If you want to know what the professional haulers think, look at what the majority of them are using. Since the majority of trailers are manufactured in the Elkhart IN area I get to see the new trailers being hauled out to all points across the country. By a huge margin the most popular truck is a 3/4 ton or 1 ton Dodge Cummins. The next most often seen on the road are the early decade 7.3 Powerstroke Fords. At the bottom of the list are GM trucks.
I asked the owner of the company that made my trailer (nice guy, loves building trailers, delivers 50+ trailers a week from 20' enclosed to 48' stacker trailers), and he said the pro haulers that deliver his trailers love the Dodge for the bulletproof nature of the Cummins engines, especially the 5.9L engines from '01 to '05. Yea, eventually they all develop rust but never leave them stranded. Even with 300,000+ miles on them. The Ford 7.3 engines are well respected too but don't have the durability of the Cummins. Not a single one would touch a Ford 6.0 even if it were given to them free because of all the problems. The early decade Duramax engines all need injectors by 100,000 miles and that's a $3500 repair bill. And the LB7 engines (02 to early '05 I believe) all require cooling system mods to pull heavy loads.
A friend of my inlaws (in northern Indiana) has several trucks that contract for hauling race and motor home trailers all over North America out of Elkhart. Every one is a Dodge Cummins with manual trans. He bought a new 2013 Ford 3/4 ton with the 6.7 Powerstroke with 400 hp and 800 lb-ft for himself as a daily driver just to see how it would hold up and is quite pleased with it so far. And ordered a 2014 Dodge 1 ton duallie with the new Cummins that makes 850 lb-ft of torque to replace one of his older Cummins trucks that hit 300,000 miles and is just rusting away. His only interest in any GM truck would be the Allison trans.
So not my opinion but the opinion of those who make a living by hauling- the Dodge/Cummins/manual trans is the most durable truck.
