Just as an aside, I’ve never had any issues with my DEF system. I know a lot of people complain about it, but other than buying a jug every 6(?) months for ~$20 and topping off the tank at maybe another $20 whenever I’m at a truck stop (it’s significantly cheaper when you get it from the pump), there’s nothing extra I’ve had to do in regards to it. 🤷
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Thanks everyone for the excellent input! So that’s helped me narrow it down to:
Ford F250 with death wobble fixed if 2019 model
Gas
Crew cab.
8’ bed length
Payload 2-3,000# in the bed, and 12,000# towing capacity: it seems even the lowest level F250 can do that easily
Used mileage: consider same as a car for a gas engine
Areas still under consideration:
Tool storage built in: Probably a yes? Hard to secure against theft? Don’t appear easy to organize tools inside?
Lumber rack: Cons? Easy to get on/off? For towing?
Since farrier trucks came up, I was amazed how many farriers in my new SC location use trailers. I had not seen farriers trailering their equipment that way before. And the vets here typically drive SUV’s with custom cabinetry in the rear; in my prior GA location the equine vets drove pickups with vet packs in the beds.
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Seems to me my farrier in SC towed a trailer, too. The only time I’ve seen that in Colorado was one farrier who had a forge in a converted horse trailer. She custom made front shoes for my Hackney pony, who had tiny feet and was getting sore on our crappy gravel road. I wasn’t a big fan of shoeing him and ultimately found boots to fit him instead.
Rebecca
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I thought I was going nuts until I was randomly talking to my landlady’s significant other – a farm equipment dealer. He confirmed what i’ve long wondered – later models of the same class tend to haul less than their earlier predecessors in the interest of fuel efficiency. To wit, I recently saw a 1990s Ford F350 priced at $30k+. More than the MSR for it new.
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And earlier models also tend to be heavier and have not quite as good turning radius as their later kin. There is a lot to compromise in the interest of safety and fuel efficiency.
My F350 7.3L might have a 55 foot turn radius. I wish I was joking. It’s so much clunkier and plowing with it is not as easy as with a newer model. However… it’s twice the truck. 
With the Ford crowd there is a lot of demand for 90s-80s F350s especially if the body is good. It doesn’t surprise me to hear you saw one listed at $30k. If it’s a 7.3L in particular, people pay a premium for it. Those are called The Million Mile Engines in the Ford world.
Even though my truck looks like a beat up farm truck, I have people offering to buy it all the time when I’m pumping diesel. They’re probably the best thing Ford ever made.
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I wonder where that F350 is that’s for sale for 30 grand. I’ll take mine up there and sell it for that in a heartbeat. Lol
I have a 017.3 F350 and O2 7.3 F 250. And like Beowulf I get offers to buy them every time I drive them out in town. They’re still in pretty good shape and I’ve kept up all the maintenance and all the work on both of them so they have lots and lots of good years left in them. They may not be all the bells and whistles, but they get it done.
[quote=“Xanthoria, post:42, topic:803063”]
Payload 2-3,000# in the bed, and 12,000# towing capacity: it seems even the lowest level F250 can do that easily
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Check your gear ratio. For your purposes I’d want at least a 3:73 rear end preferably a 4:10 with the hauling you do. Do not go lower than a 3:73 tho. And do not assume that’s what the truck has; a lower ratio gets better gas mileage but the last thing you want is to blow out your transmission because you’re overloading it constantly.
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Also I know you mentioned buying used but when I bought my truck (pre-COVID so things may have changed) it was actually cheaper to buy new than used. Then during COVID it was worth more than I originally paid lol. Mine was a leftover from the previous year, which helped. So definitely shop around.
When I was shopping back in 2015, there were no used trucks that weren’t beat to death with 200K+ miles on them. I ended up buying new because after 5 months of searching high and low, nothing was right.
To be fair, old trucks also are missing safety features of new(er) models, as well as the comfort features. If you’re going to be using this as a work vehicle or daily driver in addition to hauling (or hauling very frequently), then newer might make sense for those factors.
We chose a farrier trailer over a body for our F350 because we still use it to haul a gooseneck horse trailer. Also for getting feed/hay, fence materials, etc. You can get lift off bodies but they are a pain. However, this year, my husband is getting a second truck, and he’s going to get a body on the new truck since we will have the “old truck” to haul in.
Yup! I thought I was going crazy – no one I knew as teen had more than an F150. Nope. Trucks are aluminum & not steel now.
