The new (ish) Ford Super Duty pickups

Note: a version of this article appeared earlier this year in OutdoorX4 magazine.

Question: Can an environmentalist—that is, someone concerned with the fate of our planet and its inhabitants (human and non-human), who trusts the findings of thousands of climate scientists, and who strives to live a responsible and reasonably low-impact life—possibly endorse a one-ton four-wheel-drive truck powered by a 475-horsepower turbodiesel V8?

I thought about this as I drove west on I-10 from Phoenix, piloting a 2020 Ford F350 SuperCrew Platinum 4x4. Tim Stoehr, a Ford product line manager, rode in the passenger seat; another journalist, Kevin Jones, sat in the spacious back seat. From the moment I’d started the truck and pulled out of the Wigwam Resort, to accelerating up the ramp on to the freeway and cruising at 75 mph, there had been no audible sign I was in a diesel truck. None. The sole giveaway was the monstrous thrust forward when I flattened the pedal. The ten-speed Torqshift transmission, brand new and beefed up to handle the—ready?—1,050 lb.ft. of torque produced by the 6.7-liter Power Stroke V8, produced shifts imperceptible enough to embarrass a Bentley.

I had adjusted the heated steering wheel both up and down and in and out to my preference, along with the adjustable pedals. My 10-way-adjustable leather-clad seat boasted both heating and cooling functions, and after we’d been on the highway for 20 miles or so Tim asked, “How about a massage?” I laughed, but then he reached over to the touch-screen and tapped a couple of times—and immediately, up my back and under my thighs I felt as if someone were running a rolling pin back and forth along my muscles. The seat incorporates multiple air bags that provide lumbar support, but can also be sequenced to produce a definite shiatsu effect that I had to admit might be welcome after five or six hours on the road.

By this point a few of you might have agreed with me if I’d thought, Who needs polar bears anyway? But we’ll come back to that.

Tim pointed out the unsurprising fact that the massage function was part of a premium package. I’m not sure what he thought of my suggestion that they could include it on the base model but have it operate with quarters.

After 40 miles on I-10 we headed north on a two-lane road that turned to winding dirt. For an unladen one-ton truck this one rode well, with surprisingly little side-stepping on washboard. The structure felt as solid as a 7,000-pound pickup on a fully boxed chassis ought to feel. Actually, despite its long list of features and a crew cab, this truck weighs less than my 2004 F350 Super Cab, thanks to an aluminum-intensive cab and bed structure. 

We pulled into the parking lot of This Dude’s Food and Brew in the one-horse town of Congress, Arizona, where several thousand horses awaited us in the form of various Super Duty trucks hooked to an escalating tonnage of trailers, from a 7,500-pound Black Series all-terrain model up to a gooseneck monster supporting a Kubota backhoe and a tracked digger—this to showcase the top Super Duty towing capacity of—ready again?—37,000 pounds. I believe my first house weighed less. In fact only those who possessed a commercial driver’s license were legally allowed to try out the F450 dually hooked up to this thing. I contented myself riding along while Kevin drove an F250 pulling the more overland-relevant Black Series camper up the seven-percent grade on Highway 89, past the memorial to the 19 Granite Mountain hotshot firefighters who died in the Yarnell Hill fire in 2013. The trailer might as well have fallen off for all the drag it imposed on the new 7.3-liter gas engine in this truck.

Need to tow a couple of tractors? No problem.

The towing demonstrations were impressive, but I was more interested in backcountry capability, so I was glad when we climbed back in the SuperCrew and headed 45 miles southwest on a dirt road that ended at a massive quarry, where Ford had constructed a driving course. 

And a good one it was, too. In ten years of running the Overland Expo we developed some excellent driving courses, but by necessity ours had to be negotiable by a wide variety of vehicles. Here the engineers were able to tailor it very specifically to impress.

Among other challenges they had incorporated a rock garden, a 29-degree climb and matching descent, some elephant footsteps, a water channel designed to show off the “Tremor” package’s commendable 33-inch fording depth (except it had drained down to a foot and a half or so by my turn), and a rather awesome diagonal ditch crossing that Matt Flis, the engineer who accompanied me, said several journalists had pronounced impassable before they were shepherded across. A curving, truck-plus-a-foot-wide passage between a double row of rocker-height boulders showcased another feature: a “bird’s-eye” view of vehicle and rocks courtesy of multiple cameras. It was a bit unnerving to try to keep one’s eyes glued to the center screen rather than out the windshield, but it worked. (Nevertheless, like most such aids, I do not consider it an acceptable substitute for learning where your truck ends.)

Compliance is not bad considering the nature of the truck. Lack of chassis flex is impressive.

About that “Tremor” package. Whether or not it includes depleted-uranium skid plates to prevent ingress by giant subterranean carnivorous worms I do not know, but it does incorporate the following features:

• 35-inch-diameter Goodyear Wrangler Duratrac tires on 18-inch alloy rims.

• Locking rear differential and (slightly disappointingly) Dana ABS-actuated traction control in the front axle.

• Trail Control with a rock-crawl mode and selectable speed.

• 10.8 inches of ground clearance.

• Decent approach and departure angles (for a big pickup) of 31 and 24 degrees.

• Suspension modifications: lifted front end, progressive-rate springs, twin-tube shocks with 1.7-inch pistons.

• A 53:1 crawl ratio on the 7.3-liter gas-engined trucks, and a 44:1 ratio for those equipped with the 6.7-liter turbodiesel. 

• An available 12,000-pound Warn winch equipped with synthetic line, very tidily hidden but with virtually zero visual or manual access to the drum to ensure correct spooling—a pet peeve of mine, yet more and more common.

