At NTEA’s Work Truck Week, which was held March 4-7 in Indianapolis, none of the Big Three of U.S. automakers — Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis — made big announcements regarding their commercial lineups like in years past, but they did offer a few updates to share. Here's what each OEM's professional brand had to say:
Ram Professional
Ram launched its 2025 heavy-duty lineup in January, which was on display in Indianapolis. The new generation feature a Cummins 6.7L diesel engine or a 6.4L V8 Hemi gasoline engine. A column shifter is standard across the lineup.
2025 Ram Heavy Duty and Chassis Cab Specs
- Cummins 6.7L high-output turbo diesel or 6.4L V8 Hemi
- Up to 405 hp and 429 lb.-ft. of torque (gas)
- Up to 430 hp and 1,075 lb.-ft. of torque (diesel)
- 36,610 lbs. of max towing
- 7,590 lb. max payload
- Most advanced Uconnect system
- Available 12" or 14.5" touchscreen display
- On-board power inverter
Both engines are paired with a ZF TorqueFlite 8-speed transmission, which ZF says focuses on minimizing fuel consumption.The TorqueFlite is a variant of ZF's Powerline transmission, which ZF leaders noted (last year at the updated product's launch) had 10% better fuel efficiency and 30% faster shifting compared to automated 6-speeds.
The Ram lineup’s previous generations has 6-speed transmissions. The additional two speeds are meant to create smoother operation when towing and hauling equipment.
The lineup also offers aesthetic improvements, such as the addition of LED lights in the front and rear and new grille designs.
Ram carried over the latest technology from its light-duty lineup. The heavy-duty trucks are now available with bigger screens that act as camera monitors to increase the driver’s visibility when towing and maneuvering tight spaces. Customers can even receive a relocatable rear camera straight from the factory, Dave Sowers, director of Ram Professional operations, said at the show.
At 2024 Work Truck, Ram had stressed at the pro brand's launch that they would focus on using telematics and preventive maintenance to achieve more efficiency.
Sowers noted this was still a work in progress.
“The story last year was Ram Professional needs to grow from a product and from a process perspective ... and the product piece of that is on track,” Sowers explained, referencing the launch of the all-new light-duty truck lineup in Q1 2024, the new HD lineup in Q1 2025, and a “steady cadence” of ProMaster innovations that have taken place through the recent model years—not to mention the all-electric version of the delivery van currently available for order.
Ram also expects demand for its ProMaster to grow, adding 200 ProMaster dealers to its network in 2024 alone, the brand announced in its Work Truck Week 2025 press conference.
GM Envolve
General Motors was the No. 1-selling OEM for fleets in 2024 and has already seen a 17% year-over-year increase in sales for 2025, according to Jennifer Costabile, GM Envolve’s general director of marketing and sales. Costabile attributes that success to GM’s wide range of products, which offer “a vehicle for every industry in every location,” including EVs.
The Chevrolet Silverado EV is one of those that has demonstarted it can fit into certain fleet applications.
Watch: Fleet Maintenance Chevy Silverado EV walkthrough
While at the show, one dealer told her that an Albany, New York-based GM customer that previously delivered parts across town using a Silverado 2500 now does do with the electric version.
“They take a lot of gas,” Costabile pointed out of the 2500. “The Silverado EV did the same thing for significantly less. There's no idling, there's no gas to fill up, and the small routes they did—even in cold weather—was not an issue.”
As Tesla's EV market dominance recedes, companies like General Motors have chipped away at the EV market share of the technology company cloaked as an auto manufacturer (or the auto manufacturer cloaked as a technology company — whichever you prefer). GM is inflicting the most damage to Tesla’s market share in the U.S. The OEM boasts the second highest total market share of EVs at 12.6%, according to Car Edge.
These numbers largely reflect the retail market, but GM has seen commercial interest in its EVs as well. Multiple companies, such as Siemens and Metro Detroit utility company DTE, have piloted or integrated the OEM’s EVs into their fleets already, and with “good reception,” Costabile said.
“The reaction to the [electric] vehicles is that it actually is a substantial cost saver over ICE variants,” Costabile said.
On the van side, the company recently brought the Brightdrop electric cargo van under its Chevrolet umbrella to expand its reach to customers with the help of more than 300 Chevrolet dealers.
On the technology front, General Motors is bringing its OnStar data capture to fleet management starting with its 2024 model year vehicles. A standard set of OnStar services is available to fleet managers with each purchase of a GM fleet vehicle.
These services are “aimed around vehicle health data, EV data to manage your fleet, and then we have connected services in the vehicle for navigation and voice commands [to] help the driver focus on getting their job done,” Michelle Calloway, director of business solutions at OnStar, told FleetOwner.
Further, for fleets already using a telematics provider, GM allows its vehicle data to be accessed by its API partners at no additional cost.
“What we've heard from customers is, if they're already working with a partner and using their [telematics] solution today, the cost of change is high,” Calloway explained, “and we want to allow them to take advantage of the great capabilities of GM vehicles in those partner applications.”
GM has also leveraged the capabilities of Lytx to provide in-cab safety alerts for drivers, such as seat belt warnings and other risky driving behaviors.
Ford Pro
Ford Pro, now in its fourth year, also celebrated its growth at the show. Since 2023, “the number of Ford connected commercial vehicles has grown by over 40% with 5.2 million vehicles in operation today,” noted Dave Prusinski, Ford Integrated Services chief revenue officer.
Ford Pro is using data to help fleet managers make informed decisions about their fleet, whether that’s through driver coaching, vehicle maintenance, or how to transition to EVs. Some examples of its new safety offerings include a top speed limiter and an acceleration limiter launching later this year. It has a vehicle start inhibitor that will soon allow fleet owners to prevent a vehicle from starting if it is stolen.
These updates result from an industry heading in a heavily connected direction.
“Fleets today are more intelligent than ever with increased connectivity and expanded capabilities,” Prusinski said. “We're building capabilities at the vehicle’s code level that seamlessly integrate with our fleet management solutions, something only Ford can do with our commercial vehicle.”
Ford Pro also expanded its Elite Commercial Service Centers, exclusive to commercial and fleet vehicles, to 67 locations. The company announced it hopes to total 120 by 2027 during its press conference at Work Truck Week. Including all of Ford’s service centers, the company has added more than 4,000 service technicians and 2,000 service bays to support customers.
On the upfit side, Ford Pro showcased its VIS 2.0 in its booth. VIS 2.0, or Vehicle Integration System 2.0, simplifies work truck upfits, providing easy access to more than 100 vehicle signals without cutting into factory wiring, Andrew Brown, Ford’s Super Duty commercial brand manager, said.
“Before, some upfitters would have to get a brand-new truck, tear apart the dash, cut in some wires, splice in to get the signals they needed, and reassemble everything,” he said. “But now [the module is] in one location and very easy to access.”
And that’s just on the hardware side.
With VIS 2.0, Ford Pro also simplified the upfit process on the software side, allowing the upfitter to program in fully customized functions specific to the application in which the truck will be used.
“The beauty of this is that it's a pretty simple and easy-to-use logic editor, and they can use any CAN signal, signals from their upfit, whatever they want to, to create custom logic for their upfit,” Brown said.
He used the example of customizing a Ford factory key fob to unlock all the doors and drawers in a work truck service body.
This article was originally published on FleetOwner.com.
About the Author
Jade Brasher
Senior Editor Jade Brasher has covered vocational trucking and fleets for the past five years. A graduate of The University of Alabama with a degree in journalism, Jade enjoys telling stories about the people behind the wheel and the intricate processes of the ever-evolving trucking industry.