A big truck deserves a big article and the F-350 Super Duty Lariat is big. Almost as big as the significance of the road trip my family took in it two weeks ago.

We were dropping both daughters off for university — a distance of 1,800 km down the road from Toronto to Halifax then back again. We’d done the trip once before, two years ago. That time we were accompanied by a fragrant Labrador retriever and the younger daughter returned home with us, too young for launching. This return, however, would render my wife and me empty nesters.

So, yes, the trip was even bigger than the F-350. Albeit barely.

I’m convinced that when bad drivers die, they’re sent to the 400-series of highways in the GTA.

That previous trip cost a bomb in premium gasoline. The vehicle was the mucho luxurious LR4, also big but not quite big enough, given the passengers, human, canine and fragrant. Oh, and the cargo teenage girls cart when leaving home. So this time, I wanted a bigger vehicle, a pickup, but a diesel for the fuel economy.

Enter the Ford F-350 Super Duty Lariat Diesel 4X4 Crew Cab! Note how incanting its very name accelerates testosterone production. It’s big — perhaps too big? This publication’s editor said it may be a “bit of overkill”.

The point’s valid. We never needed the 4×4, driving the TransCanada highway the entire distance. Nor did we use the 18K fifth wheel trailer hitch. (This 4×4 F-350 has a towing capacity of 7,348 kilos. We could’ve dragged the girls’ bedrooms to Halifax, though that would’ve left holes in the house as gaping as the ones in our lives.)

On the other hand, the editor doesn’t have two university-age daughters. They require plenty of stuff. Plus, once their friends who were flying to Halifax heard there’s a rig that doesn’t charge for extra luggage? Well, that stuff breeds. Fortunately our tester was 6,268 mm long and 2,029 mm wide excluding the mirrors. Big.

2015 Ford F-350 4×4 Crew Cab, dashboard. Click image to enlarge

First, the Three-Fitty in the city

Sartre said “L’enfer, c’est les autres” (Hell is other people). But that was in 1944, before we had the terminal clogging of our city roads. Today I suspect he’d say “L’enfer, c’est les autres conducteurs.” Indeed, I’m convinced that when bad drivers die, they’re sent to the 400-series of highways in the GTA.

I had this truck big enough for the move but first I had to get it from a distant suburb built for automobiles (after 1944) and not people, back to our narrow street, downtown. There’s construction and repairs everywhere after this vicious winter, narrowing Toronto streets further. Whoever said you’d never use high school calculus in real life hasn’t done this drive.

I drive a subcompact but, fortunately, was somewhat accustomed to the F-350’s bulk. Four days before, I’d been driving the Yukon XL Denali, which is almost as long and slightly wider than this pickup. (You see how these things get started?!) However, I’d been driving the Yukon up in the Yukon — where else — and there ain’t much to hit bar the odd moose and Victorian gold prospector.

Luckily, the flanking mirrors fold in with a gentle tip of the hand control. And the rear-view camera is simply indispensible for reversing. Not that you want the mirrors folded for long. They’re lifesavers. The lower convex jobbie complements the upper flat one, significantly minimizing your blind spot. You see remarkably well. Of course, you’re driving from up on the second floor, so you can see well ahead and plan accordingly en route.

(Not that you’d suffer if some stressed out urbanite, texting, shaving and eating cereal while blasting past emergency vehicles on the verge slipped and collided with your F-350. As Sancho Panza says in Don Quixote, “Whether the stone hits the pitcher or the pitcher hits the stone, it’s going to be bad for the pitcher.” Still, the mirrors help you steer clear of those pitchers, their fitted indicator lights, included with the Lariat trim, giving extra warning.)

2015 Ford F-350 4×4 Crew Cab steering wheel, centre stack. Click image to enlarge

So, between the recent experience with a huge SUV and some yogic breathing, the first trip wasn’t too hellish — but for one glance at the instrument panel.

To determine fuel efficiency per trip, you can zero the dial, which I did. Five minutes later, I’d already forgotten; when I re-read the dial, the average fuel consumption was 45 L/100 km!

Admittedly, any yogic breathing stopped for some seconds. Soon the little mouse started running on the wheel again and the lights went on.  Of course! This was only five minutes behind the wheel. Obviously the fuel efficiency gets better as you go. Indeed, over the next week, I was delighted with the results. (More later.)

An hour later it was far lower as I slid into a space on our street. We have a spare parking spot behind the house but … Well, popular wisdom says insanity is re-trying a thing over and expecting different results. A nasty scraping experience two years ago with the Ram 2500 Laramie Longhorn taught me that using our spare parking spot off the lane wouldn’t work. The narrowness is negotiable if you have Zen patience for 20-point turns in and out, but the crossbeam from which our sliding parking gate hangs is 2 m high. The F-350 stands 2,042 mm tall. (There are handles on the pillars to haul yourself up. The running boards aren’t just decorative. The effect is a stepladder.) After loading the youngsters’ stuff, perhaps a weighed-down F-350 could’ve backed out from the parking space without scoring the roof. Getting in, however… I parked on the street for the night.

2015 Ford F-350 4×4 Crew Cab front seats, rear seats, side mirror. Click image to enlarge

Dividing the space

The extended cab is plenty spacious for four — it seats five — but that luxury encroaches on the remaining space in the pickup bed. Furthermore, I hadn’t been planning for the trailer hitch hogging the centre of the bed, like a possessive cat. See the photo herein. It’s like some massive sausage maker or unsuccessful medieval crank toilet.

No problem, I thought, I’ll just remove it.

