Our friend used to be a Dodge dealer (Allen Dodge, Derry NH), we have had both Fords and Chevy trucks. The Dodge trucks could have a long life, but it was a flog to keep them going. I had no interest in gambling if my vehicle would make it through the day without something going wrong. In terms of utility, the Ford and Chevy trucks were about equal and gas/maintenance was about the same but our personal preference was the Chevy based on driving perception.
If Ray is looking for a PUT, I'm sure he will make his work truck work, unlike the other 75% of PUT owners. Anyone want to put a ratio on how much an Adventure/Tour motorcycle spends really Adventuring vs Touring? Riding groomed dirt county roads doesn't count, I do that on my FJR.
Up until the mid 70's you could buy a full size, 6 passenger, rail frame car that had good towing capacity and a huge trunk so it could do a lot of work that today's light PUTs perform. Granted, it got 10 mpg and lasted a reliable 60k miles. Today, if you want to do anything more than light towing or need to bring home Tom's big screen TV then you have almost no choice but a PUT. I have no idea why people that live in downtown Boston have 1/2 ton or bigger PUTs.
Here on the coast a lot of people have PUTs to pull their boats but do it so infrequently it may make better sense to rent a truck for a day or pay a towing service for the 2 days a year the boat travels over roads. New England is still rural enough that there are lots of home/farms that can still make use of a PUT.
When we owned horses we really had a need for a PUT to haul hay and horse stuff plus tow a 2 horse trailer. Our PUTs got used as a work truck almost every day. Today, in a mixed bag, we need to occasionally tow up to 1/2 ton, get to our town's muddy household dump weekly and be able to carry home construction stuff. Instead of a PUT, we have a Weird Alice vehicle -- a Honda Element. When we come back from the barn we can open all 4 doors and fire hose the interior to get out all the foot borne barn byproducts. We can pull out the seats and have about the same bed capacity as a LUV (Light Utility Vehicle). With Blizzak snow tires, the Element is about the best snow vehicle I've ever driven and it gets mid 20's for mileage. But damn, it's embarrassing to be seen driving