The Ford Super Duty pickup is very large and in-charge - here's what we thought

I don't have a lot of experience with trucks this large, but the Super Duty has a devoted following and is the working pickup of choice for countless professionals who depend on their trucks for their livelihoods.

It would have been good to sample the F-250's towing capacities, but that was a bit beyond the scope of what we could arrange in our limited time with the truck. We'll have to give Ford the benefit of the doubt, which isn't much a stretch, given that owners have been towing and hauling anything and everything for decades with this beast.

I can talk about driving the F-250. I won't kid you — there's a learning curve. The pickup is the size of a bus. The engine pulls like a freight train. You're waaayyy above the road. But for a vehicle of this size and bulk, once you get accustomed to making proper use of the mirrors, get a sense of where everything begins and ends, and learn how to work all the camera options, you can enjoy a level of road presence known only to long-haul truckers.

There have been plenty of times when I've been lucky to have the fastest car on the road. Having a vehicle that nearly the biggest is another ball game and creates a different type of confidence while imposing an additional layer of responsibility.

The power served up by the massive V8 is stunning, but the Super Duty manages it well, with a capable 6-speed automatic. The handling, for a truck this big, is excellent. The ride is also comfortable and relatively quiet, although have that mighty slab of a front grille hammering through the atmosphere generates an understandably higher level of wind noise than what you might be used to from a more aerodynamic vehicle.

Fuel economy is sort of beside the point. But the use of additional aluminum in the design has lessened the overall bulk ‚ although not by much, so you should be able to get something like 15 mpg from the diesel. (Ford used the weight savings to bolster structural strength elsewhere in the Super Duty, with the understanding that owners would be willing to trade extra MPGs for more capability.)

Super Duty loyalists famously expect to run their pickups "to failure." I didn't even come close to that. But I did over a few days develop a renewed understanding of how seriously Ford takes one of its most profitable segments. The company just doesn't mess around when it comes to big trucks. At all. And the new Super Duty is no exception.