Trucking is a special kind of driving. Sometimes you get a car just to handle the day-to-day commute, and by the time you’re done with it, you haven’t even utilized most of its features. Trucks are different, though. If you’re using your truck for work, no matter what kind of jobs you’re doing, you need something flexible that helps you make things happen. You can’t just search “used truck dealership near me” and buy the first model you see. I mean, you can; but that would be stupid. You need to really learn the truck, its ins and outs, its standard features vs its available features, and how it can or cannot help you work better.
One of the most popular trucks out there that offers a great number of work-oriented features is the Chevy Silverado. This is one of the most popular trucks on the market, which means it’s easy to find an excellent used model that can handle all of your work needs. How? Well, let’s take a look.
The Multi-Flex Tailgate
The whole point of having a pickup truck is having the pickup bed. If you’re not going to use the bed, what’s the point of having a truck? The tailgate is your access point to the bed. It’s a pretty simple concept, but sometimes when you’re hard at work and you have to get down to the nitty-gritty, that access point can become a barrier. So, what can be done about this? You might think there are only so many ways that a tailgate can operate, but Chevy decided that there can be many more.
In 2021, the Silverado introduced the Multi-Flex Tailgate. Now, you can benefit from this change when you get a used 2021 Silverado 1500. While most tailgates do nothing more than open and close, this new technology offers six functions. You may be wondering, “how can a tailgate possibly have six functions?” It’s a fair question. Chevy asked themselves the same thing, and they found the answer.
Most of us think of the tailgate as one piece, but not Chevy. They see the tailgate as two pieces: the inner gate and the primary gate. The inner gate is a smaller fold-out of the tailgate, providing a flat work surface so you can have a desk even when you’re out on the worksite. The inner gate also has its own load stop if you’ve got some larger items sticking out and need to expand a little bit. Stemming from the inner gate is a full-width step, allowing for much easier access to the cargo bed, which is especially useful when loading and unloading heavy items. With a total capacity of 375 pounds, this step is just as durable as every other part of the Silverado. Even if you don’t need the step, the inner gate folds down so that you can be closer to the bed while on ground level.
As for the primary gate, it opens and closes just like any other tailgate, but it also provides a load stop when extra long cargo demands that the tailgate stay down. So, there you go: six ways to tailgate. Chevy knows their truckers’ needs and works to accommodate them. Many of us would not have thought outside the box as Chevy has. It is amazing how much the idea of the inner gate expands the tailgate’s capability.
Of course, the cargo bed is just one piece of the cargo-hauling puzzle when it comes to trucking in a used Silverado. What good is a truck if it can’t tow a load too?
Towing Technology
If you’ve ever towed before, you know how much of a hassle it can be. Whether you’re backing up, parking, hitching, unhitching, or even just minding your own business on the highway, it can be a serious undertaking. To a certain degree, that comes with the territory, but thanks to Chevy’s innovative tech department, there are now solutions to help make it a much easier process.
Of course, one of the main factors which make towing difficult is the obstructed sight that your trailer often causes. Sometimes the trailer prevents you from seeing at just the angle you need to in order to complete the maneuver successfully, but with a used Silverado, you’ll be able to see with much greater clarity. Since the 2020 model year, the Silverado has offered up to eight cameras with fifteen available camera views, specifically related to towing. That might seem like a lot but think about all the components that go into towing: hitching, driving, and parking. The towing camera views consist of four hitch views, six driving views, and five parking views.
Hitch Views
If you’re not familiar with Chevy’s new camera technology, you may have a hard time imagining what a hitch view would be like. Hitch View gives you a close-up view of the receiver hitch to make sure that everything is attached as it should be. Similarly, there is Rear Top-Down View which gives you a view of your trailer’s nose, the hitch, and the end of your bed so that you can see the distance between trailer and truck. One of the more innovative views among all fifteen is HD Surround View, which gives you two angles in one: a bird’s-eye perspective of your truck and a frontal view of your trailer. This gives you a more complete understanding of your surroundings.
Driving Views
While there are six driving views, there are three specific views I’d like to focus on: Transparent Trailer, Rear Trailer View, and Inside Trailer View. While they are all relatively self-explanatory, the benefits are huge.
- Transparent Trailer essentially turns the trailer into a ghost trailer, so you can see its silhouette and the action behind it. This helps lend some perspective, as it attempts to show the relationship of your trailer to its surroundings.
- Rear Trailer View strives to fix what is perhaps the main difficulty in traditional towing: the inability to see behind the trailer. It’s like the now-common backup camera, but it’s attached to your trailer, so you see what is really behind you. With this view, you’ll also see a small graphic of your truck and the trailer with distance-indication lines. This is surely one of the most helpful pieces of towing technology for those who have come to dislike backing up with a trailer.
- The Inside Trailer View allows you to see, you guessed it, inside your trailer. This is especially helpful if your cargo includes animals, fragile items, or anything else you may want to keep an eye on. You can’t get too distracted, of course, but it certainly is helpful to check in every now and then.
Parking Views
When it comes to parking with a trailer, the biggest difficulties are always blind spots as well as proper steering maneuvers since trailers can be finicky and can easily jack-knife. So, to solve these problems, there are five views. When it comes to helping with blind spots, the two Rear Side Views are the two biggest assets. They show the blind spots on either side. Regular Rear Side View can show both sides at once by way of a split screen, but the turn-signal-activated version is specifically designed to help you merge lanes. It uses its Trailer Length Indicator to show whether you are in the safe zone or danger zone when it comes to merging, as your perception of distance may be altered while trailering.
To make sure that your trailer moves as it should, Front Top Down View shows the nose of your Silverado. You may think, “why would I need that? The trailer is behind me, not in front of me.” Correct. However, parking with a trailer is not the same as parking only the truck. So, this view provides guidelines to show you how you need to move to make everything happen smoothly. Why waste time being stressed when this view can help you park easily?
Even if truckers don’t want all fifteen views, any one of these views can significantly increase the efficiency of towing. It’s never an easy process, but that may change with these new technologies.
Working Hard
The Silverado is a work truck, and even a used Silverado can come with a wide array of features to make getting your work done easy. While simply having the bed and the raw capability specs can be helpful, and sometimes truckers are content with that, the possibilities can be significantly increased with technologies like the Multi-Flex Tailgate or the towing camera views.
The work culture is changing, and it’s a good time to be an entrepreneur, a freelancer, a contractor, or even just a truck owner. Regardless of whether or not you fall into one of the above categories, the Silverado’s work-oriented technologies will help make jobs happen easier. You don’t have to be a tech enthusiast to appreciate the helpful technology you can find in a used Silverado. Who doesn’t want to make driving less stressful?
