How Does the Honda Ridgeline Handle With a Fully Loaded Trailer? Let's Find Out!

Hi folks and welcome to the Truck King YouTube channel. For 2021, Honda did update the Ridgeline but they didn't change any of the numbers. They basically just made it look nicer now. So in this video, we're not going to dwell on the way it looks. We're going to dwell on the way it works. We're going to do a max towing test today. That's 5,000 pounds behind this little truck to see how it handles. So like Steve mentioned, besides the cosmetic changes in 2021, everything here under the hood stayed exactly the same. You still got your single overhead cam V6, which makes 280 horsepower and 262 pound-feet of torque, attached to a nine-speed transmission and an all-wheel drive system. Now that is the only setup you can get on this Ridgeline here in Canada. Now beyond that, the Black Edition is exactly pretty self-explanatory, right? You're going to get your blacked-out grille, blacked-out accents down low. You're losing the chrome trim up here on the front, black mirror caps, black accents, and of course, special edition seats on the inside with the Black Edition stitching, just to remind you about what you bought. And if you're curious, can you only get it in black? No, Honda will let you purchase this in white. You can get a white Black Edition. Sounds a little funny, but hey, it looks pretty sharp sometimes. From the cab back, there's nothing really new here on the Ridgeline. It's still the same bed, but hey, let's have a look at it anyway. We'll go over all the features here. So you've got your dual usage tailgate. It opens like a door so that you can get right into your trunk space or get closer to your cargo. And then it also does the standard drop like a pickup truck tailgate. Now this is an all-composite lid, and that's also a composite floor. It's got a nice grip to it, really like that. But what's here? This is the most impressive feature I think anybody talks about on the Ridgeline is this gigantic trunk. Opens all the way up there. And I mean, you can reach down to the bottom, but that is an arm length, at least deep. You can fit all kinds of stuff in there. Plus you've got drain holes if you ever happen to get it wet. And your spare tire up there on a pullout tray. Easy to access if you ever need to get in there. With that down, you've got a series of tie downs here. You have an upper and a lower, and that's in all four corners. You have these D-ring setups. So you have different options for tying down your cargo. And over here on the right-hand side, you do have this small port and you have your power outlet. You can charge things in the bed or just run things when you get to your destination. Now it's only 150 watts unplugged, but 400 watts with the truck running. I mean, we run these things with ATVs in the back with a trickle charger, running them all the way up the highway to our destination to make sure everything's charged and it's had no problems. So I've sandwiched myself in here to talk about max towing and payload. So the Ridgeline will pull 5,000 pounds. And when it comes to loading up the back, well, right down here on my door placard, it says I can put 1,477 pounds of people and gear in this truck. So here in the backseat, you don't get the same black edition stitching like you do in the front, but you do get this nice red inlay in the meshing. It just breaks it up. And of course the red piping and stitching around the outside. But one of the cool features in the back here is simple one handle release. Seat goes up, bar folds in, and you've got, I mean, save for this one channel here, you've got basically a completely flat floor and Honda's done a really good job of armoring it with these nice trays. So you've got nice protection there and you can lay in pretty much anything. And I mean, here, just for fun with those seats up, I'm six foot. I can stand back here. I can do whatever. I take these seats out for a living. I carry them out by myself because there's enough room to get in here. It's a fair bit of space. And then with the seat down. Yeah. I mean, I got some knee room. I don't know if this seat's in the fully forward position, but I got lots of knee room, lots of headroom, fairly comfortable seat. I can sit back here for a while. Okay. Now time to reverse into our trailer. Grab your little switch there and we can take a look at the camera angle. So that's your main view. That's the default view. And then I think we got the straight down, which is really nice. Yeah. When you get in tight and we'll flip to that one, we'll get closer. And then the wide angle cross traffic. And I do like that they have the cross traffic alert that you can turn on, turn off that quickly. Not that it's that annoying or anything, but like if you're just, you know, say trying to back out of a busy lane way and it's just beeping and beeping and beeping, it's like, yeah, okay, there go away. I don't want to listen to you anymore. Obviously you're in reverse. So yeah, that's when you're going to need it. So that does make a lot of sense actually. Start I do like the guidelines moving both. Oh, and they change color when the wheel is not straight. So you know that you're making, you are now making a turn. You were no longer going straight. It's just a way to let you know. I'm going to go to the little tighter view so I can see it better. I do like that. It's nice. We are using our monster Gen Y boss hitch, which is huge back there. Yeah. So now that we're, now that we're within about, well, we're within the lines now, we're going to switch to the real close here. I don't know if the height's right, but we'll find out in a second. We're going to bump it or it's going to work. We're going to find out a little bit of a hole there. I like boom. So now here we are towing in this Ridge line. We have 3000 pounds of concrete on our 2000 pound trailer. So that guy back there is fully loaded and what I love about the Ridge line is that the payload allows for this. If you have 500 pounds of tongue weight back there and Matt and I in here, we're just over a thousand pounds and the payload here is 1400. So we're not even close to approaching that payload number. You could have a max trailer and four people in here and probably be right up there. So I do appreciate that high payload here on the Ridge line. One other note, I'll just say, before I ask Matt, how it's towing, you guys saw we're using our Gen Y boss flex hitch, and that hitch actually has a rubber bushing inside to allow it to flex. It essentially makes the towing experience smoother. We do have a full video on it. You can hit the link above to check that out. But yeah, that