Best Trucks of 2024

Trucks used to be simple. Two doors, a bed and maybe a two-tone paint job. Now there are luxury trucks, hybrid trucks, all-electric trucks, off-road racing trucks and pickup trucks so small your friends won’t ask you to help them move... We strongly recommend those trucks.

Overall, the best truck is one that has the capability you need, combined with the comfort and driveability to fit into your everyday life. There are a lot of trucks on the market that are very capable, but also very, very large. The only thing bigger than those trucks is the pain they cause in your keister when it’s time to change lanes or park. If you have a daily driver and are looking for a truck for a specific task, by all means, go big. But if you’re looking for a truck that can handle big jobs and small ones like running to the grocery store, keep size in mind.

How We Made Our Picks

To find the best trucks of 2024, our crack team of testers spent hours testing trucks available to consumers today. We focused on regular-duty and smaller trucks. If you need a heavy-duty truck, you probably know enough about what you need to not really need this guide. If you’re looking at this guide, aren’t looking to tow a barn and still think you need a heavy-duty truck – trust us, you probably don’t.

Additionally, to augment our own tests, we compared the various capabilities of trucks on the markets today to see which is best for towing, hauling and all the other fun stuff that a Honda Civic just can’t do.

In addition to the Car Talk Staff Picks, we’ve included a bonus personal take from Car Talk’s co-founder Ray Magliozzi, who has probably the equivalent of 1,569,402 years of experience testing, fixing and pontificating about cars.

Here’s a quick rundown of the best trucks of 2024:

Car Talk Staff Picks For Best Trucks of 2024

• Best Small Truck: Ford Maverick
• Best Midsize Truck: Chevrolet Colorado
• Best Full-size Truck: Ford F-150 Lightning
• Best Luxury Truck: Ram 1500
• Most Innovative Truck: Rivian R1T
• Best Value Truck: Toyota Tacoma
• Most Reliable Truck: Toyota Tundra
• Best Off-Road Truck: Ford-F-150 Raptor
• Best Imaginary Truck: Tesla Cyber Truck

Ray's Personal Take

With over four decades of doling out trusted automotive advice and extensive vehicle knowledge, both behind the wheel and under the hood, Car Talk's founder and original Tappet Brother Ray Magliozzi shares his first-hand experience and expert opinion about the Best Trucks for 2024.

Spoiler alert: sometimes Ray’s take is different from the rest of the Car Talk staff. And we think it’s helpful to show you all perspectives because there’s no single right or wrong opinion!

• Best Small Truck: Ford Maverick. It’s for anyone who doesn’t need a pickup truck but wants a pickup truck. You pay the lowest pickup-truck-penality with the Maverick. It’s reasonably sized, gets good mileage, doesn’t require a ladder to get into, and gets decent gas mileage. Good mileage with the hybrid engine. Controls are simple, intuitive, and perfect.

• Best Midsize Truck: For reliability, you can’t beat the Toyota Tacoma, but its ride quality is behind the times. I’d suggest a Ford Ranger or Chevy Colorado for the moment. A new Tacoma is due in the next few years, and hopefully, they’ll address the ride and high sill.

• Best Full-size Truck: Ford F-150 Lightning. Yup. Faster, smoother, and quieter than the gasoline F-150.

• Best Luxury Truck: It seems like every pickup truck is a luxury truck these days, with prices reaching in the $80,000s. The Ram 1500 does have the best ride of the big four.

• Most Innovative Truck: Rivian R1T. I agree. Cool truck.

• Best Value Truck: Toyota Tacomas seem to last forever. Keep that in mind if you don’t want your truck to last forever — you’re going to be stuck with your Tacoma for a while.

• Most Reliable Truck: Toyota Tundra. Toyotas are very reliable overall.

• Best Off-Road Truck: Ford-F-150 Raptor. Well, it’s definitely not the best on-road truck. It’s a beast. So sure, go take it off road.

• Best Imaginary Truck: Tesla Cyber Truck. I’d like to imagine a day when someone else owns that company...

What’s the Best Truck Overall?

There is so much variation in trucks now that naming one “the best” would be like choosing the best dog in the world – they’re all good, but the best one for you is the one that meshes with your lifestyle and needs.

If you live in an urban or suburban area, or just need a truck for hauling small things, go for a Ford Maverick. If you want to tow something like a pair of jet skis or a small horse trailer, go for the Chevrolet Colorado. If you need to tow a boat or a trailer with one or two Budweiser Clydesdales in it, the Ford F-150 Lightning is the way to go. The Rivian R1T is an all-electric truck with so many innovative and smart features that it’s an excellent choice for early adopters. If you need to tow and haul, but also want to be coddled and comfortable, the Ram 1500 can be kitted out like a luxury car. The Toyota Tacoma holds its value incredibly well, making it sort of like a savings account on four wheels. The Ford Raptor is a monster off-road racing truck that will have you smiling from ear-to-ear when you take it off-road . . .and inventing new swear words when you take it to Target.

