It’s no secret that America has an insatiable lust for pickup trucks of expansive dimensions. I mean, truck culture has become so deeply ingrained in the American psyche that country-rock playlists are filled with songs about loving big diesel trucks from each of the Big Three. Well, after driving a 2025 Ford F-350 Super Duty Platinum Plus DRW (dual rear wheel), I’m feeling the same way. This 6.7-liter Power Stroke diesel V8-powered $111,000 truck, a Ford Super Duty pushed deep into the luxury domain, was a relaxing companion as I hauled a trailer on a 1,600-mile road trip across the eastern portion of America. The Platinum Plus was so good at being a comfy truck that I think I now love this big American truck more than most German luxury cars.
Yes, this was a bit of a revelation for me, too. I’m the weirdo who bought not just one, but two Volkswagen Phaetons. I still own a Volkswagen Touareg V10 TDI and two BMWs. My list of dream cars includes the BMW 850i and the Audi R8 V10. I love German cars so much that I named myself after one of the nation’s brands.
Yet, America’s big trucks offer an interesting proposition. The 2025 Ford F-350 Super Duty Platinum Plus has most of the luxuries the average person would expect to find in something like an Audi, but it’s layered on top of a vehicle that can haul a huge amount of weight across an entire landmass, and do so in shocking comfort.
(Full Disclosure: Ford loaned me a 2025 F-350 Super Duty Platinum Plus for a little over a week to haul home my new-to-me 1997 Honda Life. I then lost the key to the rig on the road trip. Ford took such great care of me during the whole ordeal, and I still cannot find the proper words to thank those lovely people enough.)
This year, I’ve found myself afflicted with a revived obsession with importing cars from Japan. Back in March, I purchased a 1997 Honda Life for only $258 in a Japanese auction. Then, in June, I purchased a 1998 MGF roadster. Now, the easiest way to get these vehicles home would be to pay a transport company to haul them from the port to your doorstep. But not only does shipping get expensive, but it’s also the boring way to do it. The cheaper and more fun way, in my eye, is to hitch up a U-Haul Auto Transport, drive to Baltimore, pick up my car, and drive home. 
Now, I could have done this trip in a half-ton pickup truck like a Ford F-150. The Honda Life weighs so little that I could have even pulled this trip off in a Honda Ridgeline, but U-Haul wouldn’t rent me a car hauler for a Ridgeline. I took a different approach. So many Americans buy heavy-duty pickup trucks as daily drivers and tow vehicles. What would living with a big dual rear wheel (dually) truck be like? I wanted to find out, so I asked Ford to send me the biggest truck in the press fleet. Initially, that was supposed to be a F-450 Super Duty Platinum Plus, but it wasn’t quite ready to be released into the fleet yet.
Instead, I got a 2025 Ford F-350 Super Duty Platinum Plus dually, and it’s a perfect representative of how far trucks have come from their humble roots.
Living Up To The Name
Ford says 90 percent of Super Duty owners use their trucks to tow things. The folks at Ram say that 90 percent of their Ram Heavy Duty customers also use their trucks for towing, too. In contrast, Ram says that only 10 percent of light-duty customers use their trucks for towing. Ford has not given me any data on this, but I would not be surprised to find a similar figure. That means most of the big trucks dotting American roads do get used for “truck stuff.”
The fifth-generation Super Duty launched in 2023, and you can click here to read about all of its nuts and bolts.
Something that I appreciate about America’s heavy pickup truck makers is that they get incredibly granular in explaining hauling capacities. Automakers love to talk about payload ratings and towing capacities. Here’s what Ford gave to the press for the fifth-gen Super Duty’s ratings:
- Gooseneck towing of 40,000 pounds with F-450 pickup.
- 5th-wheel towing of 35,000 pounds with F-450 pickup.
- Conventional towing capacity of 30,000 pounds with F-450 pickup.
- Gooseneck towing of 38,000 pounds with F-350 pickup.
- Conventional towing of 28,000 pounds with the F-350 DRW.
- Conventional towing of 25,000 pounds with the F-350 SRW.
- Gooseneck towing of 23,000 pounds with F-350 Tremor HO Power Stroke.
- Conventional towing of 22,000 pounds with F-350 DRW 7.3-liter Godzilla V8.
- Conventional towing of 18,500 pounds for the F-350 Tremor (gas and diesel).
- Gooseneck towing of 21,000 pounds for the F-350 Tremor (gas and diesel).
- Gooseneck towing of 23,000 pounds with F-250 HO Power Stroke.
- Conventional towing of 22,000 pounds with the F-250 HO Power Stroke.
