As is customary when you have access to a truck, a friend asked for some help moving this weekend. I negotiated the usual free dinner and round of golf to be determined later and headed out with the Silverado. He said there were a couple dressers and a bed set along with a few bags of clothes and a sizable painting. No problem I assured him, although I didn't really know whether or not the short five-and-a-half-foot bed would handle the mattress set...
Everything fit fine as long as we kept the tailgate down, which of course required plenty of straps and tie downs to make sure it all didnât slide out on the highway. Made me question the whole crew cab thing as the five-and-a-half-footer is the biggest bed you can get when you order a half-ton four door. Then again, when it came time to load up the painting it fit quite nicely against the soft bottoms of the folded up seats. Not a bad compromise this time around, but I'm not sure it would be one I would want to make all the time.
Ed Hellwig, Lead Senior Editor @ 13,368 miles
Ed Hellwig, Lead Senior Editor @ 13,368 miles
jerseypr5 says:
03:22 PM, 04/16/07
This is the one thing I never liked about four full sized doors and pickup trucks. I have always wondered why not provide a full sized bed (6 to 7 feet) AND the quad cab? I know the over all length of the truck would make it hard to deal with in about 90% of driving and parking conditions, but it is a truck and should stay true to its blood.
I remember seeing the old f-250 and dodge crew cabs that had something like a 7 or 8 foot bed with a full four door set up and they where huge, but they got the job done right.
I do a lot of work with Habitat for Humanity, and I know just how important a full sized bed AND a full sized cab can be. It sucks that there are really no manufactures out there who really get the right kind of compromise....
jerrywimer says:
06:06 PM, 04/16/07
Actually, they make a think called a "bed extender", that, of all things, extends the bed! Believe it or not, it allows the length of the tailgate to be used as part of the flat horizontal surface of the truck's box, while keeping things from sliding out!!
And then there's a different GM product (two of 'em actually), called the Chevrolet Avalanche (or its way spiffier cousin, the Cadillac Escalade EXT). These two not only get by with the 5'5" box when using the cab as a regular four-door crew cab- they also have the audacity to let you convert them to two-door 8+ foot box pickups in a pinch! Even more distressing, they do this while having a wheelbase and overall length that's shorter than the Silverado Crew Cab w/5'5" box!! Gotta hate versatility like that, doncha?!?
Now, I'll give ya this much- if you're doing work on a construction job site, highway road crew, or other such messy task, the 2500 / 3500 crew cab long box pickups are king. Then again, you don't usually find the people that use 'em taking them out as the regular suburban daily drivers either, so they don't worry too much about how they'll fit in the local Wal-Mart parking lot. It's more likely they'll just end up parked in a patch of bare dirt near the shoulder somewhere. And that's all well and good. It's possible to design vehicles well to fit their particular niche without making different designs *wrong*. ;-)
gtcompscientis says:
02:03 PM, 04/17/07
This is something that plagues a lot of half-tons, but I still think that the 5.5' bed plus the aforementioned extender is useful.
However it is nice to note that the 2008 Titan will have a Crew Cab w/Long Bed option (7' bed)...
johnps says:
03:07 PM, 04/18/07
Hey, um, check out a Ford dealer, why not?:D F-150 supercrews now come with 6 1/2 ' beds!!
jerrywimer says:
12:53 PM, 04/19/07
:D I don't know if GM allows you to get a 6 1/2' bed in the 1500 or not. But if you can really justify *needing* the longer bed *and* needing to carry 4+ folks around at the same time, you're probably better off with a 3/4 ton or bigger anyway. You gotta subtract weight from the hauling capacity for each additional one of us Beeg Americuns that you put in the cab, ya know? The listed capacity is usually with a single (200lb?) driver and tank of gas. Add 3 more 200lbers and you have to subtract 600 from the listed capacity. If it's a typical light 1/2 ton truck, you might as well stick with the short box in that case! ;D