re: Best trucks for the money, measured in cost per 10k miles of lifespan

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My only complaint was changing the $85 timing belt

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The Ridgeline will need a timing belt every 85,000 miles. It will cost more than $85. But everything else avour that engine is awesome. It’s the old school Honda VTEC design that they are slowly phasing out in favor of smaller turbo motors.

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I have a 2012 Tacoma 4x4 with 236K miles. She's been a fantastic truck but has been throwing a few codes that point towards fuel injectors, a mass air flow sensor, and possibly a new fuel pump.

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How much you want for it?

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For example, birds have an average life of 3 years. Very few birds live three years, though, because half are eaten by snakes and rodents before 6 months, and the other half live past 5-6 years.

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So I should pick a truck based on snakes and rodents not wanting to eat them?

Not too shocking, especially with a Honda and Toyota leading the pack for the midsizes.

Full sizes are kinda the same. I see decent deals on the Silverados and they've recently updated them to look like they spent more than $30 on the interior. The 5.3 they'll try to saddle you with sucks though. I don't know if I get Tundra though, the dealers always seem to have like two in stock and act like they're made of gold. Same with the F150s, except they have a bunch of them. And I don't know was paying $57k for a Titan.

Owned 2 Nissan Titans since 2004. Never once had a mechanical issue with either truck. I'm either lucky or list is shite.
I also have driven a GMC company truck since 2016. 2 engines and 3 transmissions.

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Turbos are awesome to me. But the reasoning for using turbos in these trucks is asinine to say the least. It's all to meet gov emissions standards but the trucks will never be run as docile as for the tests. So it's moot.

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I know people tend to hate CAFE standards just on principle but they have had the unintended consequence of ushering in the apogee of ICE performance. All that money carmakers have spent on turbos has developed unreal performance. My wife's DD has 617hp (underrated and more like 650+ at the crank when dynoed) and that would almost certainly never have happened if it weren't for the push in developing turbos.

Trucks are the perfect place for turbos. Manufacturers of medium and heavy duty trucks have known this for decades. The low end torque and wide flat torque plateau are perfect for trucks and not possible with a NA engine. In the end CAFE has created a serendipitous performance increase albeit with an increase in cost and complexity.

You can hate CAFE for the added cost and complexity but if performance is your primary metric I would argue CAFE has inadvertently pushed performance but even in the most skeptical view performance has increased in spite of CAFE.