To give you an example, the F-450 pickup noted at the top of the list can haul 8,000 pounds in its bed and tow a 40,000-pound gooseneck. I got to tow that 40,000-pound load in 2023, too, which was so awesome. The truck doing that hauling wasn’t a fancy Crew Cab, but a Regular Cab with a long bed and a somewhat spartan interior.
My press loaner this time around was the 2025 Ford F-350 Super Duty Platinum Plus DRW. Under the hood sat a 6.7-liter High Output Power Stroke V8 firing off 500 horsepower and a ground-shaking 1,200 lb-ft of torque. How much power is this? The HO Power Stroke has so much beef that it will easily spin the dually’s wheels with traction control off. This is a truck that weighs as much as a small house, and yet the Power Stroke gets the truck off of the line and up to 60 mph way faster than you’d think any mass this large should go.
A Super Duty single rear wheel can hit 60 mph in the mid-5-second range, and the dually trucks aren’t much slower. This truck is legitimately faster than some cars half the size. Of course, Ford wasn’t exactly trying to make a heavy-duty hot rod here, as the groundswell of power is mainly there to make towing insanely heavy loads feel natural. The Power Stroke outputs so much power that a Super Duty hauling 15,000 pounds still gets up to speed no differently than a crossover does. That’s the beauty of today’s ridiculously powerful truck diesels.
Six-Figure Rig
My F-350 Super Duty Platinum Plus loaner had some pretty great kit in it. According to the Monroney, my truck had a base price of $81,395. Then, the factory slathered on $27,820 in options. Those options included a 35,000-pound fifth wheel hitch kit ($1,745), a gooseneck hitch ($250), the FX4 Off-Road package with skid plates ($550), tonneau cover ($2,200), spray bedliner ($595), a rear bed step ($390), LT245/75R17 all-terrain tires ($165), and a 3.55 limited-slip rear axle ($385).
The big ticket items included the $12,995 Power Stroke engine, the $995 color, and $6,500 for the Platinum Plus package. Well, technically, equipping the Platinum Plus package requires you to check other boxes, including the Power Stroke diesel and four-wheel-drive. So, really, Platinum Plus will cost you at least $19,495 if you’re starting with a base truck. So, most of the options on this truck had to be checked by default to check the box for Platinum Plus.
So, what’s the hubbub about this Platinum Plus thing? Well, it’s Ford’s new flagship Super Duty. Ford replaced the old Limited trim level in 2025 with Platinum. But Ford also had decided that Platinum still wasn’t luxurious enough, so now we have Platinum Plus.
No matter how you slice it, Ford’s top-spec Super Duty trucks command a ton of money. Last year’s Limited had a starting price of $99,190. The cheapest 2025 Super Duty Platinum Plus is the F-250 at $99,455. The F-350 clocks in at $100,955, while the F-450 commands $105,630. My truck was $109,215. Add in destination and delivery and you land at a fat $111,310. That’s solidly German luxury car territory for what some might see as a work truck.
However, the Platinum Plus goes to great lengths to make this truck just as soft and supple as a luxury car.
As Luxurious As A Car
Headline features of the Platinum Plus trim level include “satin chrome” trim all over the truck’s exterior, unique 20-inch wheels, a power tailgate, and a seriously awesome interior. Step onto the retractable running board and into the truck, and you’ll be treated to a legitimately luxurious cabin.
Ford says the Platinum Plus features a smoked truffle interior (think gray-ish brown) featuring perforated Venetian leather seats with a French-stitched pleated pattern. More of that Venetian leather and French stitching makes appearances on the door panels. Further leather is found on the dashboard and the center console. Further touches include more satin trim and dashes of real wood here and there. The finisher, I think, is that Ford wrapped the roof, and pillars in suede. The grab handles also aren’t just hard plastic, but they’re wrapped in leather.
Other notable upgrades include Pro Power Onboard 2kW (above), illuminated door sills, special floor mats, and a thick, truffle-colored leather steering wheel.
All of that is great, but it gets better as the seats have heating, ventilation, and massage. I also appreciated this truck’s Bang & Olufsen Unleashed sound system, which featured 14 speakers and 1,080 watts of power. I’ll readily admit that I’m not an audiophile like Thomas is. I just connect my phone and crank the volume up to 11. Oh yes, I’ve probably lost a lot of hearing over the years.
The B&O system in the Platinum Plus continues to live up to what I said about the same system as it was applied to last year’s F-250 Super Duty Lariat that I had as a loaner. The B&O sound system lives up to the “Bang” in its name, hitting so hard you’ll feel it in your heart, and that’s at only halfway up the volume dial. My tunes, often symphonic metal, hip-hop, Star Trek themes, Weird Al, and all points in between, came out clear, loud, and with just the right amount of bass.
