Towing & Hauling With the Ford F-250 King Ranch Diesel + Ram 2500 Cummins Comparison!

Hey folks, and welcome to Truck King. For 2024, Ford claims that their Superduty has more than ever: more power, more towing, more luxury and comfort, and more off-road capability. Now, the truck we’re looking at right here is an all-new King Ranch, and we’re going to put a trailer on the back, work this truck hard, and see how it handles. Let’s start with the walk around.

So, powering our F250 King Ranch today is the 6.7L V8 turbo diesel. This is not the high output model, so this engine right here makes 475 horsepower and 1,050 pound-feet of torque. Although, you can step up to that HO, that thing’s making 500 horsepower and 1,220 pound-feet. We’re really in the realm of crazy numbers. I’ll throw one other crazy number at you: that’s the price to go for this diesel as it sits here. This is a 10,000，10,000option,andthenifyoudowanttogoevenfurtherfortheHO,well,that′sa133,000 option here in Canada. So, if you want those big power numbers, you’re going to pay for them.

As I mentioned, this is the F250 King Ranch. This thing is actually two trims down from sort of the pinnacle of the F250 lineup, but this is still definitely one of the luxury trucks in the lineup. You can tell; you get this really nice chrome grill. Each grille is a little bit unique, so King Ranch, you are going to get some different styling up front for 2024. The whole front end is revised—not a massive change to the styling, but a pretty nice update. I think it’s a handsome truck. Why don’t you drop in the comments right now and let me know what you think of the styling here on this F250?

As we roll down the side of the truck, you’re going to see a nice set of 20-inch bright wheels. Again, that’s part of the King Ranch package. One other thing I want to point out on the Superduty, to the best of my knowledge, it’s the only truck where you can actually still get out and manually lock your hubs. Now, there’s two settings here: you have lock or auto. So, if you leave it in auto, those hubs will lock automatically when you go into four-wheel drive. But if you do want to leave them locked at all times, I’m not sure why you would, but if you do, you can do that on a Superduty. It’s just interesting that Ford leaves those there as an option.

The vast majority of trucks these days all just have auto-locking hubs. In fact, they never even mention it, but yeah, Ford gives you that control. So, again, rolling back, we get the standard tow mirrors here on this truck, which are nice. We also get a set of powered running boards that come along with the King Ranch package. Now, even further back, there’s another step that’s been added to the Superduty here for 2024. This is a bed access step, so I can actually get up, get in there, and get to things in my bed. Honestly, this is necessary. Look how tall this truck is; it is chest height. I actually can’t reach the floor, just trying to reach in. So, yes, the more access steps we have these days, the better.

Another feature I have to mention, because you rarely see it here on the channel, is an 8.5-foot bed. This truck has an honest-to-goodness 8.5-foot bed. It has a wheelbase of 176 inches, a monster wheelbase. Frankly, the manufacturers usually just don’t order these for us to test, so it’s nice that Ford got us the 8.5-foot bed. It’ll be exciting to put the trailer on and really feel how that long wheelbase affects the towing.

So, we get to the very back, you can see those bumper steps, which is a little bit of a nod to General Motors, but I love that Ford incorporated those here as well. We do have power tailgate, both up and down, and then another really fun feature. This is unique to Ford, right down here in the tailgate, there’s a camera. When you drop this tailgate, you don’t lose your backup camera functionality. That’s a pretty cool feature, too, especially if you’re hooking up a fifth wheel trailer because you have to back in with your tailgate down. So, it gives you that kind of depth of field, so you understand how close you are to the trailer.

Smart features here from Ford. So, this is a classic Ford feature; bed step still here, still easy to use. It really does help you climb up and access your bed. And geez, it’s so nice to have an 8-foot bed. Look at all this space. The last feature I have to show you is right over here. On Superduty trucks, Ford has added Pro Power Onboard. That is two kilowatts of power, which is available to you back here in your bed or from a plug in the cabin. Two kilowatts is a lot of power, and again, let’s face it, Superduty spends a lot of their time working at job sites, and that’s where this feature will really be helpful.

So, now we can back into our trailer, and I can show you the camera system. Here’s the first view: the rear and the top down. If you hit this plus over here, you can actually zoom in on specific parts of the truck. So, if you just want to see what’s right at one rear corner, you can do that. And you get the predictive line for where your tire is going to go. That’s cool. Now, the rest of the views are all up in here. You got your bed view, there, especially handy for hooking up a fifth wheel or a gooseneck. There’s your just rear view, there’s your hitch down view, there’s your wide rear view. This is for your camera that you can put on the back of your trailer if you want to do that.

