My recently aquired wife informed me the other day that I've had my truck for one year on August 8th. So I thought I'd come over here and say hey to all yall and let you know it's been frigging awesome so far.

Five months ago I married the woman that rode up to Ohio with me a year ago to pick it up. We have a huge landscape project going on in our back yard and this truck has performed flawless getting everything for the project. The most I've towed so far is around 10,000 pounds (4 cubic yards of soil on my 20' car trailer) and it did it with ease. Of course I didn't get 100mpg and could'nt go 0-60 in 1.3 seconds like the diesel guys but it did A-ok for a gas engine. That was sarcasm of course. I've also had roughly 3000 pounds of topsoil in the bed a couple of times, I didn't feel like hooking up the trailer just to run and get it. Piece of cake. It's taken us up to Bowling Green, KY for the NMRA event, down to Destin, FL for our wedding/honeymoon, towed my Mustang many times with it, and of course my daily driver to work. It's been outstanding for all of it.

Couple if pics of the back yard...
Before...


After...




And a few in-between...






The only picture where you can barely see my baby...

Had to bring in 13.5 cubic yards of topsoil for the project, 7 cubic yards of mulch, 75 paver blocks, around 180 landscape timbers, 1500 pounds of concrete, and 35-10'X1/2" rebar rods. All towed by the truck.

By the way, that little skid loader you see me using in a couple of pictures...the most fun you can have at 2mph LOL

 

Awesome pics... and a great way to solve the flat-space issue in the back yard!

Looks GREAT!

 

Excellent yard project! Glad the V10 is treating you well!

 

Nice job on the yard project. That must have been a mother to mow that grass!

 

Nice work on the yard. No pics of the loaded truck?

 

Sorry, I never would think to take a picture. There's the one above where you can see me driving up on the trailer with the skid loader and the trailer is still hooked to the truck. The wife took that one or there wouldn't be any. We're starting another project now, turning the tiny back porch into a much larger stone patio. So I'll be getting a ton of rock stuff pretty soon. I'll try to remember to take a picture of it. If I get everything at once, I'm guessing there will be around 8K pounds of stone/rock all togeher. The trailer is only rated to 6K but I had around 8K of dirt on it with the wall project, I didn't google the weight of topsoil before getting it LOL

That's the main reason for doing this project. After moving in, I bought a nice self-propelled lawnmower and tried cutting it. After the third time I was done with it. There were several places that it was more like a "cliff" than a hill and I almost killed myself in those areas. And the rest of it was just an absolute b!tch. We only gained a couple more feet of "flat space" with the wall but never having to cut that yard again was the main goal.

Thanks for the compliments on the hill/wall. I had absolutely ZERO landscaping experience prior to this, and about a week after we started the project a heat wave hit that has yet to leave us. I think we're around 60 days of 90*+ and we're supposed to average 31 days

 

OK, here you go...
6500 pounds of flagstone on the trailer, plus 3000 pounds of rock/sand in the bed of the truck, plus trailer, plus truck, equals around 18,000 pounds all together. I only had to go about ten miles with it, but there was a nice hill to climb from a dead stop (stop light), she "survived" LOL I'm actually somewhat amazed at how easy it tows HEAVY loads like this. I expected it to make easy work of the Mustang on the trailer but really thought it would have to work pretty hard for loads like this. I do take it easy with it, but never needing to get over 3Krpm and still able to attain decent speeds in a reasonable amount of time is very impressive, to me at least :-)







Where all this is going...



Our two swings, painted, ready to hang on the patio when we finish it...


By the way, I'm still not using the tow/haul mode, I really don't see the need for it, it just makes the engine rev higher before shifting as far as I can tell and it seems to do fine getting up to speed shifting at it's normal points. I assume I'm not hurting anything by not using it, I haven't seen or read anything saying it HAS TO BE used?

That's all I got :-)

 

Nice. You really ought to think about investing in some Timbrens or airbags if you want to do this for extended periods though. That rear end does not look very happy.

 

Funny. I use tow/haul all the time. Empty and loaded.

 

Unless I read it wrong, on the door or in the manual it said I could put 36XX pounds in the bed, this is only 3000ish pounds. Is that bad? I don't ever leave a load sitting in the bed for extended periods of time, usually what ever I put in there is coming out as soon as I get home.

Did I read the load rating wrong or something?

 

No, your good. Just the sagging suspension will negatively affect handling and performance. If you only do it for a bit at a time, and not very often, adding suspension supplements are not worth it. All the airbags / timbrens do is make the ride sit level when loaded, which helps wear and tear on the suspension.