What fuel mileage do you get in your 3/4 or 1 ton diesel? Which brand is best?

[tractorshopper]

Towing or normal driving?

I'm looking at all 3 and trying to be as open minded as possible. Late model comparisons will be best and also those who live in foothill/rolling hill areas. Not my #1 priority, but am curious. Want to educate myself and your experience may help my final decision.

Also, what advantages/disadvantages are there to the standard transmission vs automatic. I drove the Ram 2500 the other day and specifically test drove a standard drive to get the feel of it (and because I'm nostalgic and grew up driving sticks, but haven't had a standard in about 15 years now). Don't know if I'd get tired of it or not.

I keep my vehicles a long time (current truck is 11 years old) so maybe you can offer wisdom on items I haven't thought of.

Currently have an F-150. Will probably want 4X4 and pretty loaded with features. Uses will be normal every day driving primarily with towing up to 10,000 lbs occasionally, but not highly frequent. Pull about 7,500 lbs with my current truck on occasion and it's at it's practical safe limit in my opinion. I don't care that Ford says it can tow more (or that the new F-150's can tow even more again). Yes, it can, but may not be prudent to do so. Please don't flame; not trying to start a war, just looking for real world experience. Looking at say F-250/350 Lariat, GMC 2500/3500 Denali, or Dodge 2500/3500 Laramie Longhorn. Prefer SRW, but haven't ruled out Dually. Will probably purchase within a year.

 

[4570Man]

A family members 3500 duramax will do 18 unloaded on the highway, and 11 loaded with a 12k fifth wheel. He claims his 7.3 did better unloaded and the same loaded. My gas truck does maybe 12 on the highway and 7-8 with my 11,000k GN.

 

[roadhunter]

Get your boots on as its' going to get deep in this thread.

For all practical purposes older Dodges have the best mileage for diesel pickups. Those Inline 6 engines are quite fuel efficient. I've owned an 11, 07, and o4 and the 04 got the best mileage. On average the 11 got about 11-12. O7 gets about 17-18. And the 04 got about 20 on average. I went back to the 07 after buying the 11 primarily for the mileage and lack of emission requirements that took effect in 07.

I also owned an 09 Chevy dually with the duramax and it struggled to get over 10 MPG.

 

[terryknight]

your right foot will have more to do with fuel economy than anything else.

2wd will do better than 4x4 all else equal.

how old are you willing to look?

 

[tractorshopper]

Terry, I'm actually looking at new. I have a lot of miles on my current truck and it's getting about time for a new one. I typically buy new and keep my vehicles 10-15 years.

 

[Soldier415]

I have a 2015 Chevy 3/4 ton with duramax. I live in Vermont aka the green mountain state where nothing is flat. I rarely do highway driving and I average 16-17 MPG unloaded and around 12 mpg towing 8-9k lbs.

When I do get on the interstate or on a drive where i'm just cruising I get around 20-21 MPG unloaded and 16-18 towing

 

[roadhunter]

I was just reading a comparison on the 2015 chevy gas vs diesel.
215 Chevrolet Silverado 25HD Duramax and 25HD Vortec - Gas vs. Diesel

Look slike that Duramax got about 15 mpg. But what really caught my eye was the dual fuel CNG option on the Chevy trucks. That is really interesting. That alone would save you more than a little bit of fuel economy would. I looked on the CNG map and its' still below a $1 a gallon in some places and below $2 for where I looked. That might be worth considering if fuel costs are a concern.
CNG Stations | Refueling | Prices | Map

 

[Steve1300]

Well, sir, I just went through this same situation. I had an old F-150 that could pull well enough, but when I did; I got only 10 MPG. It also was not rated for more than 7,700 lbs.

When I changed to a larger tractor, I had to change to a bigger trailer and a more powerful truck.

When I considered all that was for sale and what my wife liked, I ended up with the Nissan Titan XD with the 5-liter Cummins diesel. If I don't try to drive it like a zippy car, I can get nearly 20 MPG. I have not towed far enough to tell what kind of mileage I get, but folks on other truck forums report that the break-in from pulling a heavy load improves the fuel economy. I really like the surround cameras for slow maneuvering and backing up.

If I needed to pull more than 12k lbs, I'd have gone a different direction.

 

[jack707]

You want Mog stay away from dodges

 

[tractorshopper]

Soldier, those are good numbers. Better than I expected actually.

Road Hunter, the nearest CNG to me is about an hour away. I had looked at that option on the build your own, and it was a very expensive upfront cost as well. If I lived in a metropolis, though, it would be worth considering. I'd expect it to take a few years or more to break even, but the way I keep vehicles, that would be more up my alley.

Steve, I had thought about the Titans, and they are nice too, but I'm thinking this time to buy for the future. Brother and I may go in a new larger tractor and at some point, I may also want to buy a big camper, so I'm trying to plan for future needs.

Jack, not sure what you mean by Mog. What is your bad experience with a Dodge? Did you mean mpg? Are they not good?

That's what had me start this thread, since Fed law doesn't require them to publish real world MPG data, nobody does. I'm curious about the Ram manual transmission if it is a good bit better or not. I found it fun to drive. It surprised me that it has a rev limiter. I hit it twice during the test drive and it backed itself off redline basically forcing me to shift a little earlier than I would have thought, but hey, it's a 6 speed and I've only ever driven 5 speeds, and it's been quite a while since I even drove one of them.