Yeah I figured it was the surge breaks. Thanks guys!

Used car prices are crazy right now. I just got an offer to sell my six year old Sienna van to Carvana for over $20k.

So help me pick a full-size crew cab truck with a sub $20k budget. Criteria:

- Good for towing race car on flat bed, or occasionally small car in small enclosed trailer.
- Part-time daily duty, and road trips with family of four. I have a short commute and a Cayman that gets 50% of the daily duty, but I still don't want anything skanky. Needs to be clean and comfortable. Ideally something I could put a decent stereo into with Bluetooth, CarPlay, etc.
- As tough, reliable and easy to work on as possible. I would prioritize this over gas mileage, etc.

I would really like a Tundra, but around $20k they're all either ratted out or have a million miles. Maybe I shouldn't worry that much about high mileage with a Tundra? That aside, seems like it's either Ram, Silverado or F-150. Thoughts?

New gen Chevy Colorado.

2016+ have Carplay/AA. You should be able to find one pretty easily in the low 20's or less.

I know you said full-size, but the Colorado wins in the daily department hands down. It will tow a Miata on an open trailer without much car at all while getting 17mpg. It also probably won't be that bad at a small enclosed.

I really want to want the Colorado, but I have teenage kids and I think the back seat will be too small for road trips. So... full-size.

I will give you that one. That's the main reason I don't have the Colorado anymore (Ecodiesel RAM now).

The RAM absolutely SUCKS to park though. In the before times, I worked in a city with gated parking lot. The RAM is significantly worse and required a 3 point turn to get out of the lot every day.

You can get a nice higher trim level 11-14, or lower trim 15-17 F150 with the 5.0 coyote or 3.5 ecoboost for $15-20k. I have a 2011 5.0 that I daily about 50% of the time and averaged 14.7 mpg towing my car to the tail of the dragon and back. I get about 17 daily driving and sitting in DFW traffic

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Schroedinger, I bought a 2012 double cab SR5 Tundra 2 years ago for 15k with a hundred thousand miles on it. Everything was tight in the suspension and drivetrain. I'm at a hundred and seventy-five thousand now and everything is still just fine.

My last Tundra went 464000 Miles when I sold it to a guy in my neighborhood. He bought it for $3,200 and is still driving it. It was still pretty tight too. Can't do that in a Ford or Chevy. I've tried. I'm in sales and drive a lot for a living.

My dad sold his 96 silverado with just about 300k on it. 1 4l60e rebuild and a rear end rebuild throughout it's life. Original non smoking 350 too. Granted they don't make trucks like they used to.

If you do go with a 09-14 silverado try and find a later year one as those had the 6 speed. You do not want the 4 speed. You can find some 15-16's for around 20k, but they have some miles and are rusty work trucks. Ford had decent offerings 11-14 as well.

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Slimy bastard had the odometer unplugged for about 3 years.

I was talking with a family friend who's been in the used car business for years said its crazy. He told me that the big used car dealers (Car Max, Carvana, and others) are paying near RETAIL priced for cars at auction and buying nearly everything. He's got friends who basically just sold all their inventory at auction and shut their doors and walked away with bank.

What are you guys doing to optimize towing or make it less stressful for your vehicles? I already plan on throwing a larger trans cooler on the tahoe, but I was also thinking about going to a lighter 17" wheel instead of the Chrome 20s that the LTZ came with

Hub failures are just ahead of tire failures of common towing problems. Had my fair share of tire problems and just went medieval with it on last round. 12 ply ribbed Goodyear commercial tires that were stupid expensive and heavy duty wheels. Ran the wheels that came on my trailer for two years before I checked the load rating and found that I had been overloading them despite being way under the GVWR. Invested in some very heavy duty wheels that give me plenty of reserve load capacity.

Which is all a long way of saying yes, switching to Towing specific 17s is a smart move. Don't make any assumptions on load carrying capacity, research. Oh, and buy an entire extra Tire and Wheel as a spare.

Your Tahoe has the 6 speed? 6l80? I never see trans temps over 200. Probably don't need to add a trans cooler. Better wheels and tires would probably help, especially to soak up those rogue pot holes you hate to hit 1000 miles from home.
Tahoe also has rear air shocks? I'd keep an eye on those.

