It’s know that Snowbirds are looking forward to a truck filling this category, what remains to be interesting is what demographic will be desirous of stepping beyond on a 1 ton truck.

When it comes to sales, Ford's F-Series truck has been the dominant force in the U.S. truck market for quite some time. And if you want to know why, the new 2008 Ford F-450 Super Duty pickup stands as a prime example. 

Sure, most people will never need a truck with the sheer brute strength of the 2008 Ford F-450 Super Duty pickup with its 6.4-liter PowerStroke diesel and 24,500-pound towing capacity. But that's not the point. The point is that some people — especially snowbirds with huge fifth-wheel trailers — have shown a need for the ultimate towing machine.


In the past, if you wanted an F-450 dually that didn't look like an industrial appliance, you had to convert a commercial-grade F-450 cab-chassis, the unfinished one that comes with naked frame rails behind the cab. Several companies make a tidy living from grafting standard F-350 8-foot beds (or even fiberglass replicas) onto the back of cab-chassis combinations. Unfortunately there are major problems involved. First, a commercial chassis usually features a narrow standard frame with straight rails just 34 inches apart. A conventional civilian pickup actually employs wider-spaced frame rails because it doesn't have to be compatible with moving-van cargo boxes, tow-truck setups and other industrial gear. Bolting a typical pickup bed to a narrow cab-chassis frame requires hand labor and fabrication.

And then there is the wheelbase issue. An F-450 crew-cab cab-chassis measures 176.2 inches, while the equivalent F-350 spans only 172.4 inches. When an 8-foot box is adapted to the commercial chassis, there's a 4-inch gap behind the cab that has to be bridged with an obvious filler panel. 

Ford solves both problems at once by making the F-450 Super Duty pickup in-house. For the back half of the frame, F-350-dimensioned rails bring the frame-spacing, bed mounts and wheelbase along with them. An 8-foot pickup box drops straight on, and the unsightly cab-gap is history.

Up front, the F-450 is all commercial grade. The 4x2 and 4x4 alike employ a radius-arm suspension setup to locate what Ford calls a "wide-frame monobeam," a very wide solid axle with coil springs. This design not only affords massive load-carrying capacity but also 45 degrees of steering lock