What’s the Difference Between a Truck and a Pickup Truck?

Trucks and pickup trucks are technically two different types of vehicles, but most people, us included, tend to use the terms interchangeably.

If you want to get technical and annoy everyone at the next party you attend, a truck is a body-on-frame vehicle used for doing heavy work. Trucks come in many shapes and sizes, from the 18-wheelers used to haul goods on highways, to the last box truck you rented to move your kids into your house yet again.

A pickup truck is a type of truck with an open bed. All of the trucks we talk about on this page are considered pickup trucks. Pickups are still meant to be work vehicles, but they can do lighter-duty work, and also aren’t too much of a pain to use for daily driving (just try and get that U-Haul into the parking garage at the mall).

We’re Car Talk so we know the difference, but we also write for people who don’t – which is why you’ll see both terms used on this page, even though, technically, we’re only talking about pickup trucks. You’ll also see us sometimes just use the term pickup or pickups to refer to the trucks on this page. It means the same thing as pickup truck, and we use it when our fingers get tired of typing.

What Types of Trucks Are There?

If you couldn’t tell from the list above, there are so many types of trucks on the market, which makes it possible to find one that’s just perfect for you so long as you’re willing to wade through all the models, trims, powertrains, beds and cab sizes available.

We realize that you don’t have all day, so we’re going to paint trucks with a pretty broad brush here. Full-size trucks are the biggest trucks aimed at the everyday consumer (heavy-duty trucks really only make sense for special or commercial uses). They tend to come with beds that start at six feet long and go up from there. You can get them with two door cabs that seat two; extended cabs with a tiny backseat that can seat up to five people, but only if you really hate the three people you’re putting in the backseat; or crew cabs, which have four full-size doors and pretty comfortable backseats. In fact, it can be tough to tell the difference between the interior of a crew cab truck and the first two rows of a large SUV. Trucks in this class weigh about 1,500 pounds and so have names like Ram 1500, Chevrolet Silverado 1500 and Ford F-150 to differentiate them from their larger counterparts.

Next up are midsize pickup trucks. These trucks have names that used to belong to small trucks, like the Ford Ranger, but make no mistake: these are not compact trucks. Midsize trucks like the Chevrolet Colorado, Nissan Frontier and Toyota Tacoma are generally smaller versions of their bigger counterparts. Because they’re smaller, if you go for a model with a backseat, know that you’ll probably lose any friends that you force to sit back there. They also can’t tow or haul as much as a full-size truck, but are fine for things like ATVs. They also can be more fun on off-road trails, since they fit in tighter spaces.

One level down from midsize trucks are small pickup trucks. This category doesn’t have quite as many models in it because when most consumers want a truck, they want something big. Still, the Ford Maverick and Hyundai Santa Cruz are good options if you need something with a bed for bikes or kayaks, but still want something that’s easy to drive around town.

The final category is what we’re just going to call weird trucks. These are models that are technically trucks but don’t really fit neatly into the main three categories. Size-wise, the Jeep Gladiator slots between the small and midsize categories, but it’s also the only truck under $100k with a removable roof and doors. The Rivian R1T is an all-electric truck that takes space that would be used for gas-powered drivetrain components and uses it for options like a full-on camping kitchen. The Ford F-150 Lightning is a full-size truck, but it has an all-electric drivetrain and has the fastest 0-to-60 time of any truck on the market. At the other end of the spectrum from EV trucks you have the Ram TRX and Ford Raptor – two monster off-road trucks that like to pretend they’re dinosaurs, but instead of making fossil fuels, they just burn a heck of a lot of them. The GMC Hummer truck is an all-electric beast that can crab walk sideways – it’s really weird to see and looks like it’s glitching – but costs about $100k. There’s also the Tesla Cyber Truck, which looks like a Klingon doorstop and isn’t on the market yet, but Tesla says it will be available soon (note: they’ve been saying that for about three years).

What’s the Most Reliable Pickup Truck?

The Toyota Tundra gets the highest reliability ratings for full-size trucks, and the Honda Ridgeline (we bet you didn’t even know Honda made a truck!) gets the best ratings for small and mid-size pickup trucks. Keep in mind, however, that most trucks on the market right now are fairly reliable, so if the Toyota Tundra is too big for you and you don’t need all of its hauling and towing capability, the Toyota Tacoma is also plenty reliable. As for the Ridgeline, it’s a comfortable truck but can’t tow or haul as much as other trucks. The same design that makes it comfortable and easy to drive also makes it less capable when it comes to hauling or towing larger loads. Check out the Chevrolet Colorado if you like the Ridgeline’s size but need a little more muscle.

