I’ve been stuck working 14hr overnight shifts this week. The highlight is being the on-call guy means I get to drive a brand new work truck home.
I thought I’d take this opportunity to do a completely unfair comparison between this and the work truck from my last job. Why is it unfair? Because I’m comparing a 2018 F-150 with 1,500 miles to a 1999 Chevy K2500 with 150,000 miles
Features: well it’s nice that the new truck has a needle telling me how much gas it has. On my old truck the needle was gone, and you just filled up every 200 miles.
All the door handles work! In the old truck you got in on the passenger side and out on the drivers side. Alternatively if someone wanted you could leave the windows down and Dukes of Hazard it if you were so inclined. They ordered new handles before I left; no idea if they were ever installed.
Both are 4x4, but I do prefer the floor lever to select 4x4 in the Chevy versus the dial on the dash. The Ford does add a locking rear axle.
My old truck had a great heater and a button on the dash that said AC, but that didn’t work. It also had an AM/FM radio.
This truck has working AC and an AM/FM radio with A CD player, Bluetooth, and an aux port.
Both trucks left the factory with ABS. It didn’t work on the Chevy, and just before I left it developed a fluid leak; no idea if they fixed it.
Comfort: I prefer the ride height of the Chevy. Plus the seat itself in the Ford is higher off the cab floor than I would prefer. As a side issue of that I can’t quite angle the rear view mirror as high as I would like. Similarly, I wish the steering wheel would tilt just a touch further up. Telescoping it out helps some though.
The seats, other than the height, are pretty good in the Ford. In the Chevy the old bench had seen better days. It had 150,000 miles at an average of probably 20mph. That’s a lot of ass time to crush the foam. Plus it was used reading water meters so there was a lot of in and out to break down the edge of the seat. If I spent all day in it my back hurt when I was done.
Tailgate: the Ford has a locking tailgate that annoys me every time I get out, lock the truck out of habit, and have to unlock it to get something out.
The Chevy had a barely latching tailgate that either fell down on the first minor bump or that just wouldn’t open when you wanted it to.
Finally, engine stop start:
Chevy turn the key to start; turn it the other way to stop.
Ford: start driving, come to a light, engine stops, I curse and stab at the button to turn off the auto start/stop feature. I hate how abrupt it is and at night the lights get dim when the engine restarts.
There you have it. A brand new truck is more comfortable, less broken, and has more features, most of them good to have, than a 20 year old truck that’s lead a rough life.