San Antonio Express-News On the Road column.

By G. Chambers Williams III, San Antonio Express-News Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Feb. 18--DODGE'S BIGGER 1500: Here in Texas, we like our trucks really big.

And that's just what Dodge has given us with the current generation of the Ram pickup, where even the smallest version, the 1500 model line, is really big.

Introduced in model year 2002 to replace the Ram truck design that had been on the market since 1994, the newest Ram 1500 is the biggest and best of the regular-duty Rams yet. In fact, it's nearly as large as the Ram heavy-duty pickups of the past.

The Ram 1500 is bigger than the Ford F-150 and Chevrolet/GMC 1500-series trucks -- in fact, this truck is as big as the heavy-duty F-250 and 2500-series trucks from Ford and Chevy/GMC.

During my recent weeklong test drive of the Ram 1500 Laramie Quad Cab, I found myself looking down on those in lowly F-150s, Chevy Silverados 1500s and GMC Sierra 1500s. And when I did come up beside the Ford and Chevy/GMC heavy-duty pickups, I found that we were just about evenly matched.

Now, exactly why Dodge needed to make its smallest full-size pickup as large as the competition's bigger trucks, I just don't know. But I did find my Ram 1500 a lot harder to park in tight mall and restaurant parking spaces than …