EOG’s Black Edition F550-5500 is Not Your Grandpa’s Pickup Truck

After surveying numerous attendees at the Truck Camper Adventure Rally, two things seem to bite truck camper newbies more often than not: underestimating the weight of the camper and underestimating the payload rating of the truck. Underestimating a camper’s weight is forgivable, since the actual loaded weight is much higher than the official dry weights listed on manufacturer websites. This number can vary from as little as 200 pounds to as high as 2,500 pounds, depending on the size of the camper. This is why having your rig weighed is so critical. On the other hand, not knowing your truck’s payload rating is egregious because it can be found on the driver side door jamb on the Tire and Loading sticker. Looking at the sticker only takes a few seconds.

Unfortunately, with larger, more palatial truck campers, the payload rating of even a one-ton dually is sometimes not enough, especially when opting for a crew cab and a diesel. This means the GVWR of even a Ford F350 DRW, Ram 3500 DRW, and Chevy Silverado 3