I'll try to keep this as short as possible, but following the sticky's format here's some background for starters. I work as a commercial electrician in a state that doesn't really have any kind of ev community from what I can find. I have a solid understanding of electrical theory and safety from both my time in college working towards a physics degree, and my electrical apprenticeship. My experience working on cars is only slightly more than changing my oil, although over the last few months I've developed a burning passion for all things automotive. Doing my own maintenance just isn't enough for me (at least on the mechanically sound Corolla I drive now) anymore and I pretty much NEED a project, so I'm really not afraid to dive into anything at this point.
I want this project to accomplish two things. Firstly it needs to serve as a material hauling/utility vehicle for the ~100 acre (former) golf course my family has recently bought. My parents are planning a series of construction projects on parts of the property only accessible by cart path, and will be needing to transport several hundreds of pounds of lumber/building materials to and from various places on the property. For this purpose I'll try to set a modest goal of hauling around at the very least 500 lbs of material (+vehicle and two people) at 10-20mph for 2-3 hours of total drive time throughout the day. Being a golf course there are quite a few elevation changes, some very steep, but lets just say it needs to be able to handle a modest incline while under full load (without worrying about the batteries or controller blowing up obviously)
My second goal for this project is less need and more want. I'd like for this vehicle to be able to make the round trip from the golf course to the hardware store in town 20 miles away. These are 80% back roads with two stop lights and a couple of stop signs between point A and B. Speed limit 55mph for about 75% of the trip and 45mph for the other 25%. On the way back I'd want it to be able to haul at least 200-300lb of cargo without worrying about running out of juice.
I live in a hot and humid area and out in the middle of the property this vehicle will be the only source of power, so I'll go ahead and tack on the requirement that it have enough battery capacity to run an air conditioner through both of these use cases.
Based on my goal of having the vehicle road legal and capable of decent speed AND capable of hauling material at low speeds, a small manual transmission truck seems like the logical donor. So after about 1 minute on craigslist I managed to find a 2wd 1997 Ford Ranger XLT 5 speed manual seemingly in good condition. I haven't gone to see this vehicle yet, but supposedly the interior and exterior are in great condition despite its age, the only problem with it being a recently blown engine. I'm confident I can get this truck for $500-700, which seems like a great deal as long as the interior and exterior are in as good a condition as the owner says, and the transmission and suspension aren't totally shot.
I'm not sure exactly what battery technology would be best for my purposes, but considering I'm trying to keep as much bed space and hauling capacity as possible for material, Li-ion seems like the only way to go. I am however not sure if it'll be prohibitively expensive to have the capacity and utility I want in such a (relatively) large truck with Li-ion cells. It seems like salvaged leaf/volt battery packs are the gold standard of batteries these days, but I'm seeing conflicting (probably outdated) information about LiFePo4 cells being the most affordable/safest option?
On the note of affordability I saw the thread about using used motors from forklifts and was wondering where one might be able to source such a thing? I know of a few places that rent out large equipment like that in the area, but I'm not sure if they would be able or willing to sell a perfectly good electric engine from their fleet to just anyone walking in off the street. Also not sure if one of these engines would be capable of handing the tasks I'd like to accomplish.
That covers pretty much all of my ideas so far, so now all that's left is for me to ask if it would be at all feasible to complete this project (and have it not look like complete shit) within a budget of around $6000 total. After a quick calculation using figures from the wiki (and tending towards the high side on my battery requirements), it looks like the batteries are going to suck up my whole budget and then some, but I'm hoping a salvaged leaf/volt battery pack (or 3

) will save this project. I've just had a hard time finding good info on whether these batteries made for small cars will be able to handle the load I want to put on them, and also how much they cost/where to get them.
If you got this far, seriously, thank you. And I hope you laughed when I started this essay by saying I'd keep it short. Any suggestions would be much appreciated, because at this point it looks like the only way to accomplish what I want to would be to buy a 25 year old (ICE) Japanese mini-truck from an importer in the next state over, and I hope it doesn't come to that haha.