Ford launches pickup truck rescue courses

New Ford research shows that UK pickup drivers regularly help friends, family and strangers in trouble on the road. However, many pickup drivers lack vital rescue know-how. The new ‘Ranger Ready’ campaign tackles this, giving a practical instruction experience using real-world scenarios to give drivers the skills they need when called upon to help.

James Cooper, Ranger brand manager at Ford in Europe, said: “The data that we unearthed confirmed something we instinctively knew – there’s an inbuilt heroism in the UK’s pickup community, a real desire to help others.

“But the data also revealed a crucial gap. Despite drivers’ good intentions, not everyone has the know-how to help as much as they would like. That’s where Ranger Ready comes in.”

Ford’s data shows pickup drivers are among the first to offer a tow rope, wade into floodwater or pull a stranded car from a muddy verge – according to its new research, 98% of pickup drivers have helped someone in need of a capable vehicle at least once in the past year. In fact, pickup drivers step in around four times per year on average and spend an average of more than one full day of their time per year offering a helping hand.

Ford crunched the numbers and found that with more than an estimated 230,000 pickup drivers in the UK, that’s nearly one million free rescues every year – sometimes pulling stuck vehicles out of snow, mud, or even floodwater.

And the brand calculates those free rescues potentially save stranded motorists more than £32m in callout fees annually.

Ranger Ready is a hands-on training programme designed to give pickup drivers the techniques they need for safe, effective rescues, while boosting confidence in offroad driving.

The training has already been trialled with a group of Ranger fans and owners, who learned how to rescue other vehicles with a trailer and tackled one of the UK’s toughest offroad courses.