Hi GRM community!
I'm doing great, thanks for asking. Hey, is that a new shirt you're all wearing? I like it. It suits you. All of you.
Hey, so my wife and I run a business that frequently involves me packing up our Model Y to the brim, hauling stuff to our sites, unpacking all of that stuff at the site for the day, and then reversing all of that afterwards. Sometimes, we get home, and we're unloading everything late at night on a Sunday with my job coming up Monday morning. My mom suggested we look into a van. This would get us two things:
1.) It would get us immeasurable space back in our garage, and
2.) We wouldn't have to pack up the SUV before the event or unpack it afterwards.
3.) Optional point - We would ALWAYS have all of our stuff, and the risk of forgetting anything would be way down.
We filed it away in the "good ideas" bin for the time being, and then my wife brought up the topic last week. "Should we get a van, or maybe an enclosed trailer?"
Good question!
Discussion ensued and I kind of rolled into the conversation something like "what if it can also tow?"
Dual use!
We don't currently own anything that can tow. My dad lets me use his F-150 and open trailer to tow the race car around, but I would like to take the F-150 out of the equation. It's a very nice truck, but it's his and I don't want to be beating on it. My obvious choice for towing would be a mid-1990s F-series something. Maybe a 7.3L Powersmoke. But that's not a good vehicle for our business. We could buy an enclosed trailer, and a truck, but then we'd still have our two cars, the race car, etc. The driveway and garage are only so big, and my budget is limited.
But wait, vans can tow! Some of them can, anyway. So my mind went right to the white, windowless contractor vans we all see and love. E-250, and E-350 seem obvious choices. E-150 might not have the towing capacity needed to haul a very large steel trailer with a very portly Audi on it. I could get one with a tool box built into it so I could fill that with race car tools, and the tools would help us with our jobs, too. We could get our tents in there (which are also dual-use tools that can be used at the track or at our events). All of her gear, all of mine, and NONE of it would take up garage space, and none would be left home.
OK, there you go. Let's discuss. What should we buy for tow rig, dual-use dealies? Let's say the budget is about $12,000. The 7.3 Powersmoke would be awesome, 6.0L is probably just fine because there's no way a van owner is going to tune his E-350 dog-washing van, and the newer Powerstroke (6.5L?) is apparently not worth touching. I'm not opposed to gas, but diesel would be fun to own since I've never owned one. I'm open to Mercedes Sprinters (if they can tow), Econoline, etc. Anything, really. I figure the car and trailer weigh about 6,000 pounds combined--maybe more when I start throwing tires and stuff on there.