Should I Buy a Truck?

Trucks started off as work vehicles but have evolved into lifestyle vehicles. That is, most people who drive trucks don’t actually need everything a truck can do. They just like how a truck looks, or makes them feel, or they just want to be prepared to pull a van carrying the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders out of a ditch, should the need arise. Keep in mind that as trucks have become lifestyle vehicles, their prices have started to reflect the fact that they’re toys for a lot of people. With some notable exceptions, they are not great on gas either and can be a bear to insure.

• Buy a truck if you frequently tow or haul large things like ATVs, jet skis, motorcycles, a boat or livestock. And no, your mother-in-law is not considered livestock.
• Buy a truck if you know for sure that you won’t have trouble driving it or parking it where you live. Garages in older homes often can’t fit today's trucks, and trucks are banned (or are just too tall) from some urban parking garages. You also don’t want to be that person parked across four spots the day after Thanksgiving at Wal-Mart just because you bought a truck.
• Buy a truck if you want one and have the budget to do it and can afford to keep it gassed up and insured. Trucks aren’t cheap to buy and they aren’t always cheap to own.
• Buy a truck if you have the skill to drive it. Trucks require extra skill and attention to drive, especially in bad weather and especially if you’re driving a full-size truck. This is not the vehicle to buy your teenager.

How Much Do Pickup Trucks Cost?

Trucks used to be inexpensive blue-collar workhorses. While there are still some affordable trucks out there (we’re looking at you, Ford Maverick) it’s not hard to find full-loaded full-size trucks in the $70,000 to $80,000 range. Because trucks are really popular with consumers, you shouldn’t expect a lot of dealer discounts, either.

How Much Can Trucks Tow?

How much a truck can tow depends on its construction and powertrain. Mosty full- and mid-size trucks use a body-on-frame construction that makes them able to tow more than small trucks, which use unibody construction. Those smaller trucks also have smaller engines, so they just can’t pull as much weight. That said, those big engines use a lot of gas even when they aren’t towing, so don’t go for the largest towing capacity “just in case” you get the opportunity to tow the floats in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Be realistic about what you’re actually going to do with your truck

You should know that within the same model line different trims of the same truck will be able to tow different amounts. Make sure you get the right model and trim to handle your towing needs and don’t forget to include the weight of your trailer when calculating how much you need to tow.

As a general rule, small trucks can tow less than 2,500 pounds, while midsize trucks tend to top out at around 6,000 pounds. Full-size trucks generally can tow a maximum of around 11,000 pounds, while full-size electric trucks tend to be able to tow up to 7,000 pounds.

How Much Cargo Space Do Trucks Have?

Trucks tend not to have much interior cargo space, so if you're making a Costco run, do it on a sunny day. Electric trucks are an exception to this, because they take the place where the engine would be in a gas truck and use it for trunk (or frunk, because it’s in the front) space. Other trucks also have some innovative cargo spaces. The Ram 1500 has in-bed storage lockers for tools or other items. You can even fill them with ice and drinks if you want to reenact a beer commercial or be the popular guy at the tailgating party.

When you’re talking about trucks and cargo, you’re generally talking about payload or hauling capacity: how much weight the truck can carry in its bed. Most full-size trucks have beds that are six feet long or longer, so space isn’t the limiting factor for hauling, weight is.

Are Trucks Good on Gas?

Electric trucks are very good on gas, seeing as they don’t use any. But trucks, in general, use a lot of gas. These are big, brick-shaped vehicles that weigh a ton and are often towing or hauling heavy loads. Here’s an overview of truck fuel economy according to fueleconomy.gov. Note that these numbers will vary based on trim and if you’re towing or hauling something.

Can I Get an Electric Truck?

2023 was the year of the electric truck and 2024 should continue that trend. The Ford F-150 Lightning is our top overall full size truck mainly because it has much of the same capability as the regular F-150, but is all electric (and faster!). It has a range of up to 320 miles and, as Ford keeps reminding us in all their ads, can be used as a generator for your entire house for a few days. The Rivian R1T is another electric truck that can come close to matching gas trucks in capability and has a 314 mile range. The GMC Hummer truck is another EV truck, and while it has a 329 mile range, its starting price is also over $100,000.

If you don’t want to go all electric in your truck yet, the Ford Maverick has a hybrid model, as does the Ford F-150 and the Toyota Tundra.

Does Driving a Truck Mean You Have a Small . . .?

. . .bank account? Considering how much a truck can cost to buy and own, your bank account will be smaller after buying a truck. Just make sure you don’t try and compensate for that (or anything else) with how you drive or customize your truck.