I think this system even edges out the one that I tested in the Ram HD earlier this year. At the very least, they’re so incredibly close and both are just plain great if you’re a music normie like me. The truck is also spilling over with tech. My tester came with Ford Co-Pilot360 2.0, a HUD, adaptive cruise control, lane assist, automatic emergency braking, wireless charging, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and Ford SYNC 4 running through a gigantic 12-inch screen. Another 12-inch screen handled instrument cluster duties.
One of my complaints about some of these high-end trucks was that they often feel like their manufacturers started with a work truck and then filled them up with leather. What this means, at least in my eye, you get great seating surfaces, then brush your hands against nasty pebbled plastic on the door panels or on the A-pillars. They’re reminders that, at their heart, these are still work trucks. I noticed this in last year’s Lariat and with this year’s Ram HD Laramie. Even some top truck trims make this compromise.
The Platinum Plus did an admirable job hiding the truck’s working roots. The suede-covered pillars felt like something I’d expect to see in a BMW. Ford was also much better at covering the door panels in premium materials than Ram is. Remember, here’s what the doors look like on a Ram truck that costs nearly $100,000:
That pebbled plastic felt as out of place as it looked. This plastic was used in Ram’s flagship trucks, too.
Now, here’s the Platinum Plus doors:
Sadly, not everything is great in there. There are some cheaper-feeling plastics on the dashboard that feel a little out of place compared to the beautiful leather seats. The same sort of plastic can also be found on parts of the door panels. However, this plastic doesn’t feel so out of place that it’ll ruin your experience. In fact, I bet most owners and people not being paid to evaluate things will never notice or care. Heck, even German brands have this same sort of deal going on with interior plastics today.
On the road? This truck is incredible for what it is.
As A Daily
Motor City Solutions of Detroit dropped off the truck right before Memorial Day weekend, and I loved that because it gave me time to treat this truck like many folks do. I drove it to the grocery store, took it to a baseball game, and cruised around with my wife.
Operating a dually truck as a daily driver is a bit funny. You don’t sit in most parking spaces, so you have to park at the back of the lot if you don’t want to look goofy. These trucks also don’t really fit in apartment complex parking lots well, either, so I had to park the Platinum Plus in the overflow lot where folks park campers, limos, and the occasional semi-tractor.
Driving the big truck as a daily also just changes how you tackle the open road. Your seating position towers above almost everyone else who isn’t driving a semi and the truck’s big hips mean you can’t just make tight turns like you would in a car or a smaller truck.
But you also have a commanding view of the road ahead. I’m used to driving tiny Smarts and Kei cars, where you can’t see past the pickup ahead of you. Well, now I am the pickup driver, and I see everything. Admittedly, this sort of became intoxicating after a while. I’m used to driving vehicles so small that everyone either doesn’t see me or cuts me off. That doesn’t happen in the big truck. It’s weird, but it was almost like the F-350 was demanding respect from other drivers on the road. The same kind of drivers that would make me test out the brakes on my Vespa didn’t mess with me now.
People seemed to love this particular look of the Super Duty. Normally, I prefer some real color, and the sort of “creamy” grays that are so hot with automakers right now aren’t my thing at all. However, I make an exception in this case. At least in my eyes, the satin trim works well with the blue-ish gray of this truck. Strangers at gas stations called the Platinum Plus “classy.”
The truck also had pretty respectable fuel economy as a daily driver. The empty Super Duty did over 18 mpg on the highway and around 22 mpg when just cruising around town. It’s impressive that something that feels as large as a cruise ship even hits those numbers.
But I won’t say that the truck felt like driving a car. You’re reminded that you’re in a heavy-duty pickup truck the moment you take a corner too fast and you feel the weight of the truck resisting the change in direction from the helm and the tires screaming “seriously?” The suspension is also rougher when the truck is unloaded. The remarkably comfy seats ensure that the ride never reaches the level of being uncomfortable, but like all big trucks, the Super Duty sort of just bounces and jiggles off big bumps and Chicago-sized potholes.
Hauling Empty
The real reason why I got this truck was to drive it 773 miles out east to Baltimore to pick up my 1997 Honda Life. Now, I already covered how that whole trip failed to work out exactly as planned after I lost the truck’s key fob. If you missed it, click here to begin reading my three-part saga. The good news is that I made it exactly 697 miles before I lost the key. So, I still managed to put around 1,500 miles on the Platinum Plus, and most of those miles were towing.
My preferred method to pick up cars from a port involve renting a U-Haul Auto Transport at home, towing the trailer out to the port empty, and then bringing the car back home. U-Haul Auto Transports are only $55 a day if you return them to the same U-Haul store. However, a long-distance one-way rental may run you $1,000. So it’s actually cheaper to tow the empty trailer.
