I drove a $57,000 Chevy Silverado to see if the all-new pickup can take on the Ford F-150 - here's the verdict

Matthew DeBord/Business Insider

The pressure is on! Is the new Silverado up to it.

• Following Ford with its new flagship F-150 pickup, Chevy has rolled out the Silverado full-size hauler for 2019.
• There are now updated versions of the the three bestselling full-size pickups in the market: the Silverado, the F-150, and the RAM 1500.
• The stage is set for an old-fashioned truck war in 2019 - and the the new Silverado is more than up to the challenge, even though it's not as heavily improved as the F-150.

Americans buy millions of full-size pickup trucks every year. And over the past four, they've shown an especially robust enthusiasm for the vehicles, as the US economy has roared and gas prices have remained low.

This is good news for Detroit because pickups are huge profit drivers. But here's the thing: although a carmaker can stick with a pickup design for a decade, it's critical to update when the competition does.

That's the cycle we're in at the moment. Ford revamped its legendary F-150 a few years back, so it was only a matter of time before Chevy and RAM followed. That's now happened, so consumers have three new full-size pickups to choose from.

The pitched battle is between Ford and Chevy, of course, as it always has been. Chevy is now bringing an all-new Silverado to the action. We've driven the previous generation of the truck, and we've sampled the F-150 in various guises. So I was excited to get my hands on the new, fourth-generation Silverado for a week.

Here's how it went:

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