First, Thankyou for serving, second cont your research, in which a lot of great info already here. Yep have not seen an oil pan rust out, but some come in plastic now.....kinda scary for me. My oil pan is pot metal on the gm series gas trucks...on my previous 02 I had to take the oil pan off to get the broken dipstick out. Funny now, but when I put it all back I over tightened the corner of the pan and literally snapped it off....... Man gm wants 400.00 for that cheap made pan.... So got a used one for 150.00 and learned another hard lesson in life...lol anyway good luck, and yes my parents old 96 dodge 2500 they had, had the bearings replaced a few times... But at high miles.