I would guess the new production trucks with the emissions stuff have quite a ways to go before they can even come close to being as cost effective as a well built glider. My 2013 FL Columbia glider with a 12.7 DDEC IV 60 pumped up to 550 hp and 1850 torque, 18 speed in front of 2.64 rears, riding on wide based low pro 22.5 rubber gets nicely into 7 avg mpg territory in the winter and nicely into 8 avg mpg territory in the summer. Sure, I am not heavy all the time. Average payload in the box is around 35K. Considering the greatly reduced initial cost and smaller overall operation cost of a pre-egr engine and the fuel mileage one can tweak out of them, there is no way the new stuff will compete favorably for quite a few years. If I need to I can carry 2000 more lb payload compared to a similarly spec'd new production truck with all that emissions stuff also. Again, no contest. And one also has to figure in that a glider gets to avoid the Federal Excise Tax also. When you step back and take a long hard look at everything, there is no production truck going to beat a glider for a long, long time.

I took a look at what cost would be for a number of other new trucks spec'd identical to mine. Cheapest I could negotiate, with FET, was $160,000. I got my glider for $112,000, ready to work. It is going to take one heck of a lot of extra fuel mileage to make up for the over $40,000 I saved in the purchase. And not too many new trucks are beating me in fuel mileage now. And they sure are not going to beat me in overall operation costs when you include maintenance and repairs on the engine components.

Pics are on my profile page.