The all new Checker pickup truck?

Hypothetical - some exec realizes that there many fancy pants extended cab suburb cruisers in the mid to high 5 figure range and realizes there might be a market for a vinyl interior/hose out, honest to goodness work truck. Now, say you were into marketing/engineering and find yourself in charge of designing an all new pickup truck that catered to the ag/logging/construction/utility markets, what would you spec and at what price range? It would have to be street legal.

I've thought about this before...

I think I would make ONE truck, ext cab, long bed, 1 ton. DONE. Put a choice of manual or automatic trans in it, and a choice of a gas, or diesel engine, and you would be selling trucks left and right!

No frills, back up cameras, on star, heated mirrors, JUST a nice, sold, worktruck.

Keep it under $40,000 and you would be golden!!!

The big three all build work trucks, just not many are stocked on dealer lots. You can buy a half ton for mid 20's, if you don't want any extras.

1 it would have to be built on an existing design. Not enough market share to justify independent design.

2 so basically all you could do would be to give it a plastic seat that's terribly uncomfortable and rubber floor Matt.

And there you have your work truck. You ain't getting a carb back. You ain't losing computer controls and because of warranty issues you ain't getting a manual transmission. That is unless part of your plan includes the overthrow of the government and dismantling of the EPA?

Rick

Some days that last part is starting to sound good........

Pretty good view of how it goes tho oil tanker. Our chain saws need to be computer controlled now a days, and the manufacturers are finding
that deal to be better profits so instead of fighting, they are encouraging such sort of EPA control on life.

Paul

(quoted from post at 06:51:40 05/04/15)
1 it would have to be built on an existing design. Not enough market share to justify independent design.

2 so basically all you could do would be to give it a plastic seat that's terribly uncomfortable and rubber floor Matt.

And there you have your work truck. You ain't getting a carb back. You ain't losing computer controls and because of warranty issues you ain't getting a manual transmission. That is unless part of your plan includes the overthrow of the government and dismantling of the EPA?

Rick

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Dismantling the EPA would be a step in the right direction.

I looked at this one over the weekend.I was kinda impressed.



http://www.laurabuickgmc.com/VehicleDetails/new-2015-GMC-Sierra_3500HD-Double_Cab_Long_Box_4_Wheel-Collinsville-IL/232098

You must be pretty young, I grew up in the years that our local river was so polluted you couldn't swim or fish in it, now it's clean and there are lot's of fish, and healthy ones. I also worked in the days before OSHA, and believe me, they are both necessary!

I would look at my build sheets and see I already sell a stripped out, no radio, vinyl rubber truck and see it sells ok to fleets but terrible to the public. I happen to own on of these things for our farm, a F350 XL. No power windows. No power locks. Floor transfer case shifter. Mine has a radio I guess but rubber floors. Bench seats.

If I was picking a dream farm truck, add a good dumping flatbed with integrated gooseneck, underbody toolboxes and a fuel tank. Put a set of quick connects from the dump to the rear to lift implements when moving them. Small hydraulic crane in the headboard of the flatbed for working on stuff in the field.

I'm 53 and think the EPA should be the first govt. agency disbanded

I priced a F350 cab/chassis dually a few weeks ago. It was a bare bones vinyl interior and floor mat. Extended cab, gas engine, 4x4 and automatic transmission. Cash price was $33,940, a diesel was about $40,000. They can be found in Chevy and Dodge if you look. I'm not sure if you can still get a manual transmission unless you special order

I understand what you are saying Russ.

They could be choked back some tho for my part.

Pendulum swings, we always go too far or not far enough.

EPA has turned into a power and control grab with some political undertones, not a regulatory office of good science.

Need to turn that pendulum around.

Paul

Dodge is the only one offering what they call a standard shift but, it's not a true standard transmission. None of the others are offering anything but automatics anymore. Sad!

The EPA is like anything started/run by the government - eventually it's going to take on a life of it's own, and get out of control
I think we're officially there - especially under this administration
I do miss the days of simple trucks though - guess that's why I drive one that's thirty years old...or maybe it's because I can't afford a new one
Pete

I would call it International Harvester or GMC (the old GMC, that is, pre-1970's).