 

And then this is the trailer reverse guidance system. You actually have to calibrate it, but this would actually help you back into your trailer if you had that all set up as well. Now, there’s one cool trick we go into the rear view here, and I can use my power tailgate button, and you’ll be able to see that tailgate camera in action. So, you see it automatically switches over there, and now I can see how close I am to that trailer directly behind my truck, even though the tailgate’s open. That’s a cool feature. Now, I do have to go back and park to make my uh, powered tailgate work, but now I can hit the button up, it goes, and I retain my regular view. Then, of course, I can use my hitch down view to actually hook up to this trailer. That’s a cool feature. You know what, it’s nice to have all these camera views these days, and even better to make sure that they’re always accessible, regardless of what you’re doing.

And hopefully, my height is set up okay. Bam, and there we go, we’re about to hook up, and this is a great chance to show off the onboard scales feature. As it suggests, this truck is going to weigh how much payload it has on it. Now, it has a very depressing payload rating of 1,819 lbs, and you can see with just me, cameraman Liam, and a little bit of gear in the back, we’re at least a quarter, even approaching half of that payload rating. What I’m going to do right now is we’re going to jump out, hook up the trailer, and then we’ll come straight back up here to see how much tongue weight is being put on the truck. That’s sort of really the usefulness of onboard scales: to understand how close to that payload rating you are.

Because you’ll notice, it doesn’t offer you a number. It doesn’t actually say, “Hey, your payload weighs 600 lbs.” It just gives you this green bar to give you an overall sense. So, let’s go hook up right now. This trailer is going to be 10,000 lbs as it sits right here, right now. It’s about 7,000 lbs, which means I would expect roughly 700 lbs of tongue weight to be transferred to the truck. Now, again, based on what we saw in this 700 lbs, we might be close to payload, but uh, let’s go ahead and find out. Okay, there. The weight is fully off the foot, so the weight of the trailer is now fully on the truck. Let’s go see what changed, and there you have it, folks. Like I mentioned, so this of course still includes my weight and cameraman Liam’s weight, but there you go. We are nearly at payload with just that trailer on the back.

And that aside, I do love onboard scales. I truly believe a lot of people don’t understand how much payload they put on their pickup trucks, so it’s nice to have sort of a visual gauge to remind you of how much weight you should be rolling down the road with. So, the leaves

are falling, and if you’re from Canada, what that means is that the snow will soon be here. At this time of year, we try to do inventory on everything we’ve got and make sure everything’s going to continue to work through the winter. Frankly, a lot of our equipment does hibernate; we don’t run the backhoe in the winter, I don’t run the bulldozer in the winter. But this little tractor is going to be hooked up to the big snowthrower, and so it needs to run, and it has glow plugs. The reason I’m telling you that is because the battery that’s in it has been working fine in warm weather, but we’re talking about having to run the glow plugs for a minute, two minutes; they suck a lot of juice up at minus 20, and I don’t want to take a chance. So, yeah, Canadian Tire, new Moto Master battery, and we’re just going to throw that in here right now. Of course, Motor Master carries a full line of batteries up there at Canadian Tire, but I was particularly looking for something with good cranking amps, and this one is rated at 800, but it will give me 650 at uh, what does it say on here, 18, 18° C? So that’s not bad, and that’s exactly what I want, cuz I’ve been here in January, and poor tractor just going “wah wah”—that’s a bad sound when you need it to go, ready for winter.

And now, folks, here we are on the road in the F250 King Ranch with the 10,000lb trailer on the back. So, I think the first thing we have to talk about is just all the numbers surrounding this truck as it sits. So, uh, first of all, you’re asking, well, what’s the tow rating? And I do have to say, as F250s go, this is basically the lowest possible tow rating you can get just because of the spec of this truck. This truck has 3.31 rear gears, that is the most fuel-conscious rear gear, and uh, the least powerful rear gear you can get in a Superduty. We also have 4×4, and we have the long wheelbase with the 8ft bed. All of that comes together to give us a 15,500 lb conventional tow rating, so only 1,550 off the hitch back there. We’re not far off of Max Towing, which just feels really low for an F250, right?

Exactly, and to your point, I just want to throw this here right now: Ford probably gives you more ways to build a truck than anybody else. All right, you can spec so many different parts, and you can put it together, and the numbers are all going to be different. So, when we’re talking about this truck, we’re not talking about every F250. We’re talking about this particular one and the way it’s built, which I would never build. However, it’s the one we got, so that’s what we’re going to test, carry on. Precisely, so we can move on to fifth wheel and gooseneck for this F250, again, as it sits right here. Your fifth wheel rating is 12,100 lb, gooseneck is 13,200 lb, fairly low numbers. But all of those tow numbers are kind of hinged around the payload number, and the payload number on this truck is 1,819 lb, which once again, for a 3/4-ton truck, feels very low.

