Great advise!! Will look at truck rentals closer to me in the DC suburbs. All those locations are 3-4 hours away

 

I will echo the rental option... that was a saving grace for us... Before I got my truck I just knew I wanted a Dodge Ram... because well, the few folks I knew that towed campers had them, so that meant that is what I wanted... then the day came that we wanted to do a trip up to WY and back, a total of barely over 4k miles... no way our Pathfinder was going to pull our camper that distance, or in those mountains, so I looked at truck rental companies. There was an Enterprise Truck rental company in Memphis, a little over an hour from us. So, I called and reserved one. Turns out, I had no say in what I got, it just depended on what was available when I got there, but since I made a reservation, that did guarantee something would be there.

The day we went to pick it up they pulled a 2020 F250 around front. Agate black (I figured it would be covered in Enterprise stickers...) 6.7L XLT, CCSB, 4x4. And the best part, it only had 52 miles on it! Although, I was still disappointed it wasn't a Ram...

We drove it home that morning, hooked it up to our camper (yeah, we didn't wait for the first 1000 mile break in period before towing...) and then over the next 10 days (9 really) we put over 4000 miles on it pulling our camper. Turned out, we loved it! The power of the diesel, the interior room for me and my wife and our 2 kids in the back (and when no kids, the back seats flipped up for a huge, flat area for our 2 large dogs) and the 10 speed shifted so nice! I really enjoyed it, but I still wondered about the Ram...

Then a few months later, we made another reservation to go to south FL and back. So we rented another truck... and this time I got the Ram! It was also a 2020, a Big Horn edition (so the same trim level as the XLT), Cummins engine, CCSB 4x4. Again, we drove it home, hooked the camper to it and took off. We put just over 2k miles on it, but unlike our previous trip through the western mountains, this was in the flats of Florida...

Turns out, the Ram was much, much less exciting... To be fair, it had 20k miles on it already, hard miles that construction crews put on it, and it had a faint smell of smoke and we even found french fries under the seat. I hated the way the 6 speed shifted... it seemed to have a hard time finding the right gear even on flat land, so I would imagine the mountains would have been less fun... and this time only my daughter came (my son was in boot camp), but we did bring our 2 dogs also. Sadly though, the back seat was also much less accommodating... the rear seat was either all up or all down, and since my daughter was back there, it was all down. Plus, the huge transmission hump in the rear floor board made the floorboards almost unusable for my poor dogs... Overall, I hated it, at least compared to the Ford we rented, but I am so glad I was able to rent them both because had I not, I would be typing this up on the Ram forums, but with much less satisfaction...

So, in 2021, we went to a Ford dealership and placed an order for exactly what we wanted.... well, almost. The only thing I would change today about my truck is I wish I would have went with a long bed rather than the short bed. Sure, it's only 16", but man that would have come in useful many times... and so would have the 48 gallon tank rather than the 34 gallon tank in my short bed. Yet again, one of my Ram buddies talked me out of the long bed...

Anyway, back in summer and fall of 2020, the rental only costs about $600 each time. That included the days and the miles, so it was definitely worth it!