Anyway, the U-Haul trailer weighs 2,210 pounds. A Honda Life weighs about 1,700 pounds. That’s just 3,910 pounds, or a fraction of the 28,000 pounds that a F-350 DRW can tow from the receiver hitch below its rear bumper. It sounds silly to tow such a small amount of weight with such a huge truck, but this is something that real heavy-duty truck owners do. They aren’t always towing gigantic campers and tractors, but some are just towing home a car.
Towing the empty U-Haul with the F-350 DRW was interesting. I have often said that when a journalist tells you that they “don’t feel it back there” when describing towing, they’re almost always exaggerating. You always feel the trailer back there, even if your tow vehicle is amazingly capable. Well, towing the light U-Haul with the F-350 was the closest I’ve ever came to being able to say that statement. But, that’s not at all surprising given the fact that the empty flat trailer was only 7.8 percent of the truck’s conventional towing capacity.
Now, I felt the trailer back there because the trailer did impact braking performance a little and I could feel the trailer move on the hitch when I hit bumps. But as far as the truck was concerned, 2,210 pounds was nothing. The truck averaged 17.2 mpg on the highway with the empty trailer and even the suspension seemed entirely unbothered, as it was still pretty hard.
Yet, I found myself loving the seats all over again because even after 11 hours of driving, I felt only limited fatigue. I remember only three moments when I thought the truck was too rough, and it was when I hit bumps so bad that the empty U-Haul trailer got a little bit of airtime behind the truck.
The Platinum Plus was the perfect road trip companion. I turned on my ventilated seat, hit the radar cruise control, and ate up literally hundreds of miles at a time. The Platinum Plus has a generous 48-gallon fuel tank. At 17.2 mpg, that means 825 miles of driving range, or more than enough fuel to drive 773 miles from my apartment near the Wisconsin border to the Port of Baltimore without stopping.
Sadly, I didn’t get to take a picture of me loading the Honda Life up behind the Super Duty, but I was able to get that picture later, after Ford’s hero of a driver brought me the truck’s second key, allowing me to hitch up to the U-Haul trailer with the Honda already on it.
Hauling A Car
Hitching up to the trailer was easy. Now, I come from a family of heavy haulers and have been towing trailers pretty much since I got my license. However, not everyone can hitch a trailer blindfolded and with an arm behind their back. So, the Ford, like so many modern trucks, has a bunch of hacks to make towing easier even for novices.
This truck came equipped with a sweet suite of cameras, giving me a 360-degree view of the truck. Normally, I have to back the truck up, jump out, check my position, hop back in, and then do it all over again. Or, I’ll have a spotter direct me. The Super Duty makes that easy, as a camera and a dotted line will guide me straight to the tongue of the trailer. Then I just hit the parking brake, dropped the tongue of the trailer, and hooked everything up.
Ford also offers the Pro Trailer Hitch Assist system (shown above), where the truck can reverse itself straight to the tongue of the trailer, even steering itself there. Some of Ford’s trailer automation software does depend on little stickers being placed on the trailer, so I wasn’t able to test it out on the U-Haul. That’s just the tip of Ford’s hauling and towing tech, which you can read more about by clicking here.
Loading the tiny, lightweight car made little change in how the trailer pulled. The trailer wasn’t just a flat deck scooting down the road, but now it had a car on top, and now surface area finally mattered. Realistically, the truck didn’t haul any differently with the car on the back. The rear suspension was perhaps just a touch softer from the weight, but performance was pretty much the same. The truck was able to cruise in 10th gear with the car back there all day long. The only obvious indication of making the truck do any work at all was that fuel economy dropped to about 13.3 mpg.
If anything, I love being able to say that. I love that this truck has such an excess in capability that towing a car is pretty much a non-event for the truck. That’s why people go big like this. Sure, a large crossover could have hauled this load without a problem, but the truck made it look and feel easy.
Even better is how you have so much excess capacity that you can park the car trailer, hitch up the girthy gooseneck, and then tow a tractor to the farm. I’ve had the privilege of towing really large trailers with the fifth-gen Super Duty, and it’s extremely capable at that, too.
The Platinum Plus was also the most comfortable truck I’ve slept in, too. I’m a serial cheapskate and sometimes, I don’t want to get a hotel. So, I’ll park the truck, lay out a blanket on the back seat, and get to sawing logs. I got a full night’s sleep on the rear bench of the F-350 and I honestly felt great when I woke up the morning after. As it turns out, the soft leather seats make for a good bed! It was actually much better sleeping in this truck than in last year’s F-250 Lariat, so there’s that.
That said, a lot of the people who use these big pickups as hotshot trucks or similar will fold up the rear seats and then plop down something resembling a real bed onto the expansive floor. That’s also a good option that remains here.
