Modern heavy-duty pickups are silly. A 2020 F-350 diesel dually has 475 horsepower, 1,050 lb-ft of torque, and can tow up to 35,750 pounds. But the big trucks—three-quarter-ton and one-ton, in the parlance—weren’t always so steroids-for-breakfast musclebound.
In fact, if you rewind the clock a few years, the current F-150 compares favorably with the F-250s and F-350s of yore. Plenty of people daily-drive F-150s and keep an old heavy-duty truck around for the chores, towing horses or boats or car trailers. But guess what? Your late-model F-150 might very well be more capable than your old diesel workhorse. At least, when it comes to towing.
1990 vs. Today
We looked at both towing and payload specs going back to the 1990s and quickly realized that one of those numbers has diverged much more than the other. Payload ratings haven’t much changed, and the beastliest F-350 from 1990 sports a 6685-pound payload rating, which is about double the max for the 2020 F-150 and not too far off the current Super Duty (7850 pounds). (Ford has yet to release official payload and towing numbers for the new 2021 F-150.) Leaf-spring technology, it seems, hasn’t experienced much of a revolution over the years.
1995 vs. Today
Towing, though, is a different story. A stout tow rating depends on a complicated synthesis between a truck’s engine, transmission, brakes, cooling systems and suspension. Go back to 1995 and you could buy an F-250 with a naturally aspirated gasoline straight-six and a manual transmission, a combination unheard of today. And that truck would tow. . .3200 pounds. Never mind the F-150—a Subaru Outback now tows more than that F-250.
Of course, that was the mildest truck in 1995. What about a King Kong 7.3-liter Power Stroke diesel F-350 dually? That one maxed out at 10,000 pounds, a towing threshold that the average F-150 was knocking on ten years ago. (Even without the Max Tow and Max Payload packages, a 5.4-liter 2010 F-150 could tow 9800 pounds. With those packages: 11,300 pounds.)
2000 vs. Today
Move into the 2000s and the Super Duty trucks begin to show signs of the road tugboats they’d become, but their tow ratings are still mostly in the realm of what we now think of as half-ton territory. Ford’s 2000 tow champion was, strangely enough, the rear-wheel-drive F-250 regular cab with the 6.8-liter V-10 and a 4.30 rear end. It could tow 14,500 pounds, manual or automatic, using a fifth-wheel trailer. (Manual-transmission V-10 work trucks? Cool.) But that was the top of the food chain. Fail to optimize your choices on engine, cab and gearing, and 20 years ago you could’ve ended up with a F-350 dually rated to tow 7500 pounds. Which is the same as a 2020 Ranger.
2007 vs. Today
By 2007, the beefiest F-350 dually diesel could tow 15,000 pounds with a conventional hitch or up to 19,200 pounds with a fifth-wheel, provided it was equipped with the excellently named TowBoss package. And from there it just got crazier, as the 6.0-liter Power Stroke gave way to the 6.4- and then the 6.7-liter diesels. So we’re going to say the early-to-mid 2000s is the era where your bygone Super Duty and your modern F-150s intersect. In 2004, the Super Duty tow range spanned 6800 pounds up to 13,400 with a conventional trailer—essentially, an overlay of today’s F-150.
Will the new 2021 F-150 push deeper into territory once held by the diesel dually behemoths? Let’s hope so. Do we hear 14,000 pounds?
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How the Ford F-150 Became a Heavy-Duty Truck - Car and Driver
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