Small trucks

[Lemur]

-Rear doors, at least half doors, a must.
-Good fuel efficiency.

Taking a glance at the Ford website, I don't see any images of the Ranger that include real half-doors of any sort. As for fuel economy, For claims it's in the 20s, which will be good if true.

Oh, nevermind, I see you can order the Ranger as a "Supercab 4-door." But hey, why not do like every militia in Africa and trust yourself to a small Toyota pickup? Just mount a .50 cal in the bed and you'll be full of Hutu power.

If Toyota is good enough for Somali warlords and the Taliban, it's good enough for New Hampshire winters.

[PanzerJaeger]

Ok - the small segment is dead. The Ranger's tooth is so long it stretches into the 90's without any significant upgrades.. just cosmetic stuff. The Frontier isn't much better. Rolling penalty boxes...

I would suggest you move up, especially now. You can get incredible deals on pickup trucks now. Dodge is giving up to 50% discounts trying to get rid of their Rams, but the Ford F-150 is the better truck IMO(although you probably wouldn't notice the differences in the applications you're using it for.) This segment (F-150, Ram, Silverado) has benefitted greatly from intense competition and improvement.

In any event, the one segment the domestics actually do outperform the transplants in is trucks - and all three are offering tones of incentives to move them. Its a great time to buy!

[Don Corleone]

Well, the full-size trucks are nice, but a couple of problems:

1) I don't need a truck that big.
2) Not sure it will fit in the garage.
3) I have a 32 mile commute (each way).
4) Full-size trucks don't come in manual and I love manual transmissions.

[KukriKhan]

If you already own a vehicle for your commute, maybe look into an ATV to do your plow job, instead of a pickup. I don't know about NH, but out here tons of repo'd ATV's get auctioned every week for about 30 cents on the dollar. Folks are 'walking away' from their toys, trying to cut costs.

Googling thru "small snow plow" showed Jeep Wranglers about the smallest vehicle used, to support the combined blade and snow load. So, if you insist on a truck, looks like you'll need a very powerful small one, or a regular sized one.

[Hosakawa Tito]

To be honest I don't see any trucks smaller than 1/2 ton pickups with plows on them around here. I would imagine that one would need at least a six cylinder engine to generate enough horsepower & torque to plow snow. 4 wheel drive is a must and weight in the box to increase traction and the kinetic energy needed to push a 300lb. plow + snow.

If you already own a vehicle for your commute, maybe look into an ATV to do your plow job, instead of a pickup

That might be the more frugal alternative, and will fit in your storage space.

[Oaty]

Plows are bad on trucks. You'll have to take it off when the snow clears and remount it every time you need to plow. Notice when the snows gone you don't see to many trucks if any with plows attached. Since you're only looking for your own personal driveway I'd reccomend getting a snowblower, minitractor or an ATV as an above poster mentioned