(quoted from post at 07:37:37 05/04/15) You must be pretty young, I grew up in the years that our local river was so polluted you couldn't swim or fish in it, now it's clean and there are lot's of fish, and healthy ones. I also worked in the days before OSHA, and believe me, they are both necessary!

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Russ I don't think that anyone isn't saying the EPA did some really good things. But today when they force tier 4 standards with no justification we have the tendency to think they have gotten to powerful.

Rick

First off you would have to find someone that stil can drive a standard transmission, Then you threw in that extinked word WORK . and let's face it prices are out of control. And as far as getting a new truck with a standard transmission #1 the reason for the lack of them by the MFG. is emission control due to big brother . There are several cab and chassis setting on a dealers lot and are what you may can a WORK truck but the sticker price is 52-56000 plus what ever bed you want to install. and all are SLUSH BOXES . As far as i am concerned they have only made two automatic transmissions , The ones that are already out and the ones that are going out . I have tried the slush boxes in a pick up WORK truck and that did not go well at all. Years back when i was one of four snow removal contractors in the pin head on the map i bought a new 78 Found on the road DEAD F 250 Snow patrol . The night i bought that truck it never made it home from the dealer and had to be towed back , It was on a Thursday evening and they worked on that truck all night trying to get it to run . I needed it due to the fact that we had a major snow storm going on . At 4:00 A M i needed to be plowing and they had to give me another truck to get started . At noon i was caught up and went back to get MY NEW truck , the service manage had been up since six am the day before along with the one parts guy and the one mechanic and they all said that my truck was done . Told the service manage to get in and he and i would take it for a TEST drive . He and i pulled out of the lot and drove down the hill and drove about a mile and a half and turned around to go back . it made it a half mile and we had to get a wrecked to drag it back . After two more days they got it where it would run and the next storm hit . I started to plow at 3 a m and by 6;30 i limped it to the dealers ft. door with the transmission out . two days later i got it back and the next storm hit and again started at 3 am and by 9 in the morning i limped it back with the transmission smoked again . and the next storm it ate another one and another one . Then they put a whole new transmission in it and it lasted till the next snow storm. and it was fried . I gave up on the dealer and pulled it myself and dug into it . They had cheapened up the transmission somuch that there was noway it would hold up under nay use . i was lucky that i had some OLD C-6 parts from back in the drag racing days and i removed the four dic ft. drum and installed a six dic ft drum and a six disc intermediate drum did away with all the Bellvieu washers and added six disc in the rear upped the loc up pressures stiffened up the accumulator spring and it then lasted for five more years but it still failed . My other truck was a four gear and yep it was a pain and slow in rev. but it never once let me down in 12 years . There was 279and change on that truck and ran like a top up till the day a highschool kid racing his buddy lot it on a curve and slid sideways into me head on i was in the wrong place at the wrong time and so was he as he did not make it . I see all the slush boxes that give up the ghost down the street from me at the local hotrod shop for pick ups and even the NEW as my one old friend trys to tell me the new BULLET PROF DODGE transmissions as i have seen five of them down there being reworked as DODGE will not stand behind them if you tweak your GOAT .

An why isnt't it a true standard shift? I have one....Its no different than any other standard I have had.

I agree with Russ from MN . I grew up around Port Arthur texas where three of the largest refineries and multiple chemical plants in the area. Oil seeped in all of our waterways and marshes for years. No fish or wildlife cuould survive.Now all waterways are clean And the air is clean and breathable. I know they go overboard but EPA is a necessary evil.

Pair-a-dice farm: "It was a bare bones vinyl interior and floor mat. Extended cab, gas engine, 4x4 and automatic transmission. Cash price was $33,940, a diesel was about $40,000."

Exactly.

I wanted one. So I bought this. If they still made them I'd buy a new one.

