Hello readers, and welcome back, once again, to my award-winning series in which I take letters from you, sent to me, and provide answers to them. While I was going to pick five or six emails at random for this one, I noticed something odd while looking at some of the messages I’ve received. One particular email really stood out to me concerning the 2021 GMC Sierra 1500 vs 2021 Ford F-150 and a peculiar use for them.
This letter struck me due to its professional tone, concise composition, and a general sense of child-like inquisitiveness. For a moment, I considered casting it aside and answering more letters about my favorite foods and preferred methods of body disposal. But, after further consideration, I realized this was a topic that many people would find compelling, and perhaps addressing it was long overdue. So, enjoy my insights, and I hope these answers find you in good health and a reasonable state of mind.
The Letter
Dear Disgusting Earth Creature,
I have recently stumbled upon your series of articles and find your ideas most intriguing. Particularly your thoughts on biological weaponry and the application of genetically engineered moose to future human militaries.
I have some ideas of my own about how best to attack my FILTHY enemies, but my efforts have been hampered by your infantile huMAN technology. Recently, however, I have come into possession of a large quantity of bees. At first, I thought them merely a resource from which I could extract delicious goo for my robot servant. But after an unfortunate incident involving a hamster, a pair of salad tongs, and their hive, I have come to appreciate their violent tendencies.
My plans to weaponize these bees have been foiled so far because of the pathetic equipment I have to work with on this planet. I have considered using a truck like the GMC Sierra or Ford F-150 as a delivery system for my swarming horde of buzzing DOOM! Which should I choose?
Tell Me,
Z.
Sierra and Ford F-150 Stats
A good question indeed and something I have considered on more than one occasion. After all, what are bees, if not a natural weapon to be used against one’s enemies? We’ll discuss the bees in a moment, but first, let’s talk about two of the specs for these two trucks because they’ll be important further down.
2021 GMC Sierra 1500:
· Max Towing Capacity: 11,800 lbs
· Max Payload: 2,250 lbs
2021 Ford F-150:
· Max Towing Capacity: 14,000 lbs
· Max Payload: 3,350 lbs
Just looking at these raw numbers, the Ford F-150 offers greater performance and capability overall. The difference in both towing and payload is pretty significant, and we’ll see down below that that can have a huge impact on the kind of bee delivery you have available. That being said, some of these differences might not matter, depending on just how many bees you have at your disposal. So keep reading to really get the big picture.
Concerning Bees
Bees are not, inherently, the greatest of natural weapons. They have their own lives and plans going on, which typically involve flowers, pollen, dancing, and honey. That’s cool, but just like any other creature on this planet, there are plenty of ways to use them as a weapon. For best results, however, we’re going to need large numbers of them. Quantity over quality here.
You see, the more bees you can throw at a problem (or at an enemy), the better the results you’re going to end up with. So we want to deploy as many bees as possible at once in order to improve the chances of them going absolutely berserk on our intended target. Of course, we’re going to run into some limits on how many bees we can manage, so let’s consider how much they weigh.
On average, a honey bee weighs about 0.00025 pounds, which means that about 4,000 bees will weigh one pound. A large colony can get up to about 60,000 bees in total (we’re dealing with averages here, but I’ll lean toward the higher end of things just to be safe), which is about 15 pounds. In addition to that, the hive itself for a large colony of bees, which includes their honeycomb, wax, honey, etc., weighs about 110 lbs. So, a large colony of bees in their hive weighs approximately 125 lbs.
Trailering Considerations
Now, let’s say your plan is to deliver the greatest number of bees possible to your target in a single devastating strike: a noble goal indeed. Your best bet with a pickup truck will be loading up a cargo trailer and pulling it behind you – just absolutely filling it with bees. They’re going to transport better if you can get them in their hive and load that, rather than trying to shepherd a massive cloud of swarming bees.
Looking at one example, I can see a cargo trailer with a 7,000 lbs capacity weighs nearly 2,000 lbs empty and has a tongue weight of 318 lbs. This cargo trailer, with a payload capacity of 7,000 lbs and measuring 7×12 feet, requires 12,040 lbs of towing power to handle 7,000 lbs of bees and hives, which means you can get up to 56 large hives loaded up, each with 60,000 bees. That’s a total of more than 3.3 million bees ready to assault your enemy!
The Ford F-150 can handle more than 12,000 lbs of towing when properly equipped, but the GMC Sierra 1500 cannot. With the Sierra, we’re either going to need a different-size trailer, or if we like the 7×12 size (which seems convenient to me), then we’re limited to a trailer with a 5,200 lbs capacity. That means just 41 large hives – or a total of 2.4 million bees. Don’t get me wrong, that’s still a lot of bees, but you’ll certainly do more damage with the Ford pickup.
Payload Delivery
Now let’s say you want to load up the back of your truck with bees rather than pulling a cargo trailer behind you. To keep them all in, you’re going to need a cap or shell to go over the bed, so they don’t all just buzz off. That will probably weigh about 180 lbs, but we’ll round up to 200 lbs just to be safe.
So with the camper, and if you pick a truck with optimal payload, then the GMC Sierra can handle 2,000 lbs of bees while the F-150 can carry 3,125 lbs. Using the same bee weights as before, this means the Sierra can carry 16 hives, or 960k bees, while the Ford truck can carry 25 hives or a total of 1.5 million bees!
Final Analysis
The results pretty well speak for themselves. All things being equal, the 2021 Ford F-150 will let you deliver far more bees in an attack than the GMC Sierra 1500. But, here’s one final thing to consider: does the difference really matter? Even though the raw numbers are superior for the F-150, is it a realistic and meaningful difference?
The GMC Sierra can easily pull 41 hives in a large cargo trailer behind it, while the F-150 can handle up to 56 hives. But unless you have a number of hives between 41 and 56 to use, that difference really doesn’t matter. Similarly, the Sierra can handle up to 16 hives in its bed, while the Ford can carry 25 hives, but unless you have 17-25 hives available to you, the difference is meaningless.
In other words, at the end of the day, the bees at your disposal will dictate the right truck to use for your destructive honey pot.
Editor’s Note: We would like to remind you that bees should not be used as a weapon, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service has issued a mandatory, non-weaponized bee order for the entirety of the country. Do not, we repeat, do not use bees to attack your enemies. Besides, wasps are much more vicious and aggressive. Thank you.