I did however just repack the hubs on the trailer. It's such a simple quick job that i try to just do it every year. Some hubs have grease fittings that help. When i have to buy new spindles i'm going to look for the ones with the fittings.

Yeah, I want to convert them to traditional shocks and coils. One of the bags is looking real suspect already

The drivetrain in the Tundra really isn't great for towing.

My buddy tows a 24ft enclosed trailer and he averages about 8mpg. That's 8mpg in the Midwest and he cruises at 68mph. It's also only a 6 speed, which loses 6th gear while towing. So it cruises at 3000rpm. He barely gets 200 miles of range out of the stock 26 gallon tank and is considering a larger aftermarket tank, just so he doesn't have to stop multiple times to refuel.

I tried to talk him out of it in favor of something with a newer drivetrain. They haven't updated it in over 10 years. It is reliable though as a dual duty, but I would steer clear if it's a dedicated tow rig.
For reference my Cayenne Diesel tows my 24ft enclosed at about 13mpg.
And another race buddy has a Cayenne GTS that also tows a 24ft enclosed at 10mpg.

Before writing off the Tundra vs all the fancy 10 speed turbo charged lane keeping assist vehicles, you may want to consider the entire cost of ownership. Yes, fuel mileage is 8-9mpg pulling a enclosed 24ft as I found as well. However, when you add value retention and reliability into the equation, the final cost may be one of the most attractive options around. I'm personally knocking on the door of 200K in my '08 5.7 Sequoia Platinum with 1000's of miles pulling a 24' enclosed and it's only asked for tires, brakes and fluids (and a lot of fuel). It still drives tight, it's reliable, looks almost he same as a 2020MY, and I plan to push it to 300k!

Knocking a tundra for the sake of a few miles per gallon on the rare occasions when you tow is pretty silly when the expense of owning a vag product at all is many times higher. That's a pretty unreasonable comparison. For an 800 mile round-trip tow at the rates mentioned you would see a $100 difference depending upon the price of fuel. Even if you are doing a bunch of track days a year you aren't going to make up the difference in the price of doing a brake job between the two vehicles since the Porsche is going to be so much higher. Not to mention all of the other wonderful things that are unreliable on vag products. I can't imagine the repair costs of running a vag product 300000 miles.

Yeah, towing mileage is going to be pretty similar for gas-engined trucks. Now, the unloaded fuel economy of the Tundra is lower than newer offerings but that may not be a deal breaker depending on how much you drive. The Tundra only has a few major issues:

1). Payload capacity is low, particularly on the CrewMax trucks. Heavily optioned trucks are in the 1,300 pound range, and with accessories can duck under that.
2). Unladen fuel economy (already mentioned).
3). Infotainment is not current, and more modern safety/convenience features have limited availability.

If those things aren't an issue for your use case, by all accounts the Tundra is a great choice.

FWIW I was getting 14mpg in the Tahoe doing about 70, but that was with a Uhaul open trailer.

For the record, I didn't recommend buying a Cayenne. It just happens to be one of the only options that can tow at least 7500lbs and doesn't require me daily driving a full size truck.

I was just noting that you can buy almost anything and get better fuel economy than the Tundra: both towing and unladen.
You can get a Ford/Chevy/Dodge half ton that gets ~4-5mpg higher. That's a significant amount of fuel over 100,000 miles of regular driving- 1000 gallons @ $2.50/gal = $2500
It's also not a quiet, relaxing experience towing while you buzz down the highway at 3000rpm for hours at a time. If you can get past the mediocre towing performance, it'll have the brick-like reliability you'd expect. The 5.7L port injected 8 banger makes good power once you rev it up.

Within my budget of $15-20k, I'm now looking at 2010-2014 Tundras and F-150's. I thought about Sequoia's but I think I'd rather have a bed for wheels, gas cans, coolers, and other big/dirty stuff that I don't want in the cabin with me. There are a few Tundras out there in my budget but they all have 130,000 miles or more. Crazy as it sounds, I like that the 2008-2013 Tundras had reclining rear seats. For the same money there are several F-150's with either the V8 or the 3.5L EcoBoost that have less than 100,000 miles and more bells/whistles (higher trim, 4x4, etc.). I'm going to drive a bunch and see what feels better. I would much rather buy from an individual and not pay the sales tax!