Ram 2500 at 300,000 Miles: The Honest Owner’s Assessment

Dale Pruitt bought his 2014 Ram 2500 new off a lot in Shreveport, Louisiana on a Wednesday afternoon in October. He paid $52,000 for it, which he describes as too much, and drove it home on a quarter tank because the salesman forgot to fill it, which he describes as an omen. Eleven years later the truck has 301,400 miles on it and Dale has no plans to sell it. We spent a day with him and the truck outside of Natchitoches and asked him to be straight with us about all of it.

He was.

What the truck is

It’s a crew cab, long bed, 4×4 with the 6.7 Cummins and the six-speed automatic. Tradesman trim, which means it came with rubber floors and hand-crank windows and not much else. Dale wanted it that way. Fewer things to break, he said. He has been proven right about this more than once.

The exterior shows its age honestly. The front bumper has a crack on the passenger side from a parking lot incident in 2019 that Dale has not repaired because it doesn’t affect anything. The bed has the kind of scratches and scuffs you get from eleven years of actual use. The paint above the rear wheels has some bubbling. Everything else looks like a truck that’s been taken care of, which is different from a truck that’s been pampered.

Inside it’s clean. Not showroom clean, work clean. The rubber floors have held up well. The seat fabric on the driver’s side is worn on the bolster where Dale gets in and out. The headliner is original and still tight. The radio is the factory unit and it works fine and Dale has never once thought about replacing it.

The engine

The 6.7 Cummins has never been rebuilt. Dale wants to be clear about that because he says people assume at this mileage that something major must have happened. Nothing major has happened. The engine has had the same maintenance schedule since he bought it: oil every 5,000 miles with a Fleetguard filter, coolant flush every two years, fuel filter every 15,000 miles. He keeps a notebook in the glovebox with every service entry written in his own handwriting going back to the first oil change in November 2014.

It uses a small amount of oil between changes. About a quart every 8,000 miles, which Dale says started around 220,000 and has stayed consistent since. He doesn’t consider this a problem. He adds a quart and writes it in the notebook and moves on.

Power feels the same to him as it did at 50,000 miles. We asked if he was sure about that and he said he was sure. He’s not running a tune. Stock injection, stock turbo, stock everything under the hood. The turbo has never been touched. The injectors were replaced as a set at 187,000 miles, which he describes as the single biggest expense the truck has had, and the engine has run cleaner since.

Pull up behind this truck at idle and the exhaust is light grey and mostly invisible. Dale runs good fuel, always from stations with high turnover, and he treats every other tank with a diesel additive he buys by the case from a supplier in Bossier City. He has done this since mile one. Whether that’s the reason the engine is in the shape it’s in is impossible to say with certainty. Dale believes it is and at 301,400 miles his opinion carries some weight.

What has actually broken

The transmission was rebuilt at 210,000 miles. Dale tows regularly, a 14,000-pound equipment trailer for his landscaping business, and he says he probably should have serviced the transmission fluid more aggressively in the early years. He didn’t and it cost him $3,800 at a shop in Shreveport that he trusts and has used ever since. Since the rebuild it has been fine.

The water pump failed at 160,000 miles on a Tuesday morning in a Walmart parking lot in Monroe. He had it towed to a shop and fixed in a day. The alternator went at 240,000 miles, which he says he saw coming because the voltage readings had been slightly low for a few months. He should have caught it sooner. He didn’t. It stranded him for two hours on Highway 84 east of Natchitoches before a guy in a pickup stopped and helped him out.

Both front wheel bearings have been replaced. The rear differential got new fluid and a pinion seal at 195,000 miles. The brake rotors and pads have been replaced three times, which Dale says is normal for a truck that tows as much as his does. One of the door actuators failed last winter and the passenger rear door wouldn’t open from the inside for about six weeks before Dale got around to fixing it. His wife did not find this acceptable. He fixed it.

The air conditioning compressor was replaced at 178,000 miles. In Louisiana this is not optional.

What has not broken

The frame. The front and rear axles. The transfer case. The cab structure. The suspension geometry is still true, which his alignment shop confirmed last spring when they said the front end wore as evenly as anything they’d seen on a high-mileage truck. The electrical system has been completely reliable except for one blown fuse in 2020 that took twenty minutes to diagnose and thirty seconds to fix.

The 6.7 Cummins, as already noted, has never been touched internally. Dale knocks on the hood when he says this. He is not a superstitious man but he is a practical one.

What he’d do differently

Transmission fluid earlier. He says this without hesitation. Every 60,000 miles whether it looks dirty or not, especially if you tow. That’s his advice and it cost him $3,800 to arrive at it.

He’d also buy the same truck again. Same year, same engine, same trim level. He looked hard at a 2023 when the transmission went, ran the numbers on a new payment against a rebuilt transmission and decided the rebuilt transmission was the smarter call by a significant margin. Three years later he still thinks so.

What comes next

Dale wants to get to 400,000 miles. He says this the way a person states a plan, not a wish. He’s had the truck inspected by his mechanic twice in the last year and both times the verdict was the same: keep doing what you’re doing. The frame shows no rust. The engine shows no signs of distress. The only things his mechanic flagged were the rear shocks, which Dale has since replaced and which made a noticeable difference on the highway.

At his current mileage rate, around 25,000 to 28,000 miles per year, he’ll hit 400,000 somewhere in 2027. He’s already written it in the notebook.

RAM Trucks – Built Tough