Around here I would say that 90% of fleet trucks are Ford with the other 10% being Dodge. No Chevrolets in big fleets; maybe only for small companies that probably buy them one by one. Definitely no Toyotas or Nissans.

This probably played a big role in me choosing a Ford. I figured that if it's good enough for someone to buy and repair after employees use it it will do the job for me.

In my travels I have mostly seen Toyotas. They seem to be everywhere in the world and last forever.

So why are fleets mostly Fords and not Toyotas? Cheaper? Better? Maintenance? Not wanting to mix and match 1/2 ton and bigger?

 

"Why are there no Toyota fleet trucks? "

The answer is in the "TOWING GUIDE ".

If you have to tow 16-20,000 Lbs. (or more) horse trailers (or cargo) all day long for a living , what would you get ?

I would have gotten a Toyota truck , if they were capable of towing my 14,000 Lbs. loaded 5th wheel trailer ( and its 4000 Lbs payload as the hitch weight ).

 

Toyota trucks are nice and all...but they don't really handle "real" useage. They are great for light duty applications

I see Fleets of Toyota and Nissan trucks out here in Hawaii. But those Fleet trucks are all the Taco and Frontier, and it's typically the small "Johhny on the Spot" trucks for the Terminators and small contractor style stuff.

When it time for actual loads and the "real work", you always see the Superduties roll out. I see the oddball Chevy/Dodge used for this, but it's overwhelmingly a Ford application. Been that way all over the US where-ever I was stationed.


Hell, even in Dubai and the Phillipines I saw superduties for the heavy loads. The Ranger and Taco were pulling up the small stuff.



I did see this in the Phillipines though. It was a 2012/2013 Ranger converted to a Ambulance.

 

When I lived in Phoenix, I worked for a utility company. The whole company fleet of trucks were Fords. It had been that way the last 10-15 years. Before that it was Dodges. There were probably 1200 or so SD's in our fleet across the state.

The Fords were great, and held up to an amazing amount of abuse from the kids driving them. It seems that most guys, when you toss them a set of keys to a "company truck" tend to treat them like they stole them.

One of the main reasons I bought a Ford was how well they stood up to severe service.

All that being said, the ONLY reason our company bought Fords, was that Ford had an aggressive fleet purchase program. This was according to the Gal at our company that oversaw the fleet purchasing. She made the announcement in Fall of 2011 that we would no longer be buying exclusively Ford vehicles because they just changed their fleet program.

From then on, they would be "looking at" either Chevy's or Fords depending on who could break the best deal for that year.

I relocated to ND in fall of 2011, so I don't know how many Chevy's they now have in the mix.They typically bought 200 or so trucks every year, as a rolling replacement for existing fleet trucks.

I was good friends with one of the fleet repair shop managers, and I told him I now felt sorry for him. He was about to become way busier fixing all those broken Chevy's. He said he was thinking of putting on a couple extra mechanics to keep up...

So, long story short, in our case, the main reason we bought Fords was the price.

 

its all about money, have you priced a tundra? they are almost as much money as a f250 these days. and a ford, chevy, dodge is universal for parts, service ect. almost everywhere will work on them. toyota, nissan seems to be more specialized when it comes to repair shops. plus factory dealerships are everywhere for domestic trucks.

 

I am pretty sure Toy does not have fleet incentives similar to the Big 3.

 

The countries that run those getups also wear the losing Super Bowl teams victory shirts that's why. They can get by with junk.

 

because Toyota doesn't make a truck.

 

^^^ HAHAHHAA ^^^^

 

Up here most fleets are Ford, i know all the big companies i deal with a majority of them run Ford and the answer i get is less down time and the ability to hold up to sever abuse in the arctic when other brands wont hold up.

Nobody would think of running toyotas...around here anyhow.

One company uses GM diesels exclusively because they run the warranty shop for GM. when they had a guy down to walk us through the winterization upfit on the 72 new GM trucks he told me he had 108 dead trucks sitting outside his light duty shop needing to come in. out of a fleet of a few thousand 108 is a pretty large number.

this is the stuff i deal with day in/day out. upfitting trucks for the north slope of Alaska.

more i have for BP

 

This surprised me because I think my F250 is not very good at dealing with winter and the weather here near Montreal is much better than the oil fields of Alaska.

Windshield washer nozzles often freeze up.
Windows freeze up. Can't get them to do down.
Heated seats take a long time to get up to temp.
Wipers are always caked with ice so no good contact with the windshield.

Most of those problems are present to some degrees on all cars but it's definitely worse on the F250. Especially the windows not going down. My other cars/SUVs never had that problem and the windows are closer to the door seals so you can de-snow the windows just by bringing them down and back up using the seal as a squeegee. The F250 has so much play between the window and the seal that when it does go down it comes back up with snow/ice still on it.

One thing the F250 does better in winter than any car/SUV. Ground clearance and agressive thread tires

 

Toyotas are girls trucks...my wife wants to trade in her minivan for a Tundra because they are "cute" and capable of pulling our boat Plus Toyotas don't get any better mileage than a tuned SD.

 

The big difference between your climate and the North Slope of Alaska is once it gets cold it stays cold. When its that cold its very dry so you done get the same icing issues.

you don't roll you windows down at -60F
you don't spray you windshield washers at -60F
you don't have heated seats, one because its a work truck and two because the trucks are never shut off when its -60F...they are left to idle
you don't really need your wipers because the snow and windshield are so cold it blows off.

You should see what the chevys and dodges that have spent any time up there look like. They are throw away trucks after that is done because they are hailed out after 2-3 years.

 

I guess the F150 doesn't count by those standards.

The Tundra is an outstanding half-ton truck. I test drove one when I bought my '11 F350. It completely blew the F150 out of the water from a performance perspective, and at the time it was the only other half-ton truck available rated to tow 11,000 lbs. If I opted for a half-ton truck I would have picked the Tundra over the F150.

Why are we comparing a 1/2 ton Toyota with a Super Duty?

 

why are we comparing a foreign owed POS profit center to any American truck? and don't give me that bs line, they are built in America... where does the profit end up?? not here....