Unfortunately, losing the key meant that I also got to test how durable the Platinum Plus interior is. The poor truck got caught in a downpour with its sunroof open. The seats and some of the interior equipment did get a pretty good soaking, but it all dried up really well. The truck still smelled new after. So, all of the pretty leather isn’t as delicate as it seems. If you want to read more about that, click here.
I’ve been gushing a lot about this truck. Truth be told, the F-350 Platinum Plus is now my second-favorite new truck, and it’s second only to the mighty Ford F-150 FP700, which is definitely my dream pickup right now.
Headaches
However, there were some problems that cropped up on this tester. One was that the truck’s trailer wiring did not respond well to being driven in a heavy downpour. About an hour into my drive home, I hit heavy rain. As I drove through the deluge, a warning popped up on my screen about the trailer light and trailer brake modules failing.
Thankfully, Ford has a super handy trailer light checker program so you can inspect things by yourself. On the outside, the effect was that the trailer’s running lights worked fine, but brake lights and turn signals did not function.
At first, I thought these modules failed because of the open sunroof incident, but some diagnosis (i.e. this find on the internet) led me to the wires that connect the truck’s trailer wiring to the rear bumper. The connectors were full of water, presumably from the tires kicking water up at the undercarriage. If I dried these connectors out, the errors went away. It looks like I wasn’t the only person to have this problem.
Thankfully, the easy solution would be to use dielectric grease in the connectors to help keep rain out.
I also had an issue where the driver side running board stopped deploying. This issue began happening before the sunroof incident. I’d hear the motor attempt to turn on, but the board wouldn’t drop. As it turns out, the running boards can detect resistance, and too much resistance will cause the board to either fail to deploy or fail to retract. The boards can get stuck if the joints are not cleaned and lubed. Cleaning gunk out of the joints returned function to the driver-side running board.
I’m also still just not a fan of how tall trucks are. It’s gotten to the point where the bedsides of heavy-duty pickup trucks come to the top of my shoulders and bed floors are getting above belly button level. Heavy-duty trucks have huge beds, but they’re often quite hard to actually use. It’s unsurprising that automakers have come up with weird solutions like tailgate steps or tailgate barn doors.
I’ve asked a Ram HD engineer about this, and I was told that, at least in Ram’s case, the sky-high truck was a sort of compromise. Truck buyers want lots of ground clearance and tons of articulation. However, they also want usable beds. The compromise is to jack the trucks up high for off-road capability, and then to give you a step ladder or whatever to access your bed.
The towering height also makes visibility difficult for some drivers. Now, I don’t have a problem driving this truck, but that’s because I love driving big vehicles and generally know where my vehicle’s ends are. However, I noticed that shorter drivers might have a hard time seeing obstacles in front of the F-350’s long hood or behind its tailgate. It would also likely be somewhat hard for that person to gauge just where the front bumper is. If you’re a shorter driver, I’d imagine the cameras would be absolutely critical to pulling this truck out of your driveway without driving over the neighbor’s dog or flattening your kid’s bicycle.
Of course, the driver of smaller cars among us, myself included, also don’t like how, among other things, huge trucks basically block the view of the road ahead. I’m not really sure of a solution for all of this, but it is something to be aware of. Big trucks are great, but going huge does have notable trade-offs.
This next one is less of a problem and more of a suggestion.
Earlier, I noted how I lost the truck’s fob while on the trip. I have an entire three-part series about this, so click here to read it. The short version is that I accidentally left the fob on the cowl in front of the windshield. The truck started and I drove it out onto an interstate, where the fob ejected itself from the truck, disappearing off the side of the road. The truck then let me continue to drive and it didn’t even warn me of the missing fob until about a mile later when I pulled over and put the truck in park. Unfortunately, the truck then shut itself down and effectively bricked itself. This meant that any window that was open was now stuck open indefinitely.
Now, Ford has a solution with this with the FordPass app. Pair the app to the truck and you can gain emergency access to its ignition. Unfortunately, a previous journalist had already paired the truck to their phone, so FordPass was useless. You might run into the same issue if the truck you’re driving is a work truck, a rental, or borrowed from someone else. In this case, I think there should be a way to emergency close the truck’s windows (or emergency open the windows if a baby gets trapped inside). You’re already having a bad day from losing your key, seeing your $100,000 truck’s interior ruined because the windows are bricked would add insult to injury.
Better Than A Luxury Car?
Overall, I loved my experience with the Platinum Plus. I had such a great time, even, that I came to a conclusion that I wasn’t expecting. If you’ve read my work for long enough, you know that I adore German luxury cars. I love driving something with oodles of power, with the quietness of a library, and with all sorts of trick toys layered on top of high class.
