This truck ready and more than able to haul
Laramie Crew Cab — with the Cummins in-line six diesel engine — is a workhorse set for duty
In retrospect, it might have been overkill. Not unlike using a jackhammer to cut French toast, I took a 2017 Ram 3500 Laramie Crew Cab 4x4 Long Box to pick up some building supplies, collect a few 19th century barn beams and haul renovation debris to the dump. As they say, go big or go home. Or in this case, go big and go to Home Depot.
The Ram 3500 is really all about towing, and this black behemoth of a tester is equipped to haul your cottage to the boat, never mind the other way around. Every option box relative to pulling is ticked here, swelling the price of this Laramie Crew Cab with eight-foot box from a base $65,995 to an eye-watering $86,910.
Key among these is an upgrade from the base 5.7-litre Hemi V-8, with 383 horsepower and 400 pound-feet of torque, to the top-spec 6.7-L Cummins turbo diesel in-line six that generates 385 hp and a seismic 900 lb-ft of torque at 1,700 rpm. In the words of Carole King, you’ll feel the earth move under your feet.
This $9,345 engine uptick leapfrogs a 6.4-L Hemi and two other Cummins in a lesser state of tune, and comes hand-in-hand with the heavy duty $4,155 six-speed automatic transmission.
OK, so we’re really serious about towing. In that case, you need to go for the $1,200 dual rear wheel and the $1,595 self-levelling rear air suspension. Of course we’ll need the Fifth Wheel/Gooseneck Towing Group, a.k.a. the ultimate trailer hitch, that sits like a weird metallic alien in the middle of the bed. This proved to be a $1,775 pain in the butt for me, as it used up valuable load space.
So, are we there yet? Not quite. With the Cummins diesel, there are three axle ratios to choose from (3.42, 3.73 and 4.10). Picking the most extreme 4.10 ($125) bestows this beast with the ability to pull 13,753 kilograms. Payload capacity is 2,576 kilograms).
For this dilettante dabbler in the world of heavy-duty trucking, the Ram 3500 Laramie made life pretty sweet. After a few hours of renovation hell — smashing plaster, crow-barring two-by-fours, terrifying our dog and cursing like a demented stevedore — I looked forward to my dump-running sojourns, wherein I plunked my weary derrière into the heated/ventilated leather bucket seat (another $1,400 for rearseat heating), felt the warmth of the heated steering wheel soothe my battered hands and cranked up the tunes on the fine Alpine audio system. The Uconnect 8.4-inch touchscreen infotainment system with SiriusXM and navigation is a $700 option here, and proves once again that Fiat Chrysler’s clear and logical interface is one of the best of its ilk.
On cold morning startups, there is a slight delay after pressing the starter button before the big diesel lump fires up and rattles to life. As to not completely insult my Ram’s capabilities, I’m hoping it might have noticed one dump load that weighed in at 575 kilograms.
But from the driver’s seat, nothing felt significantly different. The rear air suspension kept an even keel and the engine’s torque sloughed off the burden as if it wasn’t really there. If anything, ride quality improved, suggesting the Laramie was happy to be doing a bit of honest work.
We lay folk equate diesel power with fuel economy. Not so in the world of heavy duty pickups. This beast of burden, with a curb weight of 4,020 kg, guzzled to the tune of 16.6 L/100 km and it was barely breaking a sweat.
The most fun to be had in the Ram was on a road trip with Clayton, our resident videographer and rescuer of weird foundling beaters. We ventured out to drummer extraordinaire and my personal friend Mark Inneo’s farm to snag some lovely hand-hewn barn beams. Along the way, we passed innumerable derelict rides that had Clayton involuntarily twitching in his seat. A 1962 Ford Falcon up on blocks. How about that sweet old Rambler wagon? One of those 1970s, front-drive GM motorhomes with the tandem rear wheels! And there’s a Volkswagen Beetle slowly returning to the earth.
In the real world, this Ram 3500 Laramie Crew Cab 4x4 will pull horse trailers, construction equipment and yachts. In our imaginary world, we returned to the Big Smoke with a daisy chain of ferrous vehicular prizes in tow, enough to keep Clayton busy for the next decade or so.