Video: Welcome to the Cars.com Pickup Truck Buying Guide

Maybe this is your first new pickup, maybe it's your 10th, maybe you wanna use it for towing or maybe heading into the woods, or maybe just hauling the kids around and looking cool in the drop off lane. Well, whatever your reasons, the choices you face for pickups are vast. With half a dozen different types on the market and options that can let you choose from a bare bones work model to a loaded luxury liner to a showroom fresh Baja racer. Well, we've created the new pickup truck buyer's guide to try and answer some common questions surrounding trucks, define some confusing terminology, talk about the latest tech, and generally help you figure out the ultimate question, just how much pickup truck do you really need? We'll start with the smallest ones on the market right now, the compacts like this Ford Maverick here. Trucks like this one and the Hyundai Santa Cruz are based on compact crossover SUV chassis. The Maverick shares a lot of the parts you can't see with the Ford Escape and Bronco Sport, for example, while the Santa Cruz, pretty much a Hyundai Tucson SUV with a pickup bed instead of a covered cargo hatch. They're front wheel drive vehicles with optional all-wheel drive, and they typically have very limited bed and interior space but that doesn't mean that they're not extremely useful. The Maverick can tow up to 4,000 pounds and you can put up to 1,500 pounds in the bed, which is nothing to sneeze at. This category is also the cheapest entry point for new pickup ownership too. So if budgets are tight, a compact pickup might not be a bad idea. They also tend to be the most fuel efficient too with a Maverick offering an optional hybrid powertrain. But given their diminutive size, their utility while strong is still limited. That's why you might want something a little bigger and a bit more robust like a mid-size truck such as this Nissan Frontier. Trucks in this category which also include the Chevy Colorado GMC Canyon, Ford Ranger, Toyota Tacoma, Jeep Gladiator, are typically built more like their big brother, full-sized counterparts, separate cabs on a ladder style chassis. They can tow more than the compacts, carry more in their larger beds and are a lot more capable off-road too. Most mid-sizers are rear wheel drive with optional four or all-wheel drive and are powered either by turbocharged four cylinder or naturally aspirated six cylinder gasoline engines. There are no hybrids in this category or full electric vehicles either, and diesels sadly aren't a thing anymore either. Their big benefit over the larger full size pickups is the ability to park 'em just about anywhere. They'll fit in most home garages, public parking spaces and are a lot easier to navigate through urban environments. Arguably, they're even better off-road machines than their full-sized brethren for that same reason. You can get some with incredible off-road capability but with a narrower, shorter footprint that lets you sneak into tighter spaces on the trails. But if you're looking for space, power and even more utility you're probably going to have to size up one more level to a bigger model. That would be the full-sized pickups, the most popular group in the pickup segment and perpetual best sellers in the United States. But full-sized pickups are also the most complicated category, and you might not fully understand what all the the differences are. Like, what's a light duty versus heavy duty truck? What are the differences between 1500, 2500, 3500 or 150, 250, 350, so on. So let's talk about the different kinds of full-size pickup trucks. Modern full-size pickups can be further broken down into light duty and heavy duty pickups. The old terminology that used to be referred to like 1/2 ton, 3/4 ton, 1 ton pickups describes the payload rating that the truck could handle in its bed. A 1/2 pickup could carry a load of 1,000 pounds, 3/4 could do 1,500 pounds and a one ton pickup could do 2,000 pounds in the bed. These days however, even basic half ton trucks have payloads well in excess of 1,000 pounds and even the compact Ford Maverick has a payload rating of an old 3/4 ton truck. The more modern way of dividing up the category is into light duty trucks and heavy duty trucks. The light duty full-size trucks include the Ford F 150, Chevrolet Silverado 1500 GMC Sierra 1500, Ram 1500, Toyota Tundra, and Nissan Titan. They've since grown to enormous proportions and are used as much as family cars and commuters as they are for actual work purposes these days. But this is the most diverse category as well. You can get a single cab rear wheel drive, two seat work truck model with a huge bed and basic engine or option it up to a loaded leather lined five passenger luxury rig with an enormous engine and $100,000 price tag. Several flavors of off-road and four-wheel drive capability are available and there are hybrid and even full electric models now on sale. Heavy duty trucks include the Ford Super Duty F250, 350, and 450, the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra HD 2500 and 3500, and Ram's 2500 and 3500 trucks. Toyota and Nissan do not make heavy duty trucks. But what's the difference between a light duty and heavy duty pickup? Well, at the core, it's what they're capable of doing and how they're built to do it. Heavy duty trucks like this GMC Sierra 2500 HD can tow more, carry more, they're physically larger than the light duty trucks, but most importantly, they're specifically built to do these more arduous tasks with much beefier components. Heavy duty shock observers, bulkier axles with optional dual rear wheels, more robust transmissions and high output diesel engines. The top Ford Super Duty, for instance can actually tow up to 40,000 pounds. These are the trucks that you buy when you know you have to tow something big and very heavy and wanna do it with a maximum safety margin. Their disadvantages are numerous, however. They're incredibly thirsty, impossible to park in most urban and suburban areas, they weigh several tons and they're usually extremely expensive. Heavy-duty trucks are special specialty items designed more for a purpose and less for casual use. One of those specific truck tasks is towing, which is one of the biggest reasons people give for why they wanna buy a