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Buying 1st truck - advice on bed length

spyder

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If you plan to actually use your truck for truck stuff, the 6'4 bed is barely sufficient and the 5'7 bed is near useless. If you can't park a truck with a 6 foot bed, you need to buy a car anyway.
 

PetePA

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My personal preference from an aesthetic standpoint is the 5'7" bed.

From a utility standpoint, bigger is always better. There's always that situation where you wish you had a bigger bed. For me, 9" of additional space isn't enough added utility to justify. I'd go with 8' if that was available due to plywood and 2x4 sizes.

Maneuverability is also a small factor, though it can't be too much different considering only a ~9" difference in length.

Another factor is my ability to park the truck in the garage. These are nice trucks. If I got a tradesmen, then long bed. A Laramie, Limited or Tungsten? My preference is short bed.

In order of priority, for me:

#1 Aesthetic preference - 5'7"
#2 Able to park in garage - 5'7"
#3 Utility - 8' (if it were available on the trim I wanted)
#4 Maneuverability - 5'7"

There really is no situation where I prefer the 6'4" bed.
 

Nightowl

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I bought a crew cab short bed. I wish I would have gotten a quad cad with a longer bed. But I rarely have anyone in the rear seats though.
 

Rock Crawler

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Ideally, they'd build and I'd buy a Megacab with an 8' bed. That I would love.

It‘s a reality. Time to bust out your checkbook. When I had my 2006 Ram 2500 MegaCab CTD, I thought about it for about 10 seconds. Then I thought, where the hell could I even park this thing? It would require two parking spots everywhere I went.


IMG_0181.jpeg

 
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Jmac509

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Nothing gets the Ram community fired up midweek like a good ol bed length discussion thread. We lost the op days ago but our fire for bed lengths burns on.

Cheers Brothers! Have a great weekend!
 

strinos

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Nothing gets the Ram community fired up midweek like a good ol bed length discussion thread. We lost the op days ago but our fire for bed lengths burns on.

Cheers Brothers! Have a great weekend!
Ha - That's the second time I've been reported lost!

I'm going to check out the truck in question this afternoon. I've decided to go with the 6'4" assuming the truck is in good shape. Parking isn't an issue at home and we have two other vehicles for commuting and normal family hauling. This truck will just take a little getting used to, but not really concerned as I like big vehicles anyway. As this truck is really for recreation, roadtrips and the ocassional Lowe's run, I am confident I'll be just fine.

Will provide an update on whether I buy it.
 

BlueHemi1500

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Ha - That's the second time I've been reported lost!

I'm going to check out the truck in question this afternoon. I've decided to go with the 6'4" assuming the truck is in good shape. Parking isn't an issue at home and we have two other vehicles for commuting and normal family hauling. This truck will just take a little getting used to, but not really concerned as I like big vehicles anyway. As this truck is really for recreation, roadtrips and the ocassional Lowe's run, I am confident I'll be just fine.

Will provide an update on whether I buy it.
Enjoy the truck, you will find plenty of use for the longer bed. :)
 

CalvinC

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If it’s not a daily, and you aren’t tackling the rubicon trail on the regular, then 100% I’d be getting the long bed. It is a truck after all.
The whole reason for a short bed IMO is to make dailying the thing easier. But in the case of the extra 9” it’s not a huge difference anyway.

I went from an 8’ bed to a 5.5’ bed and it was such a change I had to get another trailer. That’s another solution.
 

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