definitely changes the towing experience in any vehicle. And I just had to point that out before, like I said, I asked Matt, how's it towing? What do you, what are you feeling thus far? It feels great. There's tons of power. The trailer's back there. I know it's working. I can definitely feel it. Like you mentioned, that hitch is definitely taking some of the hits out. There was a couple, especially on those gravel roads that I was like, oh, that's going to hurt. And then I didn't feel it. And I went, oh, cool. It's riding real smooth. But the biggest thing I've noticed so far is this transmission. Cruising right now, like we are, we're on a secondary highway. We're doing, you know, just around 100 kilometers an hour. It's comfortable. It's got a nice groove. But for example, I'm currently approaching a fairly steep hill. This transmission, when it needs to drop a couple gears, it doesn't do it nicely. In terms of, it hunts. It's really like, should I go down two? Should I go down one? And then by the time it makes its mind up, right here, it's like, now I'm kind of underpowered because I lost so much speed and it drops again. So it just, by the time it gets to where it needs to be, it's like, I could have just dropped, I think of the Ford 10 speed, that will skip a few to pick the right gear in comparison with this one that'll work its way down and does it kind of clunky. That's my only complaint thus far though. Power wise, towing wise, it feels great back there. And I think one interesting point to bring up about the 9 speed is Honda has moved away from it, right? They moved to the 10 speed in the Odyssey, which is with the same three and a half V6. The pilot and the passport haven't got it. Ridgeline hasn't gotten it yet. But I imagine that 10 speed's got to come everywhere. I also know there was some actual technical, physical issues with that 9 speed. So I think overall, yeah, they're moving away from it. Okay, here comes a little bit of do as we say, not as we do. The Ridgeline does not have an integrated trailer brake controller. So if you want to tow something that weighs 5,000 pounds, yes, you need trailer brakes. So you have to hit up the aftermarket for that. We don't have it on here today. So no, we're not experiencing that, but it's definitely worth mentioning. If you want to tow heavy, you got to get that brake controller plus mirrors. This trailer, we're fine because it's the flat deck. But if you have a trailer, a travel trailer or something that is impeding your view, you'd have to get aftermarket mirrors as well. Even set at their widest right now, it's great. I can see over it, but even my wheels just set up where they are taking up a large portion of my mirror. Yeah, they're not particularly large. So Matt, I was really curious to do the max towing test today. Put this thing to 5,000 pounds because that number 5,000, we talk about it a lot. In my opinion, it's a real sweet spot for towing. Unless you're into travel trailers, the majority of things are 5,000 or less. Most recreational things, ATVs, snowmobiles, dirt bikes, any of that stuff. And so I'm happy to report that at its max, the Ridgeline still feels good. Now, I think here's the biggest difference I come away with. If you put this exact trailer on the back of an F-150 or a Ram 1500, you're not going to feel it as much. You're not going to be working as hard at the wheel. You're not going to be into the throttle as much. So I think it's safe to say that it's going to fatigue you a little more. It's more driver input needed, but that's the biggest difference. So I guess what I'm saying is something a lot of people talk about. The Ridgeline is enough truck for the majority of truck buyers. You know, we talk a lot about how guys and ladies today are over-trucked. They're buying these massive trucks and they don't need them. And that's what the Ridgeline is fighting against. We've got some turkeys on the road in front of us. A whole pile of turkeys. Let's see if I can get the shot. I'll show the people the turkeys. Well, I'll just keep talking, building on what you said. The Ridgeline is enough truck to do what you need to do on a daily basis. Whoa, turkey flying! Turkey flying! Gobble, gobble, gobble. See you guys. It's enough truck to do what the average person needs. And I mean, exactly what you said. If I was towing this trailer long distances or a couple times a week or even monthly, a couple times a month, I would be looking at a larger pickup to make it easier, make it more comfortable. But if this is like a, oh, hey, can you tow this for one hour once a year? Sure, I can do that. I've got enough truck for that. The rest of the year, I've got my 800-pound utility trailer with my 700-pound snowmobile on it all day long. Let's go for a road trip. Exactly. And then, you know, the big advantage that we haven't talked about yet is when it's empty, it's so nice. It drives like a little car, right? It's small. You fit it into every parking spot you want to. It's comfortable. It's quiet. Exactly. Low to the ground. Easy to load things into. So, you know, you don't have to live with a lot of the hassles of the modern-day half-ton, too. It gets rid of them. So, yeah, you know, the Ridgeline makes a very compelling case as long as you can get over kind of the image of owning a Ridgeline because let's not lie to each other, a lot of people have strong feelings about this truck one way or the other. It's not a real truck. Yeah, you're going to hear a lot of that if you buy one. All right, folks, trying our zero to 60 here with our 5,000-pound trailer. We'll just come to a stop and ready, hit it. Here we go. Feel there. It actually laid a little rubber. I'm surprised. 60. VTEC, I heard it. VTEC. You can hear the exhaust change. There it is. You know what, Matt? Yeah, it was better than I thought. That was zero to 100 in 14.2 seconds. That's pretty quick. Which is not half bad. It felt quick, especially given that little bit of rubber it laid down off the hop there. No doubt. And yeah, now you guys can see how that stacks up on the leaderboard. Well, folks, we are coming to the end of this one. Now, I think one of the things we've really proven here today is that 5,000-pound max tow number, that's not wishful thinking on Honda's part. This truck handles that load with real confidence, and I was really happy to see that out there on the road today. Now, of course, I want to hear what you have to say, so let me know what you think of the Ridgeline. As always, go below. Don't forget to hit like, hit subscribe, hit join to become a member of the trucking channel, and then come right back here to see what we're testing next. See ya.