A few weeks ago, I fell in love with a machine when I was least expecting it. I just needed something to transport a couch from the Pasadena area about 20 miles back to my new apartment in Studio City. So I rang up U-Haul and dropped $20 on a pickup truck. What I got was one of the most perfect modern pickups I’ve ever driven.
I still have a lot to tell you all about that party at my house, and about my move, but for now, it’s President’s day and I need to go off-roading with Kristen Lee and Jake Thiewes (from Out Motorsports). As such, I must bang out some quick, but important (!) content. Namely, I need to tell you about an excellent truck that you too can experience for just a few Andrew Jacksons and a 15 minute trip to your dealer of white and orange moving-vehicles.
The reason why I’m comfortable calling this machine “one of the most perfect modern pickups I’ve ever driven” without worry of damage to my flimsy car-journalist reputation is that this truck is honest.
With so many modern pickups having short beds, fancy interiors with copious of electronics, and complicated suspensions and engines, this Silverado feels like a breath of fresh air. It’s a true work truck, and that’s saying something in 2023.
It has a long eight-foot bed, a regular cab, and a bench seat. Granted, it’s a split-bench and if someone sits in the middle they’ll sitt strangely tall due to the stiff cushion, but it’s a bench nonetheless. Plus, the floors? VINYL (or rubberized or whatever Chevy’s calling it these days):
Under the hood is a 335 horsepower 5.3-liter V8. That’s right, a pushrod-equipped small-block LS engine just like the truck gods ordered. Bolted to that motor is a Ypsilanti, Michigan-built (Edit: Actually, it was built in Toledo starting right around the Great Recession) six-speed automatic with a column-mounted shifter.
You can see the column shift in the image below showing the dash, and while I’m sure many of you will say “Is it really a rough and tumble work truck if it has all these screens?” the fact is that the infotainment screen is pretty damn small, and the important controls like HVAC and radio volume/channel are all physical buttons or knobs:
And if you look at the dashboard, you’ll see a fantastic set of gauges showing coolant temperature, oil pressure, and battery voltage, in addition to the basic stuff you’d expect in any other vehicle.
What’s more, the truck rips! I mean that with sincerity. The 335 horses from that V8 sound amazing, and they scoot the two-wheel drive work truck down the road with vigor:
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Why am I so in love with a U-Haul pickup truck? Why was it so hard to drop it off that night, never to be seen again? Is it because it’s been a while since I’ve been in a modern truck that felt anything like my old and beloved Jeep J10? Or is it because it’s new and therefore 10000% more comfortable and quick than anything I own? Or it because I’m just a bit tired from this move to LA? It’s probably a bit of all of that.
But I don’t think I’m wrong for loving this truck.
I started looking into what it’d take to get a hold of one of these bare-bones V8 work-rigs, and the answer is: not a whole lot! U-Haul actually sells its trucks on “trucksales.uhaul.com,” and these things all have very, very few miles on them — both of the pickups below have fewer than 13,000 on their odometers:
Pricing doesn’t seem amazing, and it’s only a couple of grand below MSRP, but it looks to be roughly the market rate for such a truck. Still, the point is that there are lots of fantastic work truck available to purchase or, if you just want a quick, loud, sweet bench-seat equipped pickup for a drive-in movie date, you can just rent the thing for $20 + mileage. And that’s just awesome.
[Mercedes Note: U-Haul doesn’t just sell off its pickup trucks, but its box trucks, too. Have you ever wanted to build a stealth camper or wish you had a truck to carry your toys? You can find old U-Hauls for sale at corporate locations and they get as big as those 26-foot GMC Topkicks. Sometimes, the equipment will be so old that you might find a late 1980s International S1600 with a manual transmission and a 7.3-liter IDI V8 diesel! -MS]
I rent these once or twice a year to haul crap from home depot. I also think they are pretty great bare bones tools.