I had a 2012 F350 that was a great truck, so when I decided to drop down to a half ton (sold our fifth wheel), I went with a 2019 F150 Lariat with the 3.5l ecoboost. It was a very reliable for the 2+yrs and 29k miles that I owned it, but never really warmed up to the ecoboost personally. It got 18-18.5mpg consistently, except when towing. I only tow a 5x9 utility trailer with a Yamaha Wolverine X2 (small 2 seat side by side) - about 3k pounds total but not very aerodynamic with a windshield on the Wolverine - but mileage dropped to 10.0mpg! I just always felt like even towing that small load was really working it and obviously out of it’s efficiency range. My F350 mpg wouldn’t drop half that much towing that. Several other things that I wasn’t a fan of, including the seats (made my back hurt on drives over an hour) or Sync - my ‘17 Camaro has a MUCH better and problem free “entertainment system” and mine had lots of problems with CarPlay.
Wife wanted a new vehicle, so I ended up trading the F150 in on an Explorer ST... wow! Nice job Ford! Sporty (3.0 ecoboost with 400hp and AWD) but still comfy, and looks great in white with blacked out trim and black wheels. Sync still sucks - hard to understand how they can even remotely think that system’s layout, user interface, etc, is any good! My wife is way less OCD than me though, so as long as music comes out she is happy. Got supplier pricing, a small rebate, free oil changes, etc, on the Explorer and only $3k less than I paid for the F150 on trade, so feel it was a good move for me.
Decided to go with a truck with a big V8 (no replacement for displacement, right?!?)... and yesterday I bought an almost base GMC AT4 with the 6.2L. Found one at a dealer who would honor supplier discount pricing, and, with the $3500 rebates, I actually got a pretty decent deal on it (~12% off sticker) after arguing about all the dealer add-on crap. Major bonus is it doesn’t have the Start-Stop due to chip shortage and I didn't pay for a bunch of crap like navigation that I’d never use! Talked with a few guys that have 6.2L trucks before buying about their experience towing with it and feel comfortable I’ll be happy with it (as mentioned, I don’t tow much weight but do tow it about a third of the time).
