2025 Ram 1500 Long-Term Verdict: Still the Half-Ton Truck to Beat
A year of towing, hauling, road-tripping, and living with Ram’s redesigned half-ton only reinforced why it earned our Truck of the Year Calipers.
Would we still award our Truck of the Year Calipers to the 2025 Ram 1500 had we extended our evaluation window to 12 months? You betcha. Our Delmonico Red yearlong review Ram 1500 Laramie served us with distinction, suffering very few missteps of any kind during its year with us, and hence the Detroit office will be very sorry to see it go—especially whenever it comes time to tow a hefty trailer, haul loads ranging from mulch to oversized artwork, or simply to road-trip somewhere far-flung.
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What We Loved
As noted in our recent Best-Looking Pickups for 2026 piece, the exterior and interior design strikes us as the best of the half-tons, and ride quality of our fully air-suspended truck remains peerless in the class. Front and rear seats proved long-haul comfortable on multiple trips, and the light-colored Sea Salt trim shows no signs of wear or staining.
And while the 60/40 swing-out/drop-down multifunction tailgate complicated our search for a tonneau and rack somewhat, the feature totally won us over. It’s just way easier to get stuff out of the bed from immediately behind the bed floor. Sure, you’ll want to use tarps when carrying bulk materials to keep the additional cracks and crevices clean, but that’s smart no matter the tailgate. And the pop-out bed step made climbing in vastly easier than most other deployable step solutions.
And while you can now order the gate without the Bed Utility Group, we came to love it. We frequently repositioned the tie-down cleats to secure differing loads, and we found the rail they attach to a handy tie-down point itself, that remained within reach when securing tarps with a load of mulch onboard. The spray-in bedliner is still the best way to preserve a working truck bed, but we didn’t end up using the 115-volt electrical outlet much, as it can’t support power tools.
Interior storage is another Ram superpower, from the commodious reconfigurable center console to the area under the rear seat that can be fenced or open, to the in-floor bins ideal for carrying freshly caught fish on ice—complete with a molded-in ruler on which to base your fish stories—the Ram offers a place for everything. Door pockets big enough to accommodate 1.5-liter water cans proved another godsend.
Great automatic 4WD traction offered by the Ram’s BorgWarner BW 48-11 active transfer case meant we survived the winter in mostly flat southeast Michigan without needing winter tires.
