Truck YeahThe trucks are good!Crossover, SUV and truck sales are booming, with their promises of space and transport capabilities refusing to give it a rest and let other vehicles into the spotlight. But it’s time we put the myths and rumors about vehicle practicality to bed, everyone. Two-door muscle cars that seat five on a good day, like the Dodge Challenger, can transport stuff just as well as your big SUVs.
And if you think this is “wrong,” or somehow “not safe,” just know the person driving next to you probably has their phone in front of their face and that may be worse.
Sure, the cosmic forces responsible for any redesigns or new platforms on the Challenger have been dormant for more than a decade and we’re not likely to pull the sheet off of a completely new one anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean this car is any sort of sleeper.
Just ask Arizona resident Casey Day, who uses his Challenger as a transport truck for his mattress company in Phoenix. Local news station KTVK recently talked to Day, who sometimes carries six or more mattresses strapped to the top of his 2010 Challenger while delivering for his business, Flylane Mattress Company.
The station reports that the sight of Day’s Challenger blankets some locals with nightmares of a mattress coming loose, but that Day said he drives 65 mph on freeways with the mattresses and has never had one fall, or almost fall, off.
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From KTVK, which has a video story here that we can’t embed:
“We respect everybody on the road,” said Day. “This is safe. It might look nuts, but it’s no different than me having a pickup truck.”
Day delivers all over the Valley.
“Whoa! I think it’s crazy,” said one driver who couldn’t stop staring while Day was stopped at a gas station.
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Day told KTVK he used to have a pickup truck for deliveries, but an employee exhausted that resource by totaling it. That’s when he got the Challenger, the car he’d always dreamed of, and realized soon after that there wasn’t a wink of built-in space for hauling his mattresses.
But since Day knows that you snooze, you lose when it comes to business innovation, he got creative with his new vehicle instead of lying down and admitting defeat. From KTVK:
He later realized [the Challenger] wasn’t the best idea.
“Shoot, I don’t have a truck and I got this and realized I still had to make a living and I just threw them (mattresses) on top. I didn’t have a choice,” he explained.
“My roof looks like the Grand Canyon. My roof is terrible. It’s all dented in,” he explained.
He’s now trying to save money to buy a pickup truck this year.
Day told the station that in the meantime, he gets pulled over often but hasn’t gotten a ticket, and the Arizona Department of Public Safety is letting individual police officers determine the safety of it all while patrolling.
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But no matter what happens, Day’s taught us an important lesson about cars: Don’t sleep on the ones that look like they’re just for show, because they’re a lot more capable than you might think.
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