Stylish but impractical hidden winch

The Tremor package is available on both the F250 (3/4-ton) and F350 (one-ton) trucks (oddly only the SuperCrew and not the SuperCab) in XLT trim level and above. But here is the important news for those contemplating one as an overlanding vehicle: The Tremor package retains the same base towing and cargo-hauling capacities as the standard truck, in contrast to most trucks with “off road” packages.

Lift bocks make for some loooong U bolts.

Suppose you were planning to buy a Four-Wheel Camper with which to do some exploration, and wanted a capable truck to carry it. We’ve owned two of these superb aluminum-framed homes away from home, both of them on Toyota Tacomas—an earlier narrow version and, later, a wider Fleet. In each case mounting the camper brought us bang up to the GVWR rating of the truck. We had to modify the suspension with air bags and heavy-duty shocks, and switch to E-rated tires. Fuel economy suffered significantly. We loved the size of the combination, as it presented very few obstacles in the backcountry. Also, obviously, we loved the Toyota reliability. But the compromises were obvious, and I was never happy with the chassis flex that resulted from the 2012 Tacoma’s open-channel rear frame sections (continued on the current model), or with its laughably antiquated rear drum brakes (continued on the current model).

Now consider that an F250 Tremor SuperCrew (crew cab) with the 6.75-foot bed has a cargo capacity of 3,450 pounds. The appropriate Four Wheel Camper model, the Hawk—a bit roomier than our Fleet—weighs 1,100 pounds dry according to the factory. Let’s assume some fudge factor there, add some options, then figure water, batteries, solar panels, etc. Give it 1,600 pounds. That’s still less than half the rated capacity for the F250, giving one plenty of leeway for a winch bumper and winch, a recovery-capable rear bumper, and other de rigueur expeditiony bits. If, on the other hand, you’ve been seduced by one of those ultra-stylish Black Series trailers, you’d find that its 7,500 pounds is exactly half the rated towing capacity of the F250 Tremor.

Now consider something else.

For various reasons you might laugh at given that my wife and I own five four-wheel-drive vehicles, I rented a truck for the drive from Tucson to Phoenix and back: a 2019 Toyota Tacoma Crew Cab, with the 3.5-liter V6 (gas, of course) and six-speed automatic transmission. Over the course of 260 miles of interstate driving between 75 and 80 mph, the truck returned a measured 19.6 miles per gallon. Note that this was a two-wheel-drive truck.

By comparison, the Ford Super Duty I drove back and forth between the resort and the driving venues, an F350 (i.e. one-ton) SuperCrew 4x4, with the 6.7-liter turbodiesel and 10-speed transmission, returned 19.4 miles per gallon over mixed freeway, two-lane paved, and dirt road driving. Further consider that my friend Michael Cox, who recently bought a new Super Duty and mounted his 20-year-old Four Wheel Camper on it, is reporting 18.2 mpg on the highway.

One can rightfully point out the significant up-front premium of the diesel engine, and the pernicious higher price of diesel fuel itself in the U.S. Nevertheless, considering solely the amount of fossil fuel burned by each vehicle, the result is eye-opening, if not shocking. Add to that Michael Cox’s confirmation of the fact that a large, powerful truck will lose a smaller percentage of its fuel economy carrying a camper (or towing a trailer) than will a small, modestly powered truck—our recent Tacoma/FWC struggled to top 15 mpg—and it might make you re-evaluate some preconceptions.

This leads us back to the question I posed at the beginning of this article. 

I’m certainly not going to give you a pass if you use your F350 to commute 50 miles back and forth to your 7,000-square-foot home every day, and hop in the Gulfstream G550 for skiing weekends in Gstaad. But there are plenty of ways to reduce one’s impact on the planet besides not traveling anywhere or only driving a Prius (how about an F350 and a Prius, for example?). Yes, my wife and I own five 4x4 vehicles, but our 1,000-square-foot house gets more than 100 percent of its yearly electricity from the 3,600 watts worth of photovoltaic panels on the roof. I’m not putting us forth as environmental saints—my 46-year-old FJ40 is far from a paradigm of fuel economy or low emissions—but then I put more miles on my bicycle each year than I do the Land Cruiser. The point is that excess in one area can be conscientiously ameliorated by conservation in another. Even the often-snickered-at carbon offsets can help put a thumb on the good side of the scale.

There’s something else, however, that is at least as important as the personal-responsibility, energy-conserving, carbon-offset aspect of a civic-minded life.

Overlanding, reduced to its essence, is about traveling through beautiful country. And the more of that traveling we do, the more we appreciate the open spaces, the myriad landforms, the clear skies, the pure streams, and the wildlife we experience. In turn, that experience imbues us with a sense of stewardship, and a desire to protect what we have enjoyed so that our children’s children might be able to do the same. And that—hopefully—spurs us to vote on local and national conservation issues in ways that have far more impact than the immediate fuel efficiency of our mode of transportation.

What would happen if we stopped traveling? We might retain fond memories of the places we’d seen, but our children wouldn’t. They would grow up with no knowledge of or appreciation for those places. Pleas for conservation would be annoyances easily dismissed in favor of immediate, shallow pleasures. Why worry about the loss of something you’d never seen except in an old documentary? You can watch the video any time, or visit that new Disney World “Old Growth Forest Experience.”

No. We need to keep exploring, and we need to show our children the exquisiteness of wild places. Therefore, yes: This environmentalist has no trouble endorsing the new Super Duty pickups. Get one, put a Four Wheel Camper on it, and go explore, preferably with your or someone else’s kids. Then come home and do the right thing at the ballot box, and buy some LED lightbulbs and a half-dozen solar panels. Maybe even a bicycle—nothing does carbon offset like riding a bike.

And if you still find yourself feeling a bit self-conscious thinking about all this on a long drive to somewhere beautiful, just reach over and hit that massage button.