This truck does almost all of that. It was remarkably quiet, while its turbodiesel V8 hits like a sledgehammer and has an exhaust note that sounds like a crack of thunder. The seats were luxurious and comfortable, while toys were abundant. Sure, this truck doesn’t have wall-to-wall screens, any trick summon features, augmented reality systems, AI, glass dashboards, motorized doors, or any other gizmo gimmick.
No, in my eye, the Platinum Plus has luxury features that I think most people will actually use. Automakers are finding out that people don’t really care about unnecessary tech like capacitive buttons, features locked behind menus, and passenger screens. But people do like leather, heated seats, cooled seats, and massage. There probably aren’t a ton of people out there who absolutely must have automatic opening doors and motorized door handles on their next car, but everyone loves a great stereo.
But, what’s great is that you get realistic luxury wrapped up in a package capable of towing a 38,000-pound trailer. That’s just nutty, and I get why some folks drive right past the Mercedes-Benz dealership to buy their luxury truck from the Ford dealership. These trucks wrap you in leather, jack you to the sky, and make you feel like you’re the queen of the road. I sure know that I felt powerful in the Platinum Plus.
It’s weird, but the Platinum Plus was a bit of a confidence-booster like that. I felt awesome behind the wheel of that gray lump of metal and diesel. I felt like I had the power of a nuclear reactor under my size 10 slip-on and so long as I was in my leather throne, anything was possible.
I figure that this is also part of the reason why trucks sell so well. That feeling of being in power is intoxicating. Who cares about paying more than $150 for a tank of diesel when you feel like you have enough torque to singlehandedly change the rotation of a planet?
So yeah, I get it now. If you gave me the choice between a new BMW or this truck, I’d take the truck. If you came to my door with a mint condition Volkswagen Phaeton V8, I’d still take the truck. Besides, the truck can haul a whole trailer full of Volkswagen Phaetons. As the song goes, I like big trucks and I cannot lie.
(All images: Author)
I love me a pick up truck. But I like them old school. My brother, a retired semi truck cross country hauler loves the pick ups that are similar to the tractors he drove. However he drives a Ram 2500 diesel dually and while it is a good truck I hate trying to climb into the 2nd story cab where the 1st step is higher than my waist. Mercedes you fail to mention what climbing into the truck is like. Do you want to need a ladder for a daily driver? Or does it offer a reasonable entry for the driver and passenger?
Ford does have the best front end of all the trucks, and it does look nice inside. I prefer hard plastics and hose down floors but to each their own. I do love how Ford took care of you with the key keitastophe, good for them on that.
I used to be an anti-truck guy. I always loved smaller lightweight cars for maneuverability and the fun-to-drive experience. I’m from Texas so everyone I knew pretty much drove a truck. In 2022, I bought my first truck and finally understood the love for them. Mine was a brand new 1794 Tundra and the comfort coupled with the high visibility position was charming in a way that made it feel special. Also, all my compact vehicles or low slung sports cars required me to drive like an attentive motorcyclist because I was always cut off or almost hit when people were turning or changing lanes. Driving a big truck was so relaxing just because you didn’t have to worry about people trying to actively kill you and it sure helped motivate other drivers to move out of the way when going 15mph below the speed limit in the left lanes. I’m back to a sedan and sports car but it’s only a matter of time before I get a truck again.
As a person who lives in the city, I hate these trucks when they’re being used by someone who clearly doesn’t need the capability. They take take up way too much space and they block the view.
And when it comes to street parking, these fucking things take up twice the space of a regular car and are a pain in the ass to share space with on narrow streets.
Plus in the the case of the diesel versions of these, you just know that the 2nd or 3rd owners are gonna remove the emissions equipment and “tune” it… greatly increasing the level of pollution it spews.
So I am absolutely no fan of these oversized trucks.
Gross. Suede does not belong on high touch surfaces. Even my plastic grab handles get disgusting over time, but at least they can be cleaned easily. I can’t imagine if they were suede.
This is one good thing about truck buyers typically being on the conservative side. A lot of the really stupid interior design on modern vehicles never made it to the trucks because they knew ahead of time it would piss their buyers off. Now if the EV truck makers would just get that message…
Anyway, given the frequently disdainful attitude that big trucks often get on this site, I’m happy to see at least one person gets why they’re so popular.
Oh snap, actually, you just pointed out a typo. I meant to say that the grab handles are wrapped in leather instead of hard plastic, but I included it on the list of suede parts. I’ll have that corrected. The rest of the parts mentioned are indeed suede, though.
Oh good, that makes a lot more sense!
I came to the same conclusion as Mercedes did, but maybe for different reasons.
