To the Woodchipper with Our Yearlong 2025 Ram 1500 Test Truck
A century-old wooded lakefront lot plus extreme weather equals abundant felled trees and fallen limbs for our yearlong review Ram to convert into mulch.
Frank MarkusWriterJim FetsPhotographerSep 05, 2025
010 2025 Ram 1500 Laramie 4×4 Arrival
Our lovely red yearlong review 2025 Ram 1500 arrived just in time to participate in an annual rite of spring: our household’s yearly Fargo moment, when we rent a woodchipper to dispose of all the dead … wood that’s either fallen or been cut down over the preceding year and gathered into piles. Our property’s self-seeded pine forest is reaching the end of its natural life, making room for a nascent ash grove beneath to thrive. Pine wood can’t be safely burned in our stove fireplace, but it makes perfectly useful mulch for use around the landscaping and along our forest path, and this overgrown kid gleefully looks forward to using the big, loud machine.
2025 ram 1500 laramie 4×4 yearlong review Update 1 a
A tiny woodchipper trailer is no match for our Ram 1500, with its fancy Trailer Tow Group (power slide-out trailering mirrors, trailer reverse assist, trailer-brake controller, trailer tire pressure monitoring capability, and more). And we found it super easy to align our ball with the hitch by using the steering wheel to line up the dashed line with the camera view of the trailer’s hitch. (The Ram can be programmed to line itself up perfectly with a hitch using Trailer Hitch Assist, but that’s part of a separate $595 Towing Technology package we’ll get along fine without.)
Hitching up is a breeze with the built-in choice of four-pin and seven-pin electrical connectors (plus feeds for two trailer cameras) and a much roomier area for securing the ball receiver and safety chains than our Ram 2500 afforded (resulting in a minor disaster). The automated trailer light-check program worked perfectly, and just shortly after making a fairly sharp right-hand turn out of the rental lot, the blind-spot radar units had measured our trailer and lit the 20-foot trailer telltale on the dash, calibrating blind-sport warnings accordingly.
2025 ram 1500 laramie 4×4 yearlong review Update 1 b
Back at the cabin, we got our big tarp into position in the bed, appreciating along the way how easy it is to climb into the bed with the 60 percent tailgate “door” open, using the bed step and bumper step. The truck bed hungrily swallowed about two cubic yards of mulch, after which we disconnected the trailer. Thanks to our Ram’s air suspension, this is as easy as supporting the tongue, lowering the rear of the truck, and driving out from under the trailer hitch. This year there was nothing new to cut down, which is great because our electric chainsaw—which plugged right into our Ford F-150 Lightning—is too powerful for the 400-watt, 110-volt plug in the back of our Ram.
2025 ram 1500 laramie 4×4 yearlong review Update 1 c
Our mulch distributed, we limboed the hitch ball back under the trailer, hitched everything up, and went to return it. This time I had hoped to take advantage of the trailer reverse assist system, but after reattaching the trailer, the two tightish left turns out of our property and back into the rental lot proved insufficient to calibrate the trailer for the system. That’s supposed to happen in the course of normal driving with no stickers or tape-measuring bother, but our route had been too straight. The calibration procedure requires two 50–65-foot-radius right-angle turns in either direction preceded and followed by 100 feet of straight driving. Dashboard messages guide the driver through the process.
Update 1 d
Back at home, when it came time to clean out the pickup box, we noticed that the multifunction tailgate certainly does have a whole lot more cracks and crevices for crud to accumulate in. Hopefully that will seem a small price (on top of $1,095) for the convenience of shorter reaches and easier climbs into the bed.
Frank Markus
I started critiquing cars at age 5 by bumming rides home from church in other parishioners’ new cars. At 16 I started running parts for an Oldsmobile dealership and got hooked on the car biz. Engineering seemed the best way to make a living in it, so with two mechanical engineering degrees I joined Chrysler to work on the Neon, LH cars, and 2nd-gen minivans. Then a friend mentioned an opening for a technical editor at another car magazine, and I did the car-biz equivalent of running off to join the circus. I loved that job too until the phone rang again with what turned out to be an even better opportunity with Motor Trend. It’s nearly impossible to imagine an even better job, but I still answer the phone…
