Truck Mileage
I'd like to add my two cents in, My wife drives a 99 dodge ram 1500 4 x 4, with a 360 engine. She spends most of the time on a four lane hwy. with traffic lights at every mile, all the way to work, 16 miles each way. I keep a log of all the fuel that we used and the miles on the truck each time we fill it up. She is averaging 18.3 MPG.
I drive a 93 dodge Dakota 4 x 4 with a 318 engine in it. I always give my wife the newer vehicle. I get 16.4 MPG empty. I own a Residential Building Business, so I'm always pulling something with it. I usually pull a 18 ft. open trailer, and always load it past my trucks pulling weight. Good trailer brakes are wonderful! I get about 14.5 puling my trailer with an average of about 7000 lbs. on it. Remember, I keep a gas log on all my vehicles. This vehicle has 180,000 miles on it with the same motor, and a rebuilt tranny at about 130,000 miles. Everything else is original.
I have a 93 Jeep wrangler with the 4.0l motor and a five speed tranny. It has 6 inches of lift with 33 inch tires on it and 3.08:1 gearing. I never use fifth gear because of the gearing. The Jeep get just over 18 MPG of the highway, and even better mileage of the trails. I never use the Jeep in the winter, it's just a toy for us to pull behind our motor home. By the way, my motor home gets 8 MPG with the 8.1l GM motor. Unfortunately, Dodge was not making any motor home chassis at the time when we bought our motor home.
One more thing, I had a 93 Chevy 1500 4 x 4 with a 5.7l motor, and I would get 13.9 MPG with it. Typically anyone who ever got over 16 MPG with a 5.7l motor is confused on how to calculate their mileage, or they had the motor worked on. I worked on my motor myself, and after some performance enhancements on the 5.7l, I was receiving 18.2 MPG, but the really big thing about the enhancements was the ability to get up to speed quickly and pass vehicles when needed. I still have the gas log books on all of my vehicles, even the ones I have sold.
By the way, did I mention that I am a Certified Master Mechanic on both gas and diesel engines, and vehicles with the State of Michigan.
My advice would be to get the Dodge Diesel, with a manual tranny, and if you need extra power, get the HD Dodge diesel with the manual tranny. The Ford diesel is my second choice.