Update: Our 2024 Toyota Tacoma TRD Off-Road is back in action!

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know about our 2024 Toyota Tacoma and its 4×4 system breaking while we were off-roading in the Rockies. Simply put, a part broke as we were climbing a rock, and it forced us to drive home in 2WD. We have a variety of stories that get into the minutia of the facts, and I don’t want to bore you with repeating it.

After the problem was identified and fixed, we brought the Tacoma back to our studio and began working with it again.

The very first thing we did was load up a trailer and head back into the Rocky Mountains. That may sound tame, but there’s a lot more to it. For one thing, we loaded up our Honda Acty 4×4 pickup on to a trailer, so we were pulling about 5,000 pounds. Now our Tacoma is rated at (up to) 6,500 pounds of towing capacity. With a loaded cabin consisting of Andre, Roman and a videographer (and the equipment), our overall payload is getting up there.

Then we sent the boys up the steepest county road in America, Lickskillet Road outside Gold Hill, Colorado. It’s a rural dirt road and has an average gradient of 14.2%. Some of the grades go up to around 18%. During snow season, it is downright treacherous. All of this is hard enough going solo, but its super challenging when towing this time of year.

It got so steep and slippery, Andre had to go into 4WD High. I guess getting to the actual ORV location was half the battle, in this case. We will have the conclusion of this hurdle in a second episode you can see on TFLoffroad (both are linked below). Check out the video to see how they did!