Personal Narrative-It's Time To Drive A Truck

Living in West Virginia, one has ridden in a pick-up truck at least once. If it was in the front seat or the back, especially when you’re six foot three with your knees in your chest. Or when everyone hopped in the bed, you knew it was going to be a good time. Growing up my father had two trucks that I can remember, both of them I loved to ride in. The first one was the definition of a work truck, and it broke down everywhere. The other one was a very nice family truck that he loved, and so did I considering it was the first vehicle I ever drove. I currently drive a truck as my daily driver, and considering my history, I want to test if there is a better truck out there than mine. So I will be testing: suspension, carrying, handling, and gas
When it's time to refuel, filling the tank completely and writing down the number of gallons it took to fill the tank and the vehicle's new odometer reading. Once two odometer readings are taken, MPG can be calculated. Calculating the distance driven by subtracting the previous odometer reading from the new one. Dividing the number of miles driven by the number of gallons it took to fill the tank. The result is the vehicle's MPG for that driving period. This will calculate an average of combined city and highway, which is okay as long as you go the same route each
A truck with stock suspension is still high enough off the ground to give one a scare when testing fast ‘jerking’ movements. The Ford gave a score of 45.6 seconds hitting no cones. However, the Dodge gave a time of 37.4 seconds also not hitting any cones. Showing a way better time compared to the Ford. For mpg, since there would be to many qualifiers I researched the average they tested in 2007. They test in a controlled environment where there would be no qualifiers or error. They calculated for my Ford is 13 city and 17 highway with a combined 15 mpg overall. And for the Dodge with a 14 city and 20 highway with a combined overall 16 mpg overall (Edmunds). Showing the Dodge comes out on top by just a hair overall, but by three on the highway. Qualifiers are anything that would affect the outcome of the score based on the test given. It’s hard to identify all qualifiers but most will be obvious to spot. One common in all the test is traffic. One cannot predict the traffic patterns for certain days. Also the weather is impossible to control. So most testing is done based on days that our dry roads, no rain or snow, and minimal wind. Even though these qualifiers where there, none of them effected the outcome of the score enough to change the score