Nope. Designed to tow heroically like the Theodore Tugboat we’d be seeing soon in the Halifax Harbour, that hitch was well stuck on and going nowhere. We packed around it.

Sidebar: Teenagers have some heavy, sharped-edged things. The F-350’s ‘Tough Bed’ spray-in bedliner costs $550 extra but is a great investment to prevent scratching.

Here’s the thing about packing a work truck like it’s a family camper. Whatever’s in that open bed is susceptible to rain. We were driving two days to the Maritimes at the maw of hurricane season. Furthermore, we’d stop at a motel halfway. We could unpack, then carry the tonnes of student crap into our room for the night. (SFX: Snort!)

2015 Ford F-350 4×4 Crew Cab, cargo bed, bed loaded. Click image to enlarge

Double solution?

First I packed each suitcase, book box, stereo, etc into oversized heavy-duty garbage bags. Magically it all fit like a puzzle, snugly allowing the gate to shut. There’d be no shifting or banging of teen stuff during sharp turns or sudden stops.

Next, I covered everything with old tarpaulins and secured the whole mess with about fifty yards of twine.

Okay, so we looked like the Clampetts after they’d collected their first cheque for Jed’s oil, but it worked! If anyone were to check beneath the tarps while we slept, all they’d see is ‘garbage’.

On the road

Spoiler alert: I’m not a truck guy.

To say that driving the F-350 is a thrilling ride at first wouldn’t be a nose-stretcher or even an outright lie. It’d fall closer to the realm of sin. At first, anyway.

My wife: “Nice pickup.”
You mean it’s a nice pickup truck?
“No, it gets up to speed quickly.”

The exaggerated power steering demands full range of movement in your rotator cuffs, you’re circling so much in turns. The feedback from the road is delivered by email about every twenty minutes. And, at one point when we were about 140 km from Lac Mégantic just two days after the TSB report was released, I noticed how braking is a bit like stopping a train.

But those are issues you’ll have with any oversized vehicle. The F-350 quickly grew on me. (My family instantly loved it and wanted to move in.) By the end of the nine-day trip, I was almost sad to see it go.

Indeed, we switched drivers only infrequently because I was happiest at the helm. However, both my wife and twenty-year old daughter got turns. (The other daughter, two weeks shy of her eighteenth birthday, though licensed wasn’t permitted according to the contract I’d signed with Ford.) They usually drive our aging Kia Rio and have never piloted anything so massive. Here’s what they had to say about the experience, live, from behind the wheel.

My wife: “Nice pickup.” You mean it’s a nice pickup truck? “No it gets up to speed quickly.”

The twenty-year old, who studies and practices environmental activism: “It’s unnecessarily big but fun. Smoother than I’m used to. And it’s really fast.”

That’s it?

“Yes” and “I like it.”

These ‘interviews’ were done early on the second day. We were driving the thousand clicks from Québec City to Halifax and, despite it being the height of tourist season there was almost nothing on the roads other than the odd delivery truck. We had time so muse.

For instance, it’s funny they call this highway the TransCanada. In northern New Brunswick, it’s so close to the American border that if the cartographer sneezed, we’d be halfway through Maine to Boston.

Here, the highway has two lanes with an occasional third for passing. The trucks tend to drive in convoys and prefer to pass each other, sloth-slow, up 2-km hills. (This is the northern end of the Appalachians.) They resume single file just when the floating lane evaporates. If the opportunity finally comes to overtake them, you need the power to seize it.

Anyway, what those two guest reviewers were briefly getting at was the performance of this pickup’s lion-hearted 6.7L Power Stroke eight-cylinder diesel engine. They loved it rocketing us into the next province when the truckers weren’t clogging the all-too-infrequently-appearing passing lane. The purported slowness of diesel’s acceleration was not in evidence. We flew.

Right girls? “Yes” and “I like it.”

The three most important women in my life also loved the comfort provided with the Lariat trim. Black leather seats, console and steering wheel were part of the preferred equipment upgrade, which included the diesel engine, for a sobering $9,950. The front seats were heated and air-conditioned. Satellite radio and GPS made the long trip enjoyable and easier. And the ride was smooth enough for long naps.

2015 Ford F-350 4×4 Crew Cab engine bay, fuel cap. Click image to enlarge

But there’s no mistaking that this is a working truck. Consider the row of auxiliary switches in the centre console beneath the touchscreen. Flicking them did nothing, so we looked them up in the owner’s manual. Make “aftermarket customization easy with four pre-wired switches attached to the power distribution blocks for electrical accessories”. Cool! There are already several outlets, but this truck can be converted into a rolling dynamo!

Utterly respectable fuel efficiency, given the obvious

A novice in the diesel world, I’ve never had to purchase diesel exhaust fluid before. Considering how long this truck is, we thought, no wonder the back end gets its own fuel. It’s practically in its own time zone. A warning on the instrument panel gives you plenty of notice, first calling attention to the disappearing fluid 800 km before it’s empty. We had to reload twice but it only set me back about $25 total.

Then there was the magic of diesel. With zero help from our leaden feet, this immense beast consistently rendered 14.1 L/100 km on the way down to Halifax and 14.8 returning to Upper Canada. It was comfortable, powerful and, if you’re patient, easy to park — probably overkill, but a fine truck nonetheless.

2015 Ford F-350 4×4 Crew Cab
Base Price: $62,099
Options: $18,045
A/C and other Taxes: $134.45
Freight & PDI: $1,690
Price as Tested: $81,968.45

Competitors
Chevrolet Silverado 3500
Ram 3500