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Sometimes, you need muscle. You need a pickup truck. You need a Dodge Ram 1500 Crew Cab SLT, preferably with a long cargo bed, if you can get it. If not, the short bed properly loaded will do.

Our 2009-model test truck came with the short cargo bed — five feet and seven inches long. Had we gotten one with the long cargo bed, eight feet, we could have distributed our cargo over a longer surface, thereby reducing its height. We would have gotten better mileage that way.

It’s a matter of physics. Cargo stacked high in the bed of a pickup truck increases wind drag, and anything that increases wind drag sucks fuel.

In a bid to save gasoline, we opted for modest Ram muscle, choosing the pickup with the 4.7-liter, 310-horsepower V-8 over the more rambunctious model with the 5.7-liter, 390-horsepower Hemi V-8. But I’m not sure we saved anything by going with the smaller engine.

We lost mileage to wind drag — the high-stacked cargo — and our lust for options. We were carrying furniture from Northern Virginia to our daughter Binta’s home in Upstate New York, where the roads can sometimes be tricky and slippery, which makes four-wheel-drive a desirable technology. Our Ram 1500 came with four-wheel drive.

The problem with that, of course, is that it usually takes more energy to drive four wheels than it does to drive two, especially if much of that driving will be uphill, which was the case on the New York end of our trip.

The upshot is that we burned regular gasoline at the disappointing rate of 15 miles per gallon on the highway, an egregious consumption accompanied by a total $225 fuel bill for a round trip of nearly 700 miles.

Sometimes, you need muscle. But, when flexing it at that price, it’s easy to understand why pickup truck sales have plummeted in an era of expensive fuel.

The good news is that those falling sales, down by as much as 33 percent at Chrysler, maker of Dodge trucks, could prove a boon for people who really need pickups. Chrysler is whacking as much as 40 percent off Rams’ list price.

Those steep discounts could translate to point-of-sale savings of $10,000 or more per truck, enough to support the V-8 Ram’s thirst for gasoline, even at 15 miles per gallon.

But selling vehicles at discount is not a recipe for corporate profitability, nor is it necessarily a good way to win the hearts and minds of customers. Seduction in the marketplace is best effected through desirable products — for example, the development of powerful pickups that also deliver good fuel economy.

Chrysler’s engineers are working hard toward that end. And there’s some evidence, in the Hemi V-8 version of the Ram, for example, that they are making some progress. Even with its 80 extra horsepower, the Hemi V-8 Ram has a computerized engine-management system that might have given us better mileage — or certainly as good as what we got from the tested 4.7-liter V-8 model.

When less power is needed in the Hemi V-8, Chrysler’s “multi-displacement system” automatically deactivates four of the engine’s eight cylinders, saving fuel. All of the Hemi V-8’s cylinders go to work whenever full power is needed.

It’s a neat compromise, one worth exploring for consumers who need the power of a big V-8 engine. But if Chrysler really wants to reel in buyers who might be willing to pay premiums for Rams, the company should get to market as quickly as possible with its models that reportedly will be powered by Cummins diesel engines.

Diesels offer 30 percent better fuel efficiency over gasoline-powered models. They also offer more torque, engine twisting power.

Diesel engines cost more than those powered by gasoline. But here’s betting that Chrysler won’t have to sell one Cummins Diesel Ram at discount.

ON WHEELS WITH WARREN BROWN Listen from noon to 1 p.m. Tuesdays on WMET World Radio (1160 AM) or http://www.wmet1160.com.