Transwest Ford

It’s not an easy thing to maintain a consistent level of success when you’re held to a certain standard of excellence. Yet, for more than 100 years now, Ford has made being the world’s foremost maker of trucks look easy despite its own expectations of excellence and the constantly raised bar of customer expectations.

Last July marked 100 years since the first Ford truck—the 1917 Ford Model TT—hit the market and became the standard-bearer for capability, versatility, and toughness. At just $600, the Ford Model TT became an overnight sensation and delivered sales of 209 trucks in its first year. By the time it was replaced by the Ford Model AA 11 years later, sales of the Ford Model TT totaled 1.3 million.

The high points and milestones for Ford trucks are many and varied over the past century, but there may be no more important moment than the launch of the F-Series in 1948.

“After the war, a lot of rural Americans moved to urban and suburban centers looking for work, and many took their Ford pickups with them,” said Bob Kreipke, Ford historian. “Ford saw this as an opportunity and began work on the next generation of trucks for 1948, what came to be known as F-Series Bonus Built trucks.”

The F-Series had not only withstood through 70 years, but it has prevailed—2017 marked the 41^st consecutive year that it has ranked No. 1 among all trucks in the United States, proving that Ford’s truck legacy is as much about what’s yet to come as it is about what’s already transpired.

To see why today’s Ford F-Series trucks—including the 2018 Ford F-150 and Ford Super Duty—don’t raise the bar for truck capabilities as much as they represent the bar by which all other trucks are measured, stop in for a test drive at Transwest Ford.