By Bruce W. Smith
Your demands are constantly evolving and keeping us on our feet. I've even met with companies and received letters over the past year from people who upfit our F-Series Super Duty for service in Iraq. One contractor shared pictures of a Super Duty that had taken on enemy fire and returned safely to base. This may be an extreme example, but everything we do is based on how you use your trucks, and there are several important opportunities, issues, and trends we as truck enthusiasts are facing today.
Perhaps no change in the full-size truck market has been bigger than trailer capacity. Overloading still exists. We see it on the road all the time and we at Ford hear about it in our focus groups. Some customers even brag about how much they overload their trucks, saying, "My Ford can take it." Although that might be true if you don't pull on big grades at extreme temperatures and don't park on hills relying on the standard parking brake, it's still not a good thing to do. Whatever a truck guy thinks about his truck, it doesn't make it legal, and we obviously can't endorse that type of towing. We closely track the trailer industry and see heavier and heavier loads every year, driven by fantastic new equipment like camper trailers with more slideouts, premium counters, and hardwood cabinets. Toy haulers are also getting bigger and more elaborate. It must be human nature that each new toy has to be bigger than the last.
During my 13 years with the Super Duty team, gross trailer weights continue to grow, sometimes catching up to Super Duty, and sometimes leap-frogging our ratings. Within Ford alone, we've raised our maximum towing capacity from 12,500 pounds in 1995 to 24,500 pounds with the new 2008 F-450 Super Duty.
This took an all-new, unique chassis that could ride comfortably fully loaded as well as empty--a big challenge for us. Having a line of trucks with a progression of capability allows the customer to pick the right truck for his specific needs. This hasn't always been the case within Ford. In years past, we confused customers with smaller changes in capability, making trailer capacity more about powertrain choice than anything else.
We continue to hear that trailering is as much about towing confidence as it is about buying the right amount of maximum capability. That's why we worked so hard to set the standard with our industry-first integrated trailer-brake controller, and now the first power-folding, power-telescoping mirrors. We've been hearing for a long time how frustrating it can be to get out and manually fold the mirrors in tight spots or in the freezing rain. This type of innovation is what keeps us going because it's based on what we've heard you need--that's how we spend our engineering resources.