The dreaded 48RE

My buddy eats up a Gen3 transmission every 100K miles on his farm and other items have been a "nickle and dime affair" for him after the warranty expired (ball joints, water pump, fuel pump, exhaust, alternator, fuel injectors). At this point the truck has depreciated too much and new ones are still outside of his budget, so he will try to continue to save and hope this one does not have a major failure forcing him in to a high debt load. This is not Dodge vs. the others slam because he does put the truck through wringer plus averages 35K miles per year. However his enthusiasm for the brand has waned and the only way he will be back in one is if the bottom line on the replacement is a significant savings over the others since he has little faith in the reliability. He doesn't even give me grief about driving a 6.0 PSD...