Safe, family-friendly pickup trucks include the Ford F-150, Toyota Tundra, Honda Ridgeline, Hyundai Santa Cruz, and Toyota Tacoma.
Modern pickup trucks can tow and haul more than ever. Multiple „light-duty“ full-size trucks are capable of pulling over 10,000 pounds, which is more than enough to tow things like boats, car trailers, or work equipment. Then there are the trucks designed as radical off-road machines with big knobby tires and massive suspension travel. But modern pickup trucks are capable of more than just impressive towing capacity or smashing through the world’s toughest terrain. They’re also spacious, high-tech, feature-rich forms of passenger transport.
To accommodate more passengers, crew-cab (four-door) configurations of pickup trucks have mostly taken over the market, with lots of full- and mid-size trucks now coming with only four doors. There are even a few compact trucks that have enough room for families and enough capability to haul around or muddy mountain bikes or make all kinds of trips to the local hardware store for your latest home improvement project.
But which are the best ones for families? I’ve been testing pickup trucks for over a decade, with experience behind the wheel of just about every truck on the market. And SlashGear’s editors have tested all the latest models, driving them in all sorts of unique scenarios, so we know which trucks live up to the hype. So for this list, we’ve taken our experience with trucks and combined it with modern safety ratings to identify the best trucks that balance truck capabilities with family-friendly features.Ford F-150
The Ford F-150 is one of the most versatile trucks on sale today. Depending on how you equip it, the F-150 is capable of towing as much as 13,500 pounds or hauling a payload of 2,440 pounds. It’s available with several different engines, including a 2.7-liter EcoBoost V6, a 3.5-liter PowerBoost Hybrid V6, and a 5.0-liter V8 for the truck purists out there. And let’s not forget the fully-electric version of the F-150, the Lightning. There’s even the off-road conquering Raptor, which will thrill drivers and passengers alike over some of the world’s roughest terrain.
The latest version of the F-150 uses Ford’s latest BlueCruise hands-free technology, which should certainly take some of the strain off those summer family road trips. It’s also spacious and comfortable, with a generally smooth ride on the highway and impressive interior tech. The latest F-150 shines in safety tests too, earning five out of five stars from NHTSA in its overall safety rating and a Top Safety Pick designation from the IIHS.
The F-150 received the lowest possible score of „Poor“ from the IIHS in the moderate overlap front crash test, but that’s relatively common amongst big full-size trucks these days. Conversely, it received the top „Good“ score for small overlap frontal safety and side crash protection. Starting prices for the latest F-150 range from around $40,000 for base two-door models, all the way up to over $80,000 for the high-performance Raptor.
