Months of True-Planet Testing Potential customers to TFL’s 2022 Best Truck of the Calendar year: The Winner Is…
January 10, 2022Table of Contents
TFLtruck.com announces the winners of the annual TFL 2022 Very best Truck of the Yr competition. These awards figure out new 2022 pickup trucks for their trailer towing capability, effectiveness, off-highway prowess, technological innovation, and overall performance.
TFLtruck deemed the following four pickup vans for this 2022 competition. In get to be qualified for this opposition, these new 2022 models had to be all-new and accessible as of December 2021. Listed here are the contestants.
- 2022 Ford Maverick
- 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz
- 2022 Nissan Frontier
- 2022 Toyota Tundra
TFLtruck also invited the Ford F-150 Raptor, GMC Hummer EV Truck, and Rivian R1T – but these pickup vans ended up not offered for testing as of December 2021.
The four all-new 2022 vans competed in the subsequent 6 classes:
- TFL Best Towing Truck
- TFL Best MPG Truck
- TFL Best Off-Road Truck
- TFL Best Truck Technology
- TFL Best Performing Truck
- TFL 2022 Truck of the Year
And the winners are… Soon after months of intense real-entire world testing, the TFLtruck.com workforce picked the following winners. Congratulations to the brands and the development teams that produced these able new pickup vehicles.
TFL Most effective Towing Truck
In get to be regarded for this prestigious award, contestants had to survive the Ike Gauntlet™ – the world’s hardest towing exam. This is an 8-mile extend of the I-70 interstate with a 7% grade, a 60 MPH pace restrict, and a optimum elevation of 11,158 ft over sea degree. If a pickup truck can tow a trailer very well on this mountain freeway, it can tow effectively wherever.

The 2022 Toyota Tundra can take the TFL Greatest Towing Truck award with self confidence. In a quick sum of time, we had the new Tundra tow an 8,100 lbs trailer more than 300 miles. This involves two runs up and down the Ike Gauntlet. The truck carried out confidently on the way day in Tow Haul and Tow+ modes. The new 2022 Tundra chassis and the up to date suspension make for a really stable and self-confident towing platform. There had been instances when I had the trailer behind the Tundra and it felt like the trailer was not even there. The twin-turbocharged V6 presented effortless energy on the way up the mountain, and the truck’s cabin was the quietest we ever examined.
Congratulations to the Toyota Tundra workforce for producing an fantastic trailer towing equipment not just amid these rivals, but amongst all other 50 %-ton pickup trucks in this section.
TFL Most effective MPG Truck
Which pickup truck has the very best authentic-environment efficiency? We set all of these vans on our MPG Loops. This consists of a 50-mile combined city-and-highway loop, 66-mile highway loop, or a extended highway-journey MPG verification. Not all of the contestants have been examined on each loop, but we drove numerous miles in each and every. The Tundra did a 1,000+ mile street journey from Houston, TX to Boulder, CO.
Although most of these vans did perfectly, just one was basically way earlier mentioned all expectations. The 2022 Ford Maverick Hybrid is the TFL Most effective MPG Truck. We verified 40.5 MPG soon after one particular of our combined driving loops. This serious-earth consequence is just remarkable for any crew taxi pickup truck. The Maverick Hybrid comes only in a entrance-wheel-push configuration. The blend of its 2.5-liter I4 and an electrical motor is a single of the smoothest and effective powertrains we just lately sampled.

Congratulations to the Ford Maverick crew on such an achievement, and presenting a pickup like this at an reasonably priced price. The Maverick Hybrid XLT we analyzed had an MSRP of under $28,000.
TFL Ideal Off-Highway Truck
Picking the most effective off-highway truck is not as simple. We took all of the contestants on a variety of Rocky Mountain off-street trails in Colorado to see how they conduct when the likely will get steep, dusty, rocky, and muddy.
We compare all of the off-road technical specs: floor clearance, strategy/departure angles, tires, turning radius, off-street modes, transfer cases, and differential lockers. Due to the fact off-road path circumstances are at any time-modifying, feeling will come into play when picking the very best of the bunch.
The 2022 TFL Ideal Off-Highway Truck award goes to the all-new 2022 Nissan Frontier. The Frontier Professional-4X we tested has what it will take to deal with tricky trails. It has the locking rear differential, small-range transfer situation, Bilstein shocks, and skid plates. It was a quite very good off-street pickup truck in its former era, and this new a person is no distinct.

The 9-velocity automated transmission offers the wanted gear ratios for sluggish-pace crawling or quicker off-highway working. The Bilstein shocks make limited get the job done of most obstructions. We took it up Webster Go and the Tombstone Hill trails. Its rather smaller mid-measurement proportions make it much better on slim trails.
Congratulations to the Nissan Frontier group for creating a mighty able off-road pickup truck.
TFL Most effective Truck Technologies
This year we are using a closer glance at the consumer interfaces and inside design inside these new pickup trucks. We have a new 100-issue scoring process to judge every single truck on the relieve of use of the infotainment program, steering wheel controls, gauges structure, voice command system, machine integration, and far more.
The TFL Best Truck Technologies award goes to the all-new 2022 Toyota Tundra.

Congratulations to the Toyota staff for simplifying the consumer interface, trying to keep the gauges easy to use, and enhancing voice command and machine integrations techniques.
TFL Most effective Doing Truck
If you have been looking at TFL, you know that we like drag racing pickup vehicles to see how they accelerate and which 1 wins. In a natural way, we had to take all of these pickup vans to our test track at IMI Motorsports to see how they examine. The Ford Maverick and the Hyundai Santa Cruz have turbocharged engines and all-wheel-travel. The Nissan Frontier has a in a natural way aspirated V6 that has class-primary horsepower. The Toyota Tundra has a twin-turbocharged V6 with loads of torque.
In the conclude, the 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz wins the TFL Best Executing Truck award. The Santa Cruz shocked us all by its pace. We expected the new Tundra to be relatively speedy, but the Santa Cruz was approximately just a quick in the course of our -60 MPH tests. We also voted for the Santa Cruz for the reason that of how very well it drives on the pavement. It is nimble and cozy. If you don’t glance back, you might not bear in mind that it has a tiny pickup mattress back again there.

Congratulations to the Hyundai Santa Cruz team for making a compact pickup that is swift and drives just as pleasant as a compact crossover or SUV.
2022 Greatest Truck of the Year!
Last but not least, when all is stated and carried out, after long deliberation, we vote for the all-new 2022 Ford Maverick as the TFL 2022 Best Truck of the Calendar year. This little pickup promised to be affordable and productive, and we found it to check out all the packing containers. It was also in a position to tow a trailer with self-confidence, have 1,300 lbs of logs, and speed up rapidly.

Congratulations to the Ford Maverick crew on this achievement. We cannot wait around to push a Ford Maverick again.
You should join our deliberations in the video clip down below.