2019 Ram Heavy Duty pickup truck shows in Detroit: Big bruiser wears a starched shirt

In 1981, when the Dodge pickup and Ram badge first applied to the truckmaker’s heavy-duty trucks, a 12-inch screen came from Sears. Color wasn’t necessarily a given, either.

A lot has changed over the four decades and five generations that Dodge (or Ram) has offered a heavy-duty three-quarter or one-ton pickup to the masses.

The 2019 Ram Heavy Duty pickup that arrived Monday is no exception.

Although Sears is gone, the Ram HD 2500 has remained. The big-rig truck attacks new buyers with compelling equipment at the corners: The Tradesman work truck is refreshingly simple, the high-trim Limited rivals first-class luxury travel, and the new Power Wagon is a trail bruiser with hardware bona fides.

When it goes on sale this spring, the Ram HD pickups will replace the current heavy-duty line, which was introduced in 2010. Unlike the new 2019 Ram 1500 pickups, officials say there won’t be overlap between the two generations of heavy-duty Ram pickups—new trucks will replace old trucks on dealer lots.

Available in Tradesman, Big Horn, Power Wagon, Laramie, Laramie Longhorn, and Limited trim levels, Ram didn’t say how much the truck would cost when it goes on sale later this year in the U.S. although it’s likely to top the current truck’s base price of more than $34,000. (Texas and nearby states will get a Lone Star variant that largely follows the Big Horn trucks.)

2019 Ram Heavy Duty

Lighter weight, heavy duty

The trucks will be available in two-door Regular Cab; four-door Crew Cab; and longer, four-door Mega Cab configurations with a 6-foot-4 or 8-foot bed. Regular Cabs can only be fitted with an 8-foot bed, Mega Cabs only get 6-foot-4 beds. Rear-wheel drive is standard on all trucks, except on Power Wagons, which are four-wheel drive only. All trim levels offer four-wheel drive as an option. All trim levels are available as 2500 single rear-wheel, three-quarter ton pickups; 3500 single rear-wheel, one-ton pickups; or 3500 dual-rear wheel, one-ton pickups; except the Power Wagon, which is 2500 level only.

More than 98 percent of the Ram Heavy Duty’s new frame is high-strength steel, according to the truckmaker. Lighter weight material in the frame, hood, and powertrain have shed more than 140 pounds from the truck’s overall weight. Most trucks’ wheelbases are incrementally shorter than the models they replace, although their overall lengths are up by about an inch in popular configurations.

Like the outgoing pickup, the new Ram Heavy Duty will be powered by a 6.4-liter V-8 gas engine as standard, or a 6.7-liter turbodiesel inline-6 as an option. The Cummins-built turbodiesel is available in two tunes: with 400 horsepower and 1,000 pound-feet of torque as an option, or 370 hp with 850 lb-ft as standard. The 6.4-liter gas engine, which is more common, makes 410 hp and 429 lb-ft, the same as last year. The 6.4-liter gasser gets a new 8-speed automatic transmission, the turbodiesel sticks with a Aisin 6-speed automatic that presumably can withstand the enormous torque without twisting into a pretzel.

2019 Ram Heavy Duty

The 1,000 lb-ft torque rating is as symbolic as it is superlative; the engine doesn’t reach max twist in the first two gears, and the rating is largely bragging rights for owners who compete in the pickup arms race. The other trump cards for the Ram HD are its 35,100-pound tow rating and 7,680-pound payload capacity. (The max tow rating is for rear-drive, dually 3500 diesel-powered models with a regular cab; the max payload rating applies to gas-powered 3500 models with rear-wheel drive and a regular cab.)

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