Maybe you didn't know this about the crew of PickUpTrucks.com but we love
to tow. That's why we love one ton single rear-wheel turbo diesel 4x4 pickup
trucks and we know you do too. So that's why we brought this group of heavy
haulers to the mountains and deserts of Arizona for the 2018 One Ton Truck
Challenge. The first truck is the Chevy Silverado 3500 6.6 liter Duramax V8 with
the High Country trim package. Next, the Ford Superduty F-350 6.7 liter Power
Stroke V8 in the Lariat trim. And finally the Ram 3500 6.7 liter Cummins i6 in
Laramie trim. Every one of our diesels is rated at more than nine hundred
foot-pounds of torque but we know torque isn't the only reason
people buy these vehicles. We start our contest with fuel economy. For the fuel
economy portion of our contest we ran our trucks over a ninety plus mile loop
through the Arizona desert that included some lonely two-lane highway, a good
portion of gravelly dirt road through the backcountry, some multi-lane freeway,
a good long city section, as well as a winding mountainous hill climb. What we
found after our empty and loaded testing loops is that the Chevy is not only a
powerful player at the track, it also does quite well in everyday driving on
all sorts of road surfaces. The Chevy Duramax averaged a respectable 18.7
miles per gallon on our test loop when empty while the Ford Super Duty
delivered 17.8 miles per gallon with Ram's Cummins finishing with
an average of 16.9. When running the exact loop later in the day
with our loaded trailers, meaning they had to haul an extra 13,000 pounds, the
results were similar but not exactly the same. Chevy won the contest again with a
10.4 miles per gallon. But this time the Ram came in second
place with a solid 9.9 miles per gallon while the Ford F-350 struggled
with a 9.2 miles per gallon calculation. But running a long mileage
test is just one way to test an engine's capability to see what they can
really do, nothing beats a good old-fashioned drag race. For that we came
to the Kingman Airport where they closed down one of their taxi runways so that
we could do some wide-open throttle quarter-mile runs both empty and with
our 13,000 pound trailers. Not surprisingly the Ram 3500 Cummins was
the slowest of our three with an empty 0 to 60 time of nine and a half seconds
and a quarter-mile time of 16.9 seconds at 84.7 miles per
hour. As you also might expect when loaded with a 13,000 pound trailer the
Ram was also the slowest of the bunch with a 20 second zero to sixty time
and a quarter-mile run of 22.4 seconds at 64.1
miles per hour. Finishing in second place by the smallest of margins, the
Ford F-350 Power Stroke ran an empty 0 to 60 time of 7.9 seconds and a
quarter-mile run in15.8 seconds at 91 miles an hour and with our
loaded Big Tex gooseneck dump bed the F-350 ran up to 60 miles an hour in 17.3
seconds with a quarter-mile time of 21.4 seconds at 67.2
miles per hour.
And in first place just inching out the Super Duty by the slimmest of margins, the
Chevy Silverado 3500 Duramax proved to be a rocket off the line in zero to 60
the best run was timed at 7.8 seconds and it ran a quarter
mile in 15.6 seconds at 92 miles per hour. In loaded testing the
Duramax ran to sixty miles an hour in 17.2 seconds and ran a
quarter mile at wide open throttle in just over 21 seconds at 67.8
miles per hour. So no big surprise that the Chevy
Duramax did so well on the quarter-mile but how did it do pulling up the Davis
Dam grade? Our tow testing was done on the infamous Highway 68 Davis Dam grade
outside Bullhead City, Arizona. That's an 11 mile section of road that climbs
about 3,000 feet from bottom to summit. Knowing that all these turbo diesel
engines are monster pullers we chose the steepest two-mile section of the climb
to conduct our head-to-head runs, most of which is at a six or seven percent grade.
As a testament to how competitive the Ford and Chevy are, they ran a distance
separated by less than one second but it was through the mid section of the run
that the Chevy Duramax just nosed ahead of the Ford Powerstroke. Chevy's time was
just a little over two minutes and three seconds with a 74 mile per hour top
speed while the Ford was just 2 minutes and 4 seconds with a 72 mile an hour top
speed. The Ram Cummins ran a respectable 2 minutes and 16 seconds with a 68 mile
per hour top speed. We should also note that we conducted several real-world
40-60 tests on a designated stretch of the Davis Dam Hill Climb where we got
each one ton into fourth gear up the hill to 40 miles an hour, then flat
footed the throttle to see how long it would take each of them to run back up
to 60. Although the finishing order was predictable the fact that they were all
so close is not. The Chevy ran forty to sixty in
18.23 seconds the Ford in 18.31 seconds
and the Ram in 18.76 seconds. In the end after we added all
our scores from the weeks worth of testing the winner of our challenge was
the Chevy Silverado 3500 with its powerful V8 Duramax, plush interior and
towing comfort. Coming a close second was the F-350 Power Stroke. While it's
powertrain was plenty tough enough, the Lariat interior left us wanting and it
didn't seem to tow with as much confidence as the others. And bringing up
the rear in third place was the Ram 3500. While a worthy competitor in this
competition it fell short in most of our track testing and offers a challenging
media system. So there you have it. We want to offer our sincere
congratulations to the winner. This is one of our tightest competitions as long
as we can remember but we also want to make a special note that these are not
perfect trucks. There's plenty of room to improve and make better and when the
manufacturers do that we'll be right here to test again. For a more detailed
look at this story go to PickupTrucks.com.