Hi, folks:

I am new here and thinking of buying my first truck, as I am planning to move up to the Blue Ridge Mountains of northern Georgia with my family. I was there recently and it is obvious that a 4x4 is going to be essential. I have pretty well decided that the truck should be a diesel.

I am looking at all of the possibilities, but I do not want to spend $50K on a new truck. It seems like the choices are fairly narrow. In Fords, you have the F250 or F350; In Chevy, you have the Silverado 2500 and 3500; In Dodge, you have the Ram 2500 and Ram 3500.

I have never owned a Ford, Chevy or a Dodge. (When they were around, my family always had Oldsmobiles. As an adult I have owned Hondas, Acuras, a Nissan Pathfinder and an MB 320CLK.)

I am sure each of these trucks has its fans on these pages, that is why I am coming to you to seek your advice and guidance. There's an '05 Silverado 3500 with a 6.6L Turbo Diesel with a 127K miles available locally for around $14,500. So that looks nice. I want to stay under $20K if that is possible.

Please let me know what you think. Thanks very much. Best wishes for wonderful Christmas and New Year's holidays.

 

That truck sounds like a great choice.

Personally, I like to view each flavor of trucks objectively. I'll admit, I would only consider a diesel truck if I were towing massive loads all week long. Anything other than that, I'd go with a gasoline engine.

As far as Ford and Dodge goes, I have not owned either of these brands. I'd say, go see each brand of truck that suits your needs, and decide after you have seen and driven each truck.

Good luck!

 

thank you, null head.

I will definitely be driving them all.

I took a Ram 2500 4x4 out for a ride last week, but that was a new one. The dealer did not have any pre-owned trucks.

 

If your going to be pulling a large trailer on a regular basis than I would say go for the diesel. If not, you are waisting money since the gas trucks can be bought for less money. Also it gets cold enough in that area where the diesels will be a little harder to start and take longer to warm up then the gas trucks (this is not from personal experience, but from a few friends that have them). If your going to pull a medium load every once in a while a 6.0 gas truck will be plenty.

 

First you need to know what at present you do not know which is what you plan to use the truck for in the first place. Most 1/2 ton trucks have a payload capacity of close to 1 ton or 2000 lbs. and for most purposes a gas powered 1/2 ton F-150 is going to provide the same carrying ability as a 1 ton with the same length bed.

It is worth the cost to pay for a subscription of about $20 for Consumerreports.org online and look at their used vehicle reports. They chart out by model by year what problems people have reported and this is based on thousands of surveys for any given model and year. You can quickly see if a particular model had transmission problems or engine problems or electrical problems and for what years.

Before I went shopping for a truck I knew that the Chevy HD trucks with the diesel engines had lots more drive train problems for model years 2002 to 2008 and fuel system problems from 2006-2008. I did not need to know the particulars only that starting in 2009 the problems reported dropped dramatically.

Another useful resource is the Reliability Ratings which you can find on edmunds.com and these show reported repairs by garages. These are less current but provide a different perspective. For the 2500HD for example the 2004-2005 had significant problems with the engine, 2006 had problems with the steering and suspension, and 2007 models with the transmission and drive train. It gets a little more complicated as Chevrolet produced 2006 models in 2007 that it called "Classic" and later true 2007 trucks that were identical in most respects to the 2008-2009 model trucks.

You will save $5-10K purchasing a 1/2 ton instead of a 3/4 or 1 ton truck and also get a better ride and better gas mileage. Diesel and a heavy duty truck is appropriate when you plan to carry 3,000 lb. payloads or greater or plan to tow more than 6,000 lbs., otherwise stick with a gas engine and either way get an automatic transmission.

At wikipedia.org there are pages with model information by year by make and you can quickly see at what point in time new lines with significant changes were introduced by GM, Ford, and Dodge.

One thing I did notice was that used diesel powered Ford F-250/350 trucks were selling for about the same price as gas powered GM 2500HD/3500HD trucks. No idea why but it was clearly happening. The used diesel trucks with less than 60K miles are selling for over $30K so I ended up buying a new one instead for $42K that was fully loaded (everything except leather seats and the nav package and I do mean everything).