I wish someone made a good truck anymore. The last good one we had was a '95 Ford F350 with a 460 engine. It never gave us a problem but it was a thirsty beast. We quit Ford when they left us holding the bag on a sick Powerstroke with 80k miles on it. Our 07 Chevy with the Duramax/Allison likes to go into limp mode on the interstate. Our new Chevy van with heavy duty everything, tow package Duramax/Allison had the fan clutch replaced last week. This weekend it blew an intercooler boot on the interstate. The lose of boost made smoke which plugged the particulate filter necessitating a tow to a Chevy dealer far from home for repairs. $53,000 vehicle that hasn't hit 8000 miles yet!

Why make a $20,000 truck when you can make a $40,000 truck that everybody buys?

Nowadays with 10 year autoloans, people can "afford" it.

That's what I said, you aren't old enough to remember what it was like!

(quoted from post at 10:06:56 05/04/15) I agree with Russ from MN . I grew up around Port Arthur texas where three of the largest refineries and multiple chemical plants in the area. Oil seeped in all of our waterways and marshes for years. No fish or wildlife cuould survive.Now all waterways are clean And the air is clean and breathable. I know they go overboard but EPA is a necessary evil.

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I agree. I grew up in a small factory town west of Detroit. The rouge river runs thru it, and I can remember nothing living in it. It basically was a open sewer, pre EPA.

Nope!!Dep of Education first!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't say that I am young at 71, getting close to 72 and I HAVE NEVER SEEN A SINGLE THING THAT THE EPA DID THAT HELPED IN ANY WAY. I call them the ruin ation agency. They should be gotten rid of ASAP.

I keep hearing that the reason manual X/MIS are no longer offered in P/U trucks is the EPA.I ain't buying it!A manual can still be gotten in Mustangs,Vetts.,Vipers and a bunch of other new cars.
Then I hear this nonsense that there are no manual X/MIS extant that can handle the torque of the current crop of diesel P/U's.With all the medium duty trucks on the road running a manual without a problem,I ain't buying that either.
I think the real reason for auto only in P/U's is few people were buying manuals.The dealers would not stock them and since most vehicles are bought right off the lot,the only thing to see was trucks with autos.
I'll say this though,the new autos are far better than the old autos.The old autos got beaten hands down!

(quoted from post at 14:38:06 05/04/15)
I keep hearing that the reason manual X/MIS are no longer offered in P/U trucks is the EPA.I ain't buying it!A manual can still be gotten in Mustangs,Vetts.,Vipers and a bunch of other new cars.
Then I hear this nonsense that there are no manual X/MIS extant that can handle the torque of the current crop of diesel P/U's.With all the medium duty trucks on the road running a manual without a problem,I ain't buying that either.
I think the real reason for auto only in P/U's is few people were buying manuals.The dealers would not stock them and since most vehicles are bought right off the lot,the only thing to see was trucks with autos.
I'll say this though,the new autos are far better than the old autos.The old autos got beaten hands down!

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The final nail in the coffin for manual transmissions was the cellphones becoming common.

Those auto execs are probably already aware that the market for the truck you are describing is actually very very small. It sounds like you are looking for a vehicle the military would buy. Have you looked into used military trucks?

New car dealers custom order every vehicle they stock on their lots. They only order vehicles equipped the way they believe will sell well. You can still go to a dealer and custom order a new pickup equipped with the options you want. The downsides of custom ordering a vehicle are: you loose the three percent dealer discount, you loose most package discounts, you have to wait four to eight plus weeks for delivery and a stripped vehicle may not have much resale value at trade-in time. If you are trying to buy new off the lot or buy a used vehicle, you are limited to what someone else ordered.

Most major pickup lines have aftermarket parts available. Worst case, can you strip the carpet, floor liner, seats, headliner, power accessories, sound deadening insulation and dashboard out of your truck and install the components you want from an aftermarket supplier? For most people, that would not be worth all the effort.

EPA is one of the best things that happened for the good of all.

