My dad has owned one Ford, one Toyota, a half dozen Chevy's, and is finally trying out Ram. I can tell you that he will never go back to a Toyota or a Ford. The Ford was unreliable. The Tundra rode rough, towed poorly, had a horribly outdated interior, got terrible mpg, and cost more for the year/miles than any other brand. The Chevy's have mostly been good, but the new half ton chevy's are mostly gutless when it comes to towing, so my dad has gone to the Ram with the 5.7L hemi. Honestly it's a comfortable, smooth-riding, powerful, affordable truck. I don't think any new half tons compete with it very well, and somehow it costs less and is still assembled here, and has one of the most reliable and smooth-shifting transmissions out there. Many guys on my old ecodiesel forum had over 300k miles on the original transmission (mostly towing) with zero issues. In fact, I'm not sure I've heard of one breaking down. I'm sure it happens, but not much.

That being said, I don't care for the Ram 2500/3500 at all - they're assembled in Mexico and I'm out on that. When I went from half ton to 3/4 ton, I went back to Chevy and it's been a good truck. I had a loaner F-150 a while back and didn't care for it at all. Drove my dad's Tundra and thought it was the worst value for a half ton that I'd ever seen. It couldn't tow nearly as well as my Ram Ecodiesel at the time, which didn't tow as well as my Ram hemi. And it rode horribly rough unloaded.

Chevy's 5.3L is just a dog of a motor with any weight behind it. I drove one for many years. Maybe it's better now, but I'm not going back to it anytime soon. But I'll admit I haven't tried to tow with the new Chevy half ton trucks. I know the 6.2L is good, but premium gas and only offering it at high trim levels kills any appeal to me.