F150 / 1500 - 1/2 Ton
F250 / 2500 - 3/4 Ton
F350 / 3500 - 1 Ton
Tonnage Classification usually goes by Payload Capacity.
Sort of, and that is the general way people view the ratings / naming of vehicles. However, it is more complex than that, and the history of light trucks in America plays into it a lot. Sure, today we call Ford F150 / Chevrolet 1500, and Ram 1500 trucks “ half ton “. And 250/2500/2500 three quarter ton, and F350/3500/3500 one ton. But really, they are not, not even as the companies “rate” them.
Like many things automotive, you have to go back to the beginning of civilian vehicle production just after WW II. During WW II the military used ratings like quarter ton, half ton, three quarter ton, one ton, etc, to rate vehicles. After the war many people were familiar with this rough concept. It had been in use before the war also (both civ and mil), but far fewer people had any real idea of what that meant to the load capacity of the vehicle in real world terms. The war exposed a lot of young American males to what a truck could do and how much was a ton, or half ton, etc.
After the war Ford came out with the F-1, which is called a half ton truck and rated it with a payload capacity of about 1000 lbs, depending on your exact configuration of options. There was also an F-2, an F-3, and an F-4. The -2 and -3 were “three quarter ton” trucks, and the F-4 was a “one ton”.
Chevrolet had the 3100 (1/2 ton), 3600 (3/4 ton), and 3800 (1 ton), Dodge had the B series, the B-1-B was half tone, B-1-C was 3/4 ton ,a nd B-1-D was 1 ton. Every couple years Dodge incremented the number, so that by 1953 they were using B-4-B, B-4-C, and B-4-D. 1954 saw the introduction of the C series Dodges using the same general format.
A few years later Ford changed the designation to F-100 for the F-1, combined the F-2 / -3 into the F-250, and the F-4 into the F-350. But all the trucks now had more options, and the actual payload of the F-100 was anything from about 760 lbs to about 1530 lbs, depending on the configuration and options. So the heavy duty half ton was really rated at three quarter ton, and the 250 could be rated for as much as a ton.
Around the same time (within a couple year span of each other) Dodge adopted D100, D200, and D300 and Chevrolet adopted C10, C20, and C30 (4x4 models were K, not C), but GMC adopted 1000 (1/2 ton), 1500 (3/4 ton), and 2500 (1 ton). Later Chevy went to 15, 25, and 35.
In the mid 1970’s the F-150 was introduced. This was a heavy duty half ton, really a half ton with some three quarter ton features on it, designed to be a heavier vehicle to circumvent some emission control regulations in place for lighter GVW vehicles. And the payload was increased to roughly ¾ ton to get the GVW they needed for the emissions sidestep. They were also called a “heavy half”.
All the other makers had to step in line, because consumers see numbers and easy specs. The “150” had to be better than Dodges “100” or Chevy’s “10” (and later 15).
Eventually everyone settled on the 150/1500, 250/2500, 350/3500 format for ratings, and the numbers still were roughly called 1/2, 3/4, and 1 ton trucks, but this had less to do with actual ratings and more to do with rough conventions.
For example, todays 2020 F150 has a payload rating of up to 3270 lbs in some configurations and the base model with the smallest engine is rated at 1990 lbs, and the Raptor is 1200 lbs. But, they still call the F150 a “half ton truck” in all configurations, even though the lightest capacity is over a half ton, and the heaviest capacity options are over 1.5 tons. Other companies have similar spreads and disparities.
So today it is more of a price point / capabilities point convention rather than a true payload capacity rating. But in the past it was indeed the payload capacity.
T!
(edit) Oops, I see Johnkn was posting some of the same info I was while I was typing this.
