Pickuptruck.com hosts Heavy Duty Truck Shootout to end all shootouts

Mike Levine from PickupTruck.com is our go-to guy for truck news. His brain is like the bed of a Ford F-450 filled with the esoteric details of heavy duty diesel pickups and 3/4-ton gassers. Plus, he's from the old school of automotive journalism and has made a successful transition to the web, which means his reporting is always knowledgeable and balanced despite it being delivered digitally. When Levine told us he was planning on doing a comprehensive comparo of today's heavy duty pickups, however, we were unprepared for the depth of the final product.

The 2007 PickupTruck.com Heavy Duty Shootout pits six HD pickups from Chevy/GMC, Ford and Dodge against each other on a totally level and unbiased playing field. Levine went so far as to hire a third-party company to perform all of the instrumented testing to remove any trace of subjectivity in the results. The players are three gas-powered 3/4-ton pickups including the 2007 Dodge Ram 2500 SLT Quad Cab 4x4, 2008 Ford F-250 FX4 Super Duty Crew Cab 4x4 and 2007 GMC Sierra 2500 HD SLE Crew Cab 4x4, and three diesel-powered one-ton pickups including the 2007 Chevrolet Silverado 3500 LT Crew Cab 4x4, 2007 Dodge Ram 3500 SLT Quad Cab 4x4 and 2008 Ford F-350 King Ranch Super Duty Crew Cab 4x4. Ford also threw in a 2008 Ford F-450 Lariat Super Duty Crew Cab 4x4 so that Levine and his team could attempt to prove how powerful this big rig really is.

We've just finished reading Part 1 and 2 of the three-part series, which includes an extremely knowledgeable and fact-filled introduction as well as the first battery of tests, including a "squat" test and 1/4-mile performance runs. Each part may appear like a lot to read, but we flew threw it faster than an unloaded GMC Sierra 2500 through the quarter mile.

Check out Part 1 here and click here for Part 2. The final installment should be out sometime this week, and we'll be eager to find out definitively which of these pickups outperformed its competitors in PickupTruck.com's battle royale of heavy duty trucks.

[Source: PickupTruck.com]

Share This Photo X