Over the weekend, my family and I went to the North Idaho State Fair in Coeur d’Alene, ID. It was as expected, lots of fried food, lots of people, crappy rip-off games and sketchy rides tended by creepy looking humans. I also got sick at night from the corndog I had there.
One thing I did like was all the North Idaho trucks in the parking lot. Lots of your average pickups and cars but there was a few that caught my eye and this one… well you can see it made me stop and take photos.
This is a late model Dodge Ram 5500
I don’t know too much about this late model Dodge Ram 5500, but I know that it has been created to let those that need some serious towing power drive in luxury. It’s a semi-truck wrapped in a comfy pickup cab.
This truck can be had at a base price of about $55,000 which is pretty impressive. But those that do want a truck like this will not be satisfied with this base model. To take it to an acceptable level you are going to be at about the $75,000 mark. But to make this thing all it can be you’ll need to shell out over $100,000 of your life savings.
It comes with a 6.4L V8 HEMI® engine but you can upgrade it to a 6.7L I6 Cummins Turbo Diesel monster for only $9,000. It will require to upgrade the tranny for an extra $1,000 but what is $1,000 when you are upgrading to something this cool.
You can build your own 5500 here: https://www.ramtrucks.com/bmo.chassis_cab_3500.2022.html#app-bmo
Here is a video of a good coverage of this truck that you will find useful and fun.
The custom bed on this truck was probably a good $10,000. Did I mention that when you buy this from Dodge, you don’t get a bed? Yeah, you are just buying a chassis and a luxury cab. You get to source your own bed for this truck and it is an extra cost.
Ok well, I’m done drooling over it. I hope you enjoy the photos below.
Valik loves tinkering in the garage and is currently restoring a 2000 GMC Sierra 1500 truck. He also writes about the progress on this blog. When not in the garage, Valik is also a web developer and a blogger. I know, strange, a hand in two completely different worlds. And that is the way he likes to keep it.