truck. Americans tow everything from trailers full of lawn equipment for work to bigger and bigger campers, to boats and ATVs for weekend getaways. One of the biggest questions new truck buyers have however, is how much truck do you need to safely tow your trailer full of whatever? Well, that's the question we're going to look into next because going by what the truck manufacturers claim isn't always the best idea. See, the truck makers are locked in this constant battle of one-upmanship, who has the best in class towing capacity this week? Who has the most torque? Who has the most cameras? But focusing on those questions can often lead you to buy something that's either way too much truck and too much money or not enough truck to do what you wanna do. Now, we don't want you to overspend in this economy, but we also want to make sure you can do what you need to do with your truck. So let's look at a few different applications and what types of trucks we think match up best for what you want to tow. Let's start with the lighter stuff, things like a single personal water craft, a small U-Haul box or an ultralight teardrop camping trailer. This is the kind of stuff that a compact crossover base pickup like a Maverick or a Hyundai Santa Cruz can handle without a problem. The compacts can generally tow anywhere from 1,500 to 5,000 pounds making them useful as trucks for simple towing duties. One aspect to consider however, only the maverick can be had with an integrated trailer brake controller a device that automatically controls a trailer's electric brakes, if so equipped. The Hyundai doesn't offer this. So while it does technically have a higher towing capacity than the Maverick, you'll have to also add an aftermarket controller if you want maximum braking safety. Moving on to some slightly heavier stuff maybe two personal watercraft or a larger camper, maybe some motorcycles or a trailer full of lawn equipment these are things that could be handled by the midsize trucks. The mid-sizers generally can handle things up to about 7,700 pounds, and most of them offer integrated towing packages with trailer brake controllers as well. But these tow ratings are also calculated with just one driver and no other cargo aboard. Add a family and luggage to the mix and your ratings drop even further. But weight isn't the only consideration when determining what a suitable towing vehicle is. You also wanna consider things like the wheel base of the towing vehicle. Several camper trailers weigh less than the maximum rated capacity for a mid-sized truck but they could be rather long. And setting up a short wheel based tow vehicle with a decent sized heavy trailer that approaches the maximum towing capacity of the pickup can make for a less stable towing experience at higher speeds or in windy conditions. You also don't really get much in the way of towing technology in a mid-size truck. It'll be on trailer connection reminders. For things like advanced cameras, remote reverse controls, and even hands-free cruise control that works while you're towing you have to upgrade to a full-size pickup. For many people towing a small camper, a good-sized boat, a flatbed trailer with a race car, your typical average full-size light duty pickup will do just fine. The latest full-size light duty pickups can tow anywhere from 5,000 to 14,000 pounds. So hauling a 7,000 pound camper trailer loaded with water, gas, food, clothes and gear shouldn't be too much of a problem. But you should still calculate what your load weighs, add in a healthy safety margin and make sure your truck's towing capacity and tongue weight can handle that. All of them have optional trailer towing packages which can bring specialized equipment to the truck like integrated trailer brake controllers, but also things like oil coolers, transmission coolers, and a host of extraordinary camera systems and electronic assistance functions that make towing even easier. For instance, Ford's Pro Trailer backup assist can allow you to back the truck and trailer combination up using just a dial on the dash and the pedals. General Motors transparent trailer function can, with the addition of some accessory cameras, even make the trailer your towing disappear when viewed in the touchscreen display, allowing you to see what's behind the trailer as you're driving down the road. But there's something more to evaluate when thinking about buying a full-sized light duty pickup for towing and that is, is your trailer heavy enough to warrant moving up to a heavy duty pickup. Specifically equipped a Ford F150 could tow up to 14,000 pounds, but should you tow that much with your F150 or should you move up to a Super Duty F250 or 350 instead? The consideration here is that, while your light duty truck could likely handle the load it's putting a lot of extra strain on other components in the truck, like the axles, brakes, transmission, and engine. That can cause premature wear in a light duty pickup, but not in a heavy duty pickup. That's why heavy duty pickups are great for towing very heavy trailers or providing a decent safety margin for merely normally heavy trailers like a large 10,000 pound camper that could be pulled by a light duty truck but which can be pulled a lot more comfortably and safely by a heavy duty pickup. Of course, some trailers simply require a heavy duty pickup like anything with a gooseneck or fifth wheel style of hitch that connects to the pickup in its bed and not off its rear bumper. Heavy duty trucks have just as much fancy technology as the light duty trucks for towing as well. With the latest Super Duty, even able to use its cameras and electronic controls to automatically back the truck up to a trailer hitch. Talk about a marriage saver. Are these all the things you need to consider when choosing a new pickup to match your towing needs? Of course, not. There's a lot more to keep in mind, such as whether you want a gas or a diesel engine, how you'll use your truck when you're not towing, budget concerns and so much more. But as a starting point, we hope this guide helps steer you in the right direction. If you'd like to know more about the cars.com pick up truck buyers guide, head over to cars.com to get more of your questions answered or maybe find the pickup that's right for you. (cheerful music)