At least in my area, the roads are continually getting straighter, wider, and flatter to the point that there is not a curve within 130 miles of my home that I cannot comfortably navigate at 70 mph in my 1-ton truck or 1-ton van. This, as roads get more congested; there is always someone in a 4-Runner in front of you clutching the steering wheel and navigating a high-speed sweeper at 45 mph.
Simultaneously, the handling, cornering, braking, and ride or modern trucks has improved to the point that they are approaching the level of lower end cars. All the while, cars are getting heavier and less fun to drive. Automatic transmissions, lane assist, adaptive cruise, haptic buttons are all huge turn-offs to the driving experience. They may be faster than trucks, but I’m not really sure I want a car that can go from 0 to felony in 8 seconds or fly down a winding road (such as they are) at speeds that would surely land me in jail.
Modern high-end cars in particular, have become so complex as to become disposable. This is why a 25 year old Corolla (or 45 year old Mercedes) is probably worth more than a 25 year old BMW 750i. These huge diesel trucks are still capable of racking up huge mileage and are still sought after in the used market even with over 200,000 miles on them. You rarely see a diesel pickup in a U-pull-it lot, but you see plenty of luxury sedans/SUVs there.
Finally, parking is simply not an issue for me. I haven’t had to parallel park in 5 years (aside from vacations). In parking lots I park my dually crew cab away from everyone else, but I do the same with my Miata to avoid door dings. A bit of walking is good for me.
I don’t daily drive my HD pickup simply because I have a fleet of other vehicles that are more fuel efficient, but if I had to pare down to just one vehicle, a current F-350 would probably be the one (albeit a single-rear wheel variant).
I bet your truck or van weights more than a 1 ton. It probably closer to 3 tons
1 ton is an old classification system for trucks, not the actual weight. It used to refer to the cargo capacity, but these days it just means a 350/3500 series truck. 1/2 ton = 150/1500, 3/4 ton = 250/2500.
Mercedes likes Ford truck more than Mercedes car. In a parallel universe, there’s a journalist named Ford who just discovered their love for Mercedes trucks.
Just got a Maverick Lariat AWD with the 4k towing upgrade. Excellent little truck with some of the same tech you laud in the big boy.
The “Pro Trailer Hitch Assist” will guide the truck to the hitch of any trailer, with or without the sticker. It’s some serious voodoo coolness.
I think the stickers allow you to define the length and weight characteristics of different trailers so the truck automatically recognizes them and adjusts. I entered these details manually, and I only have the one trailer, so the sticker isn’t necessary.
I wonder if Uhaul will start equipping their trailers with the Pro Haul stickers defining characteristics for trucks to recognize?
When I drive my ’92 F350 longbed dually (with or without slide-in camper) I take up four parking spaces with zero guilt. It is so damn big that even attempting to park in a regular space ends up way too close to adjacent vehicles.
Yeah, I don’t feel bad taking up two spots (way, way out in the back) with my ’95 F150 SuperCab longbed. The thing has the maneuverability of a school bus.
Thing which gets me is in most of the world with a 3 tonne truck, as this is, plus fuel, your useful load, is probably one passenger and 300 kg — that is a small scoop of builders sand.
Put a family with teenagers in it and you will be over the limit.
Anything over 3.5 tonnes and you need a heavy goods vehicle license, with all the health checks, test expense and the rest… And 3.5 tonnes is total vehicle weight, so even a little trailer will bring the legal useful load down to a bag of shopping.
This truck is 7600 lbs assuming it’s a 2 wheel drive model. That’s well over 3.5 tons – assuming the US short ton. If you’re using metric tons (implied by the tonne), it’s 3.45.
I do a lot of towing for work using a diesel pickup and a two car trailer. My total weight is under 26,000 lbs so I don’t need a full CDL – but I do need to carry all the appropriate safety gear, keep a log book and records of inspections and medical tests along with complying with hours of service limits. It’s something that’s not required for personal use (regardless of combined vehicle weight!) but I recommend it for anyone who is doing serious towing because all of those things exist for good reasons.
These things are made for the North America; the weight of this model without options is 3,700kg. This one has a lot of options, so I expect it to be closer to 4,000kg empty. It has a payload of 2,600kg. I don’t know the exact rules in Canada, but in the United States, even fully loaded, there are no special license requirements to drive this.
My roofer was shocked that I had $50k cash for my roof job and said he was in the wrong line of work…after he had driven not 1 but 2 different Super Duty’s to my house that were fully customized with built motors. I think you’re doing JUST fine buddy.
Nah, that’s just called “debt.”
This always kills me about the smaller companies in my area. They always have a hugely jacked up truck covered in an obnoxious wrap with huge rims and rubber band tires. Then have a 2′ drop hitch that has never been used and wonder why I don’t want/need to do business with them.