Um, because yeah, with our 10,000lb trailer on the back here today, and then the three of us in the cab with a little bit of gear, barely anything, we are over payload as we are right now. So, if you were to put a bigger fifth wheel, a heavier conventional trailer, yeah, you’re almost definitely going to go over that payload number. Now, to your point that there is a Max payload package that could have been added to this truck, the rear gears could have been changed, you could make it tow and haul more, but as we have it, yeah, the payload number is really low. And one of the most important parts there is the 9,900 lb GVWR package that’s the other thing we have here. This truck has a gross vehicle weight rating of 9,900 lb, and 10,000 is the number that’s important. Over 10,000 GVWR, there’s more paperwork involved; it’s more—it’s classified as a commercial vehicle, or can be, rather than under 10,000, when nobody bats an eye—that’s just a regular consumer truck. So, a lot of brands want to keep it under 10, and that’s another reason why this build, as it sits, is just kind of weak when it comes to ratings.

The GVWR today is also something that you can spec, and it makes sense from the point of view that under 10,000, it costs you less to license it; it may even cost you less to insure, and there is less in the way of safety inspection stuff. And, of course, every jurisdiction is different, so you’ve got that kind of monkey on your back to deal with. Now, on the other hand, the very same truck can also be registered usually two to three 3,000 lb higher, and it begs the question: is the truck actually different, yeah, or it’s just how they register it? Sure, and I can’t answer that question directly. However, the way we can answer that question is by just talking about how the truck actually feels, because while the numbers might not back up, uh, how much towing we’re doing today, the powertrain numbers are unbelievable right. We have over 1,000 pound-feet of torque, nearly 500 horsepower, so, uh, that’s really what it’s going to come down to: is how does it actually feel while it’s towing?

Well, that’s the thing when we did 0 to 60, it pulls—it pulls like a drunken mule. It’s—it’s—you just know that this powertrain, with the 10-speed transmission, with this Power Stroke, could certainly handle 20,000 if the rest of the truck was raided for it. Exactly, and even from the passenger seat, yeah, the power feels immediately, immediate. It comes on super low in the power band, and then when you put your foot into it, yeah, it just pulls right through first, second, third gear. It’s still pulling strong, so, uh, power is not an issue. Again, it’s just about all the other stuff, and, yeah, how you dress it up. So, the other big factor with towing, too, is the wheelbase, and again, more wheelbase equals a more stable towing experience.

So, it’s probably not even really a great question, Dad, but you need to answer it, which is how does the truck feel dynamically with this trailer? And I can tell you from the passenger seat, I can kind of barely feel it back there. Yeah, no, I agree exactly, and long and low is what you want. Look at any tractor-trailer on the highway—long and low, low center of gravity, long wheelbase spreads the load, gets everything closer to the ground. And, yeah, this longer wheelbase, I mean, there is a marked difference. So, uh, hence the reason I spec my new truck with the long wheelbase, exactly. So, you guys have seen a lot of the cameras. This is one that I really love: when you signal to the left or to the right, you get this view down the side of the truck. We’re making a U-turn right now; you can really track those trailer wheels. Right, Dad, you can see exactly where your trailer is, whether you’re going to clip that curb or not, or, in that case, whether you’re going to make the full circle. Uh, it’s nice to have all the camera views, but that one, especially because it happens while you’re in motion, actually driving. Uh, yeah, and that’s not unique to Ford; other brands do that too, but that’s a really smart use of those cameras.

I also want to say it, because it’s top of mind right now, but we do have a head-up display. Uh, they’ve been around for a while, but it’s the first time I believe this year in Superduty, and, uh, I mean, I love them. It’s a no-brainer; it just makes so much sense. And, uh, you were commenting earlier, what I like is that the information changes based on your drive mode. So, you can go into tow-haul mode, and you get your gear selection in your RPM. You go to off-road mode, and suddenly you get an inclinometer. So, the info actually is tailored to the drive mode, too, which is pretty cool. Yeah, and then, um, the other thing that you get, which you should pay attention to, is it knows what the speed limit is of where you are, so it’s always up on that screen. So, that you, uh, really don’t have an excuse when you’re speeding.

Another updated towing system for 2024 is the exhaust brake. So, RAM and the Cum