What is the purpose of this exercise? All the vehicle manufacturers have done the math and have come up with the same answer: The more content you put into a product, the more money you can make on it. It's more profitable to sell 500,000 trucks for $50K each than to sell a million trucks for $25K each. Consider this: all the OEMs produce stripped-down small trucks for the third-world market. They could easily import US-legal versions of these vehicles and sell them for less than 20 grand apiece. Why don't they? Because there's no profit in it, and they would just cannibalize their profitable mid-size truck business.

The manufacturers DO make stripped-down versions of their full-size pickups. They're called "work trucks" and you can go to one of their web sites and spec one out. A 3/4 ton Chevy work truck with no options lists for about $34K. But for 20-30 percent more you can get a loaded vehicle; most individuals will buy the vehicle they want rather than the one they need. Work trucks sell to fleets, where the $10K difference between a stripper and a loaded truck is a lot of money when you're buying 100 vehicles.

Do you think another OEM will come along and build a truck for this presumably under-served market? That's not entirely out of the question. There are a number of suppliers who can fully engineer a vehicle for a well-funded investor. (Magna International comes to mind.) There's a solid supplier base who can produce all the components, leaving only final assembly for the startup. But you can forget about this startup building cheap trucks. The formula for a startup car company goes like this: find an under-served niche market, and build a product you can sell at a premium price. That's the formula used successfully by Tesla and unsuccessfully by DeLorean. It's also the business plan of the new Motus motorcycle company. But the stripped down truck market is NOT underserved, and an investor trying to compete in it would find it impossible to compete on price.

The Checker company survived by serving a market niche. Their products were NOT cheap. I haven't studied the reasons for the demise of Checker, but I assume a major factor was competition from the much cheaper sedans sold by the Big Three.

You wouldn't want a Checker anything.
I put a lot of miles in those things, driving taxi while I was in college.
They were a complete piece of junk.

I understand Mahindra and Mahindra was developing a truck for the N. American market based on one of their current models that, from what I remember, was similar to what you are talking about, a basic truck. As big as they are (and they are one of the worlds biggest manufacturers) they didn't proceed with it. I suspect the profit wasn't there. They did decide the tractor market was ripe for their product and are expanding that. Tractors has to be a much smaller market than trucks and just as competitive, yet....?

Posted by MarkB_MI on May 05, 2015 at 03:05:46 from (70.210.76.101):

In Reply to: The all new Checker pickup truck? posted by prawn farmer on May 04, 2015 at 06:41:49:

"What is the purpose of this exercise?"

I suppose just an automotive Walter Mitty type reverie? Nothing serious at all. Basically, what I asked was that if you were hypothetically an engineer/marketing type person that worked for a "hypothetical start up" company that decided to build a dedicated type work truck that wanted to target the ag/logging/construction/utility sector (i.e. not the suburban commuter/soccer mom market) , how would you spec it out, and at what market price range would you shoot for? More of a building a better mouse trap - not re-inventing the wheel thing.

(quoted from post at 20:31:07 05/04/15) EPA is one of the best things that happened for the good of all.

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There is a stark contrast between common sense regulatory oversight and over bearing gov't thugs. The EPA, IRS, OSHA, etc have passed the thug point and are working towards Nazi/skinhead/fascist now.

I gave up......
like some of the other posters, I'm going older.

Every new truck I've bought, finding a manual transmission,
regular cab, V8, 8' box, 4x4, 1/2 or 3/4 ton, no power anything, got harder.
usually had to get an orphan shipped in from another state.
In 2007, nope...nothing...not available with a manual.
Had to buy an automatic....hated it.
Ended up giving it to my son.

I'll check every year or 2 to see if they come around...doubt it.
no manual trans.....no sale

Go to GM site and sort through the specs and order forms . As previously stated . Plain Jane trucks are still built .

(quoted from post at 06:46:31 05/06/15)
Go to GM site and sort through the specs and order forms . As previously stated . Plain Jane trucks are still built .

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True and at Ford too.Don't know about Dodge.As far as I know Dodge is the only U S manufacturer still offering a manual X/MIS.
But get this:Ford offers a 5 spd. manual in full size PU's in one of the South American countries!I think Brazil but I'm not sure.

