Dodge Ram enjoying the truck party

As long as there’s dirt to be moved, trailers to be towed and country songs to be written, there will be pickup trucks.

And plenty of them, judging by the sales charts that show light trucks — a category in which pickups make up a big ol’ chunk — moving off Canadian dealer lots as fast as passenger cars.

Guess my household isn’t the only one with a list of need-a-truck chores.

Like collecting a load of gravel for a backyard project, for instance. Fortunately, a red-and-shiny 2009 Dodge Ram 1500 sat in the driveway, awaiting assignment.

Except this immense Dodge was almost too shiny (but not too red; no truck can ever be too red) to be loaded down with gritty gravel. A high-end Laramie Crew Cab 4X4, it flashed chrome from every angle, but especially from the broad-as-a-barn grille that now slants forward above crisp angled headlamps. This high, confident prow, the Ram’s biggest design change in 15 years, made us think of Joan Holloway Harris on Mad Men.

But trucks gotta work. And fortunately — again — the bed was already scuffed from some previous tester’s cargo, relieving us of that first scratch guilt.

We asked for a cubic yard of No. 2 aggregate, but when the lad at the landscape depot cautioned that even half a yard — the contents of one loader bucket — weighed some 1,750 pounds, we said, “That’ll do.”

The gravel dropped in on the tarp we had spread in the bed (yeah, still worried about scratches), and the back of the Ram settled a lot more than we expected. Only later, looking up our truck’s specifications, did we realize by how much we had exceeded its 1,060-lb. maximum payload. Oops.

Not long ago, a pickup by another name was a half-ton truck, but today 1,060 lb. seems light for a mountain of red metal like our Ram. And its 6,100-lb. towing capacity? Near puny.

But Dodge, like other truck makers, knows its market. Its new Crew Cab, though smaller than the unwieldy Mega Cab that’s been dropped from the 1500 lineup, still offers four fullsize doors and a big back seat. This format has become a favourite with pickup buyers willing to give up hauling capacity in favour of a sedan-proportioned cabin that rides high above 20-inch tires and a full frame.

If you have different priorities, Dodge will sell you a different 1500. A two-door Regular Cab that can lug 1,900 lb. of patio stones or pull a 32-foot trailer, for example, or a Quad Cab (four doors, midsize back seat) that splits the differences in passenger space and load capacity between Regular and Crew.

Then there are the seven trim levels, from base ST to this Laramie, which for 2010 starts at $40,690 for a Crew Cab with automatic all-wheel-drive, leather upholstery and heated steering wheel. Add $6,000 for our tester’s heated back seats, heated and power-ventilated front buckets, DVD navigation, backseat video and other additions.