the 5.5 ft bed starts back with first Supercrew's in 2001. Truck was low cost start up using as many existing parts as possible to keep the tooling costs down and since that would be passed on to consumer the price of the truck down. The frame and underpinning were from a 6.5 ft supercab, front half of cab common and rear of cab from regular cab. rear doors from Expy (hense why they didn't roll all the way down). Hey they gave the four correct opening doors, with a huge tooling bill! They expect families to buy this for easy ingress/egress and still have a truck that fits into a standard garage (less than 19 ft plus a little to walk around). The name says it all "supercrew", better than a supercab, but not everything of a crew cab. Watch the adds, they specifically address cab space. The new F150 just carries on with a package that fits into the garage. build what sells well. To tool up another frame w/ 150 inch wheel base for the small volume is probably not worth it.

 

Oh, I think I understand. Ford has the ability to produce a range of configurations for the F-150 platform. They are currently producing trucks in configurations; both longer and shorter than the SuperCrew with the 5.5' bed. It most certainly is not (IMO) the manueverability issue that has driven Ford's choice not to offer the SuperCrew with the 6.5' bed, as they currently produce a less manuverable (and longer) SuperCab with an 8' bed.

As to the shorty SuperCrew being all the rage: I would suggest (with no offense intended to anyone), that this has more to do with the 'yuppification' of the average pickup truck buyer. As I pointed out earlier, it is the first time, former passenger car crossover buyer, that has now started drive demand -- and NOT the former work truck buying regular Joe -- that had formerly been the primary market Ford geared their F-150 product toward. As Ford has discovered, and is evidenced by the clever way trim packaging is designed to produce higher margin sales, the work truck has now become luxurious enough to attract a whole new, and (possibly) more deep-pocketed demographic, which is more than willing to help Ford increase their margins.

It is also my suspicion, that Ford is trying not to canabilize sales for the SuperDuty line, as they have succeeded in upselling the majority of short bed SD Crew Cab buyer to the 6.0L powerstroke diesel. Notice we still don't have the new 5.4L 3V motor avialable for the SD trucks? The 2V 5.4 is underpowered in that platform relative to the 3V motor in the F-150, nudging SD buyers to either take the still underpowered (in HP relative to the 3V 5.4L motor) V-10 motor, or drop five grand more to add the PowerStroke diesel.

I zero interest in a Dodge. A friend that is an engineer with D-C, has told me they were issued a mandate to remove $1,000 worth of content from the '03 model Ram trucks, for the '04 model release. They have taken out everything from air conditioning vents; to lots of nuts and bolts; to gawd knows what else, in order to comply with management's request. Takes more than uttering the word 'Hemi' to get me excited about a truck.

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Your arguements are sound, and maybe sometime they will make one with a 6.5 foot bed. But don't think the current set up is some kind of a mistake or flaw. It's set up this way for a very good reason.

Rumor has it, that the '05 F-150 lineup will include a 6.5' bed SuperCrew truck. Only time will tell, if that rumor is true. It is not a matter of something being a mistake or a flaw, as Ford has very likely considered this matter well beyond the scope of our limited discussions. My feeling, is that someone in marketing ended up having the final say in those discussions.

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Most of your points I'd get an F250. I have a feeling they'll update it next year and give it some of the new F150 traits.

Next years SD update will include a new, more 'Tonka-like' facelift and interior revisions -- and hopefully the inclusion of the 5.4L 3V motor. I would be doubtfull that a freshened SD will ever approach the refinement that is the soul of the new F-150. More likely, those sort of incremental changes will not be seen untill the next generation of SD, which (IIRC) is going to be for the '07 model year release.

 

I am a fan of the current size bed. I think that 05' is still too early, if you look at the pre-release news of the KR model and the lincoln, they both have 5.5ft beds. I think if they were thinking 6.5 for 05' at least the KR model would have it. I'm not against it as long as there is a choice and I can still choose to have the 5.5 ft bed.

 

The 5.5 on my truck works great. It's shorter than the bed on my old truck, but it's also much deeper and wider. For hauling things like gravel, brick, sod or anything else where length is not an issue, the 5.5 box is fine. I honestly can't think of a truck that can fit a 16' piece of crown in it. And unless I'm building an 8' cube I usually buy longer sticks and cut them. Ever see those thingy's riding on the back of contractor's trucks. They're called lumber racks

I don't use my truck on the job, but when it needs to work it gets the job done, even if I do have to use tie downs. To each his own I guess. But it would be a shame for you to miss out on this truck because you have a complex about fitting 8' sticks in the bed.