This is an old thread, and I haven't read thru the entire thing yet, but I've owned both so I thought I'd weigh in.
Owned:
86 F150 300ci 6cyl
86 Bronco 302
92 F250 7.3L
A bunch of Rangers
04 F150 5.4L
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07 Tundra 4.7L Double Cab (extended)
10 Tundra 5.7L CrewMax 4x4 with 20" rims & a leer cap-topper
04 Toy Sequoia 4.7L.
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08 F250 v10 Crew.
With the exception of this F250, from my experience, the Toyota's are much, much better vehicles. They are more reliable, much less expensive to own, and retain their value SOOOO much better. The 5.7L v8 in the Tundra is a powerhouse. Paired with the 4.30's, that thing tows like a dream. I would say it tows about as well as my F250 v10. My lifetime average (Fuelly) for my 5.7L 4x4 crew was just under 15mpg. When you consider the Fuelly numbers from people, you realize that all the trucks, when similarly equipped, are very close in MPG's. My F250 v10 on the other hand, is a pure gas hog. Empty 11-12mpg, towing 9-10mpg.
Now, I sold the 10 Tundra when we moved out of the City and needed to downgrade my payments & increase MPG's. Picked up a used Prius (45mpg
) and my used Sequoia (4.7L, 15mpg), and still pay less per month for the payments than I did on the Tundra.
This 08 F250 is a good truck tho. Ford SuperDuty's are notorious for killing ball-joints & hubs, so when these go again I'll replace them with moog and hopefully get more life. The truck is solid though, and I needed to upgrade to a HD truck with more capacity. If Toyota made a dang HD truck, I would like to own one. They were supposed to put a diesel in a 1-ton truck back in 07-08, but things changed with the market.
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Back to the point of this thread. If I was towing with a 1/2 ton all the time, I'd go with the Tundra because I feel the drivetrain components are much better built for towing, and I believe the truck is a better vehicle overall than any other 1/2 ton, when all things are considered. I would not want to tax a turbo'd v6 for constant heavy towing, and the 5.0 might be underpowered. That 5.7L in the Tundra is a torque monster, and most of the torque is available all the time. I'm not so sure I wouldn't rather have that in my F250 than the V10 that's in there.
But the trade-off for the Tundra is their business model... they make what configurations they WANT to make, not necessarily what the people want. I cried for a CrewMax with a 6.5' or bigger bed, but they kept the 5.5' bed on it. Offer a 6.5' or 8' bed on the Crew and I think they'd boost sales by a fair number.