Are Leather Seats in Trucks Going Away? Automakers Getting Cheap?

A new truck trend lately has seen leather seats replaced with leather-like leaving just the high-end trucks with true leather. What gives?

Leather Seats in Trucks

For years, trucks seats came in really two setups with two choices. You either had a bench seat or bucket seats and you either had cloth or leather.

The bench seat with cloth was the work truck. While the bucket seat with leather was the fancier truck.

Leather was seen as the premium or luxury truck.

Essentially, you had two choices and two trim levels of trucks. Simple. Easy.

Somewhere along the way, trucks started becoming a lot more complex and now there are not just two trim levels offered, there are a dozen with different packages, options and a ton of different choices. Heck even the headliner of some trucks can be made of suede.

Leather-Like Seats?

Leather, though, was still leather. Sure there was a phase of time where a material called pleather or artificial leather made its debut in passenger cars, but trucks were different.

If you got in say a Ford King Ranch edition, you wanted to smell the leather or a sport truck like the 2025 Ram 1500 RHO. The same thing with a Tundra 1794 edition. The leather was specifically chosen for the way it felt, smoothness and the smell.

Consumers expected this to be the case as well. They knew you had the work truck, the base consumer grade with cloth and the next grade or trim level up would have leather seats.

However, that’s not the case. I recently stopped at my local Ford dealership, Transwest Scottsbluff, after fans of this outlet pointed out the 2025 Ford F-150 Lariat doesn’t have leather seats anymore. A $65,000 F-150 Lariat without leather seats? Yup. It has “ActiveX” as I show in this TikTok video.

Ford says these seats are a synthetic leather alternative and it has been around for a few years in their SUVs and the Ford Maverick. They are supposedly more durable, resistant to staining, fading and temperature changes. They shouldn’t burn your legs in the summer or be cold in the winter.

It doesn’t use cow hides instead it used recycled plastic bottles to create the material.

Ford does offer leather, but you have to step up into the higher trim levels like the Platinum trim starting at $74,905 to get them. This is quite the step up from the base XLT which starts around the mid $40k for a regular cab and $50k for a crew cab.

Other Brands Don’t Use Leather Either?

Ford isn’t alone in not using leather.

Toyota uses Softex and leather-trimmed seats until you get into their higher-trim levels. Ram has leather-trimmed seats and reserves its best leather for the higher-trim levels like the Toyota 1794 or Capstone trim.

GM is the only automaker I found that still offers leather seats in the middle trim levels with premium leather in the higher trim levels.

Why is Leather Going Away?

A few factors are causing leather to go away that are obvious and not so obvious.

The first is cost. That’s always a factor. Automakers have a profit margin to hit and a price point they need to stay under to be competitive. As they add more feature consumers want like more technology and capability, they have to cut somewhere they don’t think consumers care as much about. If they can offer a leather-like seating material with the benefits stated above and consumers don’t complain, then why not?

Second, weight. Payload on full-size trucks has been a problem in recent years. Adding more stuff in the cabin (screens, massaging seats, dual-pano moonroofs, etc…) adds weight. As you add stuff, you subtract from what the truck can carry in terms of people, their gear and what the truck can tow with all that stuff in total. Basically, the truck’s capability goes down.

What do you do? You can’t beef up the frame to accommodate the weight without sacrificing ride comfort. And you don’t want to take away the stuff consumers are shopping for when buying a new truck.

So, you remove where you can and since leather is heavy, it is an easy target.

For the higher-end luxury trucks, you can keep leather since the customer expectation is different. Let’s be real, that customer isn’t going to haul a bed full of paving stones every day.

The bottom line

The fact is some people are going to irate at the idea they are now going to be spending $65,000 on a new truck that doesn’t come with leather seats when just 10 years ago that truck was $50,000 with leather (insert your own year and price).

That’s the quick judgement on price and seating material.

They will miss the fact the truck itself has changed dramatically in that timeframe and the truck they bought 10 years ago doesn’t really exist today. Has their truck needs changed? Not likely. The truck world has changed and whether that’s a good or bad thing is just how you see it.