30,000 lbs behind the Ram

burningman wrote:
I'm glad I'm not in the market for a new truck, I don't know which one I'd buy!
I've been a Ford and Chevy guy most of my life but that was the old-school stuff that really hasn't got anything to do with the new trucks today. The only reason I have a Dodge is I wanted a Cummins, and that's only because I do my own work and the straight six is so much easier, and I don't like that on the Fords you have to lift the cab off just to change a fuse or empty the ash tray.

Pickup diesels are getting to a pretty high stress level. The biggest truck I drive has a Caterpillar C15. It's rated at 550hp, not a whole lot more than the new pickups or my hot-rodded old 5.9 Cummins, but it's a 15.2 liter monster. The one I drive the most has a 10.7 liter Cummins M11 that dynoed 370hp at the wheels.
Makes me wonder how these pickups are going to stay together! I'm sure the pickup horsepower numbers are inflated because they are measured at higher RPM but they are awfully strong.

When it was new, my GMC 3500 dually with a gas 454 was the strongest pickup available!
What's next, hybrid electrics that make 2000 ft/lbs right from a dead stop?

Probably!!

The big Cat or Cummins engines deliver high hp hour after hour in many applications. A pickup truck pulls hard on the odd hill every once in awhile.
Regardless, these little pick up truck engines making 350 HP at 2000 rpm is nothing to sneeze at. In order to move one of these trucks up the hill in 11.5 minutes with a 30,000 lb trailer in tow, the truck needs to put an average of 300 hp to the pavement over the entire run. A test like this demonstrates that the trucks have transmissions and cooling systems in place to utilize the power they are making. It's interesting to note that it takes just as much power to pull a 16000 lb RV up a hill like this at 60 mph as it took for the Ram to pull the 30,000 lb trailer up in the 12.5 minutes.