Before the fifth wheel, before the move, before any of it, we needed a truck. Not a nice-to-have truck, a truck that could legally and comfortably tow a Brinkley Model Z 3515 with a GVWR pushing 17,500 pounds. This video is the day we finally went to see our new Ford F350 Platinum in person, and the slightly ridiculous packing test that followed.
The F350 versus RAM 3500 debate
We spent months going back and forth between the Ford F350 and the RAM 3500. Both are serious one-ton trucks, both tow more than we need, and both have loyal owners who will tell you the other one is a mistake. For us it came down to the details you only settle by sitting in them: the interior, the tech, how the truck felt to drive, and what the dealers near us could actually get. In the end we signed for the F350 Platinum.
First impressions of the Platinum
The Platinum trim is the one where Ford stops pretending a work truck can't also be comfortable. The seats are nicer than most furniture we've owned. The cab is quiet, the screen is huge, and there are enough camera angles that hitching a fifth wheel by yourself stops being a two-person shouting exercise. Fabiola's first reaction in the video says it better than we can write it here.
It's also just enormous. Coming from normal vehicles, a long-bed dually-adjacent one-ton takes recalibration. Parking lots shrink. Drive-throughs become a geometry problem. We knew that going in, but knowing it and living it are different things, and the video captures some of that adjustment in real time.
The packing test
Here's the part that made this trip more than a test drive. In a couple of weeks we'd be driving this truck from Marquette, Michigan to Florida to pick up our RV, which meant everything coming with us into full-time life had to fit in the bed and the back seat. So we ran a packing test: could our bags, gear, and the pile of stuff we'd been staging in the house actually fit?
The back seat of a crew cab F350 is legitimately huge, and the bed swallowed more than we expected, but "will it fit" was a closer call than the truck's size suggests. Full-timers don't pack for a vacation, they pack their whole life. The test told us what had to be cut before the real drive, which is exactly what we wanted to learn while we were still parked in a driveway instead of a snowstorm.
Was it the right call?
At the time this video went up, we'd only had the truck for its first days. The real test came right after: a five-day, two-thousand-mile winter drive to Florida, followed by hitching up a 40-foot fifth wheel for the first time. We covered that trip in its own video, and the short version is that nothing about the F350 decision has kept us up at night since.
Is it the most amazing Ford truck of 2025? We're two people who bought one, so grade our bias accordingly. But if your travel plans involve towing a house, this is the category of truck the job requires, and the Platinum makes long towing days something you can do every week without dreading them.
Watch the full video on YouTube to see the truck up close and the packing test verdict. We also send a short weekly newsletter about where we are and what broke this week. The signup form is on our newsletter page.