I've put 45k+ miles on my 2011 to this point. Approximately 4,000 miles towing everything from the snowmobile trailer to the boat and a few things in-between. The truck has been good thus far with no return trips to the dealer, at least Ecoboost related, I did have a noisy pinion bearing replaced. Now the sled trailer is pretty light and really doesn't even count as towing, the boat is a little more substantial at around 4k lbs which is what it has towed the most. With the boat in tow what blows me away is how it holds 6th and rarely downshifts when running down the highway, this is less than I can say about it's competitors, especially the GMs (I previously pulled it with a 5.3L in a Yukon and a fishing partner runs a 11' dodge w/ hemi)
Over the past weekend I had some dirt work to do around the house which required me to grab one of the bobcats from the shop. Normally I would drive the Superduty for something like this but kind of wanted to see how it's little brother would fair since I was only going 20 miles. Now depending on which skidder I grab they range in weight from about 6,000 lbs to 8,000 lbs plus the weight of the trailer which is normally 2,500 to 3,500lbs empty, again depending on which one I take. Long story short, I grabbed one of the medium duty trailers and an S205 and headed home (total weight around 9,500-10,000 lbs). Being 100% honest, the power of the little V-6 was simply amazing! It had no issues accelerating up to speed around town, once on the highway you could maintain the speed limit with out much effort. It loved 5th gear and would run in 6th regularly if I didn't lock it out. On the largest hill it dropped to 4th, kicked up to a little over 3k rpms and had lots of pedal to spare. What I actually found just as impressive was how well the truck itself handled the load. It wasn't squirmy, there was no tail waging the dog, it stopped really nice with the IBC, heck, it was downright comfortable! To the point that if I'm not towing more than 10k I'm pretty sure the F150 will be hooked to those trailers that I had previously reserved for the Superduty! Point being, if you haven't owned an Ecoboost and spent some time getting familiar with these new trucks, I suggest you hold your comments. FYI, it was a balmy 94 degrees out and I had a 10 mph head wind on the highway. Say what you want, these new trucks are extremely capable work horses!
When it comes reliability, we'll find out after a few more years. Of newer trucks, we are currently running 4 ecoboost trucks at the shop, one 5.0, and one 6.7 diesel. So far mine is the only one that's went in for any type of warranty work (pinion bearing). FYI, we used to run solely GM trucks and the guys that drive them are allowed to buy whatever they'd like, Ford, GM, Dodge, or Toyota. We Currently only have Fords, take it for what it's worth.