While I don’t know the particulars, there definitely are tax deductions for costs associated with work trucks. Maybe someone better versed can offer a quick comment, as I think independent contractors would drive more modestly priced trucks if not for the tax write-offs..
The only way to stop the ever-increasing girth is through regulations and… yeah, that’s not happening any time soon.
That truck shouldn’t have even started with the key fob outside of the cabin, so I wouldn’t beat myself up about what happened.
Also, although I’m sure you’ve figured this out by now, Mercedes, if you test another Ford in the future, the first thing you should do is a Master Reset, which will sever any FordPass connection to the previous driver.
Unladen Ford duallys are bouncy as shit. I cannot imagine daily driving one with nothing in the bed.
A friend of mine bought an F450 cab-and-chassis and put a flat bed on it. The rear springs are sized to support an ambulance body. My god does that thing ride hard.
A former roommate owned a 2nd gen Dodge Ram 3500 cab-chassis with a flatbed. I was helping him unload something once and hopped up onto the bed, noting that I didn’t feel any jounce as I did so. Jumping up and down as hard as I could produced zero movement. There’s no telling how poorly it rode, but maybe it’s part of the ‘charm’ along with going deaf from the old 12-valve.
I’m a little surprised fleet people don’t do this before sending vehicles to the next person. You don’t want someone to get a bad first impression because of a previous reviewer screwing with the settings.
It’s also a privacy thing, which is why I do my own reset when I trade in a car.
I actually had a loaner vehicle about a month ago and went to connect CarPlay and the history was full with 5 other peoples phones. The last thing I did before turning it back in was make sure my phone was deleted out of it.
I always thought dualuly’s were cool until a wiser old truck driver point out that tires cost %50 more than a regular truck. Also have fun change a flat on the inner tire.
Not quite 50% more, since they are typically a bit smaller than their single rear wheel equivalents, but they are more. On the flip side, tires typically last 80,000 miles or so. Changing an inner rear takes 30 seconds more than the outside rear (or the front, for that matter).
The main downsides are the fuel consumption penalty, the worse off-road performance, and the fact that you can’t take them through a car wash.
This is the the kind of review I come to the Autopian to read. Classic! Mercedes, never change.
Sounds like I need to hunt down some of these front seats, too, if they were still comfy after that long a drive. I just did the longest drive so far on my motorhome (7 hours) and my tailbone was freaking killing me halfway through. The seats looked comfy but they sure weren’t after a few hours.
The bench seat in my ’92 F350 longbed dually is very comfortable as proven on a 700 mile drive towing a car on trailer. Very comfy,
I genuinely appreciate these HD trucks. Though, I would probably go with a 2500, personally, as the DRW is overkill.
I think these trucks are the replacement for the personal luxury coupes of the 50’s-80’s. They’re big, they seat 4-5, they have big trunks…er…beds, nice interiors, and effortless torque. The difference is that these trucks, ironically, are more efficient and can tow just about anything. I appreciate that these exist and seem to keep getting more capable.
I was strolling the lot at Carmax the other day, which I try to do about once a month just because it’s fun. They let you open the doors and sit inside 300+ cars with no obligation or supervision, it’s like a playground.
I saw a 2024 F350 out there, same color, and had to check it out. Yep, pretty amazing…and also, $73k or so, with just 20k on the ticker. It seems they also have depreciation in common with German luxury cars 🙂
The one thing I really love about these things is that they allow regular people to do jobs like car hauling or moving medium-duty earthmoving equipment (hopefully with a CDW) and can help bridge that “last mile” gap for logistics almost anywhere. Don’t think of them as a bloated substitute for a car, think about them as if MINI got into building semis!
A bit hard to say for sure as the MSRP on these ranges from about $40K to $110K, but generally depreciation is fairly low.
Maybe it’s just me, but the wheel and tire package looks totally undersized aesthetically. I bet a set of alcoa semi-truck wheels would fit.
They won’t, but it can be done with modification and would definitely look nice
What is the difference between Goose Neck and 5th Wheel?
5th wheel is kind of like what semi trucks use. Gooseneck is a ball hitch inside the bed. Both are inside the bed and attached to the frame rails. 5th wheels are more for camper applications, while goosenecks are more for agricultural or industrial applications. Both have higher limits than a bumper pull due to better weight distribution.
Thanks
Thanks for asking. I had the same question.
https://www.motortrend.com/features/what-is-the-difference-between-a-gooseneck-hitch-and-a-fifth-wheel-hitch-explanation
I love driving the F250 we have at work. It was formerly one of the partners’ horse trailer/camper tow rig so it is pretty loaded for a 2012 but even that is nothing compared to how luxurious the Platinum trims are now. If I were a rich boy, I would totally have a heavy duty Ford or Ram truck.