and then to Bon Echo for a week. The last few weeks have been so busy we are more than looking forward to a week away!