I arrived in Juneau Alaska with a duffle bag and a smile. I needed a truck and I found the perfect little pickup sitting on the lot at the local Ford dealership and bought it. Juneau only has about 60 miles of roads to drive and I was out of town 2 weeks every month, during the summer, to maintain a Sky-crane helicopter that was logging the Tongass National Forrest. The first two years my little Ford Ranger only saw 12,000 miles but when I decided to leave Alaska, to work in the lower 48 during the winter, that all changed.
The next 12 seasons my little Ford Ranger took me all over the country but always back to Alaska for the summer to work. I preferred to drive to Alaska so that I could fish all the way there. My Ford Ranger hauled not only my tools and equipment for work but also my camping and fishing gear as well. I often pulled a trailer of some kind behind that Ranger and it never failed me.
I owned my Ford Ranger for 15 years and I can honestly say I never had a single problem with that truck. Some people found it hard to believe but it still had the original coolant in the radiator and the only thing I ever changed on that truck was the tires and a couple fog light lenses because somebody felt compelled to bust those out in a parking lot in Canada.
I used my little Ford Ranger for work in Alaska for 3 summers. I was in some very remote areas, during that time, chasing two helicopters that were working sometimes hundreds of miles a part. From Eagle Alaska to the Kenai Peninsula my Ford Ranger took me there. Many of the roads in Alaska are not only gravel but unmaintained as well and I could have been stranded in some really bad places with help long in coming but my Ranger never failed.
When traveling through Canada there is very long stretches without anything in sight and no cell phone coverage. You also have to fuel up wherever you can and the gas can sometimes be less than fresh and I ran many gallons of bad fuel through that engine. I even filled the tank with diesel fuel somewhere in remote Canada. The next morning I set out down a stretch of road through the mountains with my little Ford Ranger missing and coughing. I stopped every few miles and added good gas from my gas can and finally the diesel was out of my tank. That was with 75,000 miles and when I sold that Ford Ranger it had 227,000 miles and I happen to know that it is still going strong for the man that bought my little Ford Ranger.