Running The Gauntlet

Data-driven Decision Making

- Jason Gonderman

Looking from the outside in, our annual Pickup Truck of the Year test may appear as if we’re just a bunch of hooligans doing burnouts and donuts in brand-new pickups for a week. The reality is that couldn’t be further from the truth. Sure, some adolescent shenanigans take place, usually for the sake of photography, but what aren’t seen are the many hundreds of hours of work that go on behind the scenes. We’ll spare you the details of the thousands of pages of paperwork, hundreds of emails, and many hours on the phone with various state, federal, and private organizations and get right to the nitty gritty.

By now you should have noticed that there’s something different about this year’s test. For the first time, we have invited a pair of trucks from each eligible manufacturer. We requested both a luxury and an off-road trim, since all of the current pickup manufacturers have both in their lineup. Each truck went through the battery of tests prescribed individually, and at the end, the scores received by both the luxury and off-road variant from a particular manufacturer were combined. This provided the ultimate score and the overall winner.

Before the pickups hit the highway, they are first logged in, stickered up, photographed, and fully refueled. First thing on day 1, prior to the start of testing, our staff weighs each vehicle with a full tank of fuel and nothing else. We utilize a set of ProForm precision digital vehicle scales from Summit Racing that are capable of accurately weighing pickups in excess of 7,000 pounds. We do this for several reasons, the first being