Main reason there are so many Fords at the mines here is because they are the lowest bidder. Nothing really to do with how tough they are. We used to own a construction company, you buy the cheapest fleet vehicles you can. We had everything single Big 3 brand at one time or another. Meh they are all crap.
I beg to differ. I worked as a buyer for one of the world's biggest mining companies in Northern Nevada for many years. Ford WAS NOT always the lowest bidder. But the Fords were the easiest to keep running. If you know anything about modern mining you know these truck run in mud all their lives (got to keep them haul roads wet, no dust!). The GMs we tried needed a complete front end redo yearly - even the Suburbans and all they did was haul tour groups around. The mud - especially freezing mud in the winter - would build up in those A-frames and tear them up quickly. Parts for the Dodges were sometimes impossible to find...we bought a couple Dodge/Cummins 5500s one time, and put service bodies on them. A carrier bearing went out (mud, again) on one of them in just a couple months and it took Dodge months to come up with a replacement. Continuing parts problems caused us to get rid of the Dodges. Anything we needed for any of the Fords that wasn't stocked in our warehouse we would get overnight from Salt Lake.
The other equation here is - staying with one manufacturer saves on warehousing costs and maintenance costs. The section of our warehouse dedicated to Ford pickup parts was large enough, for sure we didn't want to add GM and Dodge sections. And our mechanics went to Ford training classes and used Ford proprietary software to work on the new trucks. Were we to send these guys to GM and Dodge training also?
Regardless, I think it is telling that almost every mining company in Nevada uses Ford pickups but I can assure you that Ford was not always the lowest bidder. It just makes economic sense to stick with one manufacturer rather than try to support two or three different ones.