Hauling Nearly Two Tons In a Plush Ford F-250 Pickup

Testing a heavy-duty pickup in New York City can be like going to Peter Luger steakhouse and ordering the tossed salad: You can say you’ve been there, but you didn’t actually experience it.

So when a Ford Super Duty F-250 King Ranch turned onto my Brooklyn street, its optional $8,600, 6.7-liter Powerstroke diesel chugging with an insane 925 pound-feet of torque—within sight of 18-wheeler territory—I was determined to use this truck as God and Jerry Reed intended. 

I drove the Super Duty over to Extech Building Materials in my neighborhood, where manager Piotr Worosz had his forklift man drop a 3,360-pound pallet of concrete into the bed. Maxed out in F-450 dually trim, the Super Duty can actually tote 7,630 pounds in its bed and tow a staggering 32,500 pounds—or roughly five times its own weight. Even for this F-250, having the equivalent of a Corvette in its bed felt like carrying a sack of groceries: Effortless. I really should have dropped in a second pallet, but I didn’t want to hurt this ridiculously lavish, aluminum-bodied, $77,700 pickup.

Yes, this is the ranch boss’s dream truck, or for the successful builder or developer who doesn’t want to show up at the work site in a Mercedes. As ever, some readers—real, roll-up-your-sleeves work guys—will scoff at the King Ranch as some kind of dilettante. But remember, the tremendous PowerStroke diesel alone adds $8,600 to the price, and this is just a prime-beef, over-the-top version of the standard Super Duty that starts from a reasonable $32,535. So whether you carry a toolbox or a laptop to work, one thing is clear: The all-new Super Duty leapfrogs solid offerings from Chevy and Dodge to become the new king of heavy-duty pickups.

Video shot by Erica Lourd, edited by Erica Lourd and Andrew Siceloff, and produced by Cait Knoll.