Pickup truck reliability hits rock bottom

Consumer Reports released its annual reliability ratings, and the outlook for pickup truck reliability is grim. In fact, full-size, midsize and electric pickups are the bottom three vehicle categories in the survey. Ouch.

During the Automotive Press Association briefing covering the results, Jake Fisher, senior director of auto testing at Consumer Reports, even said one of the reasons the Detroit 3 don’t make it into the top 10 most reliable brands is because of their move away from small cars — and the focus on trucks. Furthermore, he points to the automakers in the top 10 and says they’re there because most of them don’t have a full-size trucks in their lineup. Double ouch.

So, what the heck is going on? Let’s dig into this a bit.

Pickup truck reliability explained

If you look at the pickup truck ratings on the Consumer Reports website, none of the trucks – not even the small ones – get higher than a 78 overall score. And the predicted reliability for most trucks is poor. In fact, Consumer Reports only has four trucks on its CR Recommended list: Ford Maverick, Hyundai Santa Cruz, Honda Ridgeline and Ram 1500.

So, why is pickup truck reliability worse than every other segment?

As Fisher points out, trucks are tuned to do truck things, and the engines and powertrains they put in trucks are not the same as those in similarly sized SUVs.

“Trucks are built for massive duty, which is different than a smaller engine that doesn’t need to tow,” he said. “Every part of that vehicle is subject to more strain.”

So, with trucks, Consumer Reports is seeing problems with transmissions as well as engines. Since CR doesn’t always separate out its data, it’s hard to see which engines or transmissions specifically are having problems, which puts the onus on the buyer to do a little extra research to discover which trims and engines are having the problems. Trust us, there’s a forum for that.

Trucks also get double whammied on reliability because in addition to powertrain problems, you do see a lot of problems with in-car electronics. Think about it, every truck in the full-size segment has recently been completely redesigned. The oldest truck is the Ram 1500, which was redesigned in 2019, and that also happens to be the most reliable.

“You look at full-size trucks, and they’re luxury vehicles,” Fisher said.

Gone are the crank windows, manual seats and dial-tuned AM/FM radios. Today’s trucks are loaded with power seats, rear camera mirrors, large infotainment screens, app connectivity and all the electrical equipment formerly reserved for high-end sedans. And those shiny electric things – especially the newer tech – breaks. Looking at some of the customer comments on in-car electronics, you’ll see a lot of complaints about Apple Car Play or Android Auto not working properly. While that’s not necessarily a “truck problem,” it still factors into reliability.

The best of the worst

But truck buyers are going to buy a truck regardless of poor truck reliability ratings, so if you care more about vehicle reliability than brand loyalty, what’s the best option? As noted above, if you want a full-size truck, start with the 2024 Ram 1500. The 1500 not only gets recommended by CR but also has the best road-test score and best predicted reliability of any full-size truck.

The next best, ironically, is the 2024 Nissan Titan, which is at the end of its life. It’s the only other full-size truck that doesn’t have worse predicted reliability than the previous model year.

The shocker is that the new Toyota Tundra, now in its third model year after the redesign is second from the bottom. It has a low road test score, comparatively speaking, and its predicted reliability is on the “worse” side of the scale.

Here’s how Consumer Reports ranks each truck according to truck segment (the top being the best):

Full-size trucks:

• 2024 Ram 1500
• 2024 Nissan Titan
• 2024 Ford F-150
• 2024 GMC Sierra
• 2024 Chevy Silverado
• 2024 Toyota Tundra
• 2024 Ford F-150 Hybrid

Midsize trucks:

• 2024 Honda Ridgeline
• 2023 Ford Ranger (2024 model isn’t out yet)
• 2023 Toyota Tacoma (2024 model isn’t out yet)
• 2024 Nissan Frontier
• 2024 Jeep Gladiator

Note: the 2023 Chevy Colorado and GMC Sierra aren’t ranked because CR hasn’t tested them yet, however predicted reliability for both these trucks is poor owner satisfaction is middle of the road.

Small trucks:

• 2024 Ford Maverick
• 2024 Ford Maverick Hybrid
• 2024 Hyundai Santa Cruz

Electric trucks:

• 2024 Ford F-150 Lightning
• 2024 Rivian R1T

Note: While both of these trucks get an overall score of less than 70, both get higher than 80 on the road test scores. Both have poor predicted reliability, but the R1T has a super high predicted owner satisfaction score, while the F-150 Lighting does not.

The bottom line

Most owners ask their pickup trucks to do hard things, and with the extra heft and moving parts, things break more often. And, I think, to some extent pickup truck owners understand and accept this. So, maybe rather than looking at predicted reliability, potential truck owners should be looking at owner satisfaction. In case you’re wondering, the 2024 Ram 1500 wins there, too.

Editor’s note: Be sure to look at Consumer Reports’ full explanation of how it ranks vehicles, but the gist is this: CR looks not only at its own driving tests but feedback from hundreds of thousands of owners then looks at trouble areas and ranks the severity of the issues to get the predicted reliability score. So, it’s not just CR’s opinion, it’s feedback from owners like you that creates the score.