Comparison left vs right for a craftsman who doesnt know which one he should buy:
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l/r same bed size
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r lower bed for way easier loading/unloading
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r less likely to crash
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r less fuel consumption and costs
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r less expensive to repair
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r easy to park
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r easy to get around in narrow places like crowded construction sites or towns
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r not participating in road arms race
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l You get taken serious by your fellow carbrained americans because ““trucks”” are normalized and small handy cars are ridiculed.
So unless you are a fragile piece of human, choose the right one.
My mom is disabled and uses a power chair (that does not fold. Medicare won’t pay for sensible things like that). Our choices were saving up to buy a wheelchair van, which is so far outside of our means that it may as well cost a million dollars, or buy a pick up truck and a set of ramps. We searched for months and months for anything small, and could not find it. Eventually went with a Nissan frontier, a 2012, so the larger model. I’d kill for one of these little things. Would be perfect for us.
I bet a micro van like a Delica or Sambar would fit your needs pretty well. Compact, but large enough to fit like 8 people total and the seats are fully removable so you could totally fit a wheelchair in there. Seen people fit a whole motorcycle in them before.
I’ll keep an eye out for both of those! Googled em and they’re pretty good sized it looks like. Her chair is pretty tall, but I wonder if it would fit if we took the headrest off.
There’s one guy around town I see sometimes who has some sort of thing that goes on the hitch receiver of his minivan. If I see him around I might be able to ask him where he got that if I remember to. Saw him use it and it too was a non-folding power chair. He pulled up to it with the power chair, pulled ramps down, drove up onto it, pulled himself to his feet using the rear windshield wiper, stowed the ramps and leaned against the van to get to the driver’s door. I’m guessing he has some sort of spinal injury.
If it’s what I’m thinking of, it’s called a lift gate. They’re pretty cool. But her chair is about 450 pounds, so it tends to sit the frame down on the tires when you use one of those because of where the weight is, sadly. :/