It’s time to put this new 2025 Ford F-250 Power Stroke V8 turbo-diesel to the ultimate world’s toughest towing test – the Ike GauntletTM. This time we are pulling a large gooseneck equipment trailer with our “General Giant” bobbed deuce-and-a-half military truck on top. This F-250 is maxed on payload and towing capacity. Let’s see how it does!
Big thanks to Weigh Safe hitches and Silver Spur Trailers for making video possible.
This F-250 is a unique configuration. It’s a two-door regular cab 4×4 XL model with the Off-Road package. It’s rolling on 33-inch off-road tires and it has a factory winch up front. This truck has just over 3,300 lbs of payload capacity and just around 20,000 lbs of towing capacity.
The total trailer load we are pulling is close to 19,500 lbs. We are using a Weigh-Safe gooseneck ball hitch with a built-in weight scale. This made our trip way easier and safer. We were able to dial in our 3,000 lbs gooseneck tongue load as we were loading the military truck.
The F-250 is powered by standard output a 6.7L Power Stroke V8 turbo-diesel. The rating is 475 horsepower and 1,050 lb-ft of torque. It’s mated to a 10-speed heavy-duty automatic transmission.
I was initially concerned that this regular cab F-250 is too light or too short in order to tow this heavy trailer across Utah and Colorado. However, the ride was confident and stable. The truck was not riding on bump stops. We distributed the load properly.
In the end, the F-250 ran up the Ike GauntletTM in 8 minutes 26 seconds. This is a little slower than a perfect 8 minute run, but none of truck’s systems appeared to get too hot. It performed very well, and the exhaust brake helped to control the descent.
The one negative of this towing road trip is that this configuration of the F-250 has a smallish 29-gallon diesel tank. We averaged around 21 MPG without any load in this truck, 12.1 MPG when pulling an empty gooseneck trailer, and around 9 MPG with pulling this maximum load. When towing at the maximum, it meant that we needed to stop frequently for fuel. The truck was also using a lot of DEF. We do not have an exact measure of how much DEF it used, but we had put 4 gallons of DEF into the tank to maintain a comfortable level after around 1,800 miles.
Join the video below for all the fun!