Well, seeing as I've never bought a new vehicle (and probably never will), I'm already outside the hypothetical target market. That being said, very much like NoNewParts, the very first thing I consider when looking for a replacement vehicle, is a standard tranny. The rest is fluff. No gearbox, no sale. I keep having to get survivors from further away and longer and longer ago to replace what rusts away here in NY, simply because as the market forces continue their drop into stupidity, there are so few vehicles made with a "standard transmission" as even an option. And yes, I fully realize the irony in that.

It was over a decade ago that Consumer Reports stated that the most effective anti-theft device in a vehicle was a manual transmission. Think about it...

I still think my old IH 1200D was an ideal work truck. I beat the tar out of it hauling firewood, plowing snow, going 'off road', and I still have it - been parked a few years, but I bet with new brake lines, a new battery and a bit of ether, it would fire up and still go to work.

Just took delivery of a stripped down F-250 a few weeks ago. Had to order it, vinyl floors, manual transfer case/lock out hubs, and crank windows. The only comfort items I added were cloth seats and cruise control.

Dodge still builds them too under the "Tradesman" line.

The base/bare stripped down 2 wheel drive, F250 XL, regular cab, can be bought for a little over 25K. Still has a big V-8, air, shiftable(in all 6 gears like a powershift tractor) auto, and a 12K trailer hitch.

The days of the manual transmission are over, at least in the US. It's not simply because there's no market for them, it also has to do with the characteristics of modern truck engines. Back in the day when the four-speed granny transmission was king, light truck engines were slow-turning and had broad power bands. Today's engines are designed to produce gobs of power but at high rpms, which is why they need six-speed automatic transmissions behind them. To get comparable performance with a manual trans, it would need to have eight, nine or even ten speeds, and you would be shifting constantly.

Mark B,I don't find that to be the case. I have an '06 F 250 with a 6 spd. manual,3.73 axels,manual hubs and X/FER case and 5.4 L V8.When cruising at 65 to 70 MPH(1900 to 2100 RPM)in 6th(od)not too much shifting going on.At lower speeds and in hilly country and in 5th(1:1)not a lot of shifting then either unless I have to slow for a curve or slower traffic.
This is the ZF6 X/MIS and in my opinion it's the best X/MIS ever put in a domestic PU.

GVSII, your truck needs a six-speed manual transmission to perform well, which kinda proves my point. Back in the day we got by with four-speed transmissions, which really had only three usable gears. You would not be very happy if your truck had a four-speed rather than a six-speed.

But your truck is almost ten years old, and we're talking about current production trucks. Let's see how things have changed: Your '06 5.4 is rated 300 hp @ 5000 rpm, 365 lb-ft @ 3750 rpm. That's a pretty fast-turning engine. But the current production 5.0 is rated 360 hp @ 5500 rpm, 380 lb-ft @ 4250 rpm. Engine rpm for both peak power and peak torque have gone up a whopping 500 rpm! Should you swap your 5.4 with the 5.0, you'll probably wish your six-speed tranny had a couple more splits. And don't expect the trend of ever-higher engine speeds to stop; the easiest way to get more power out of an engine is to increase its rpm.

Well the last "performance" car I had was '72 Mustang.351 Cleveland HO,3.55 rear and a 4 spd. At 60 MPH in 4th -3000 RPM or 900 RPM more then my '06 5.4 at 70.
Wife has an '11 ford escape,240 HP V6 W/6 spd auto.70 MPH-2000 RPM in top gear and it doesn't do a lot of shifting unless it's towing.
As to the high HP and Tor. numbers with the high RPM's on the new 5 L ford in the F150 with a 6 spd. auto,well big numbers but there is no need to run them up that high in normal use, IE what a F150 would be used for.
The old 4 spds.-they were pretty stout X/MIS but not as stout as the ZF 6 and no where near as versatile.
No need to sweat shifting a handshaker in your new truck any more,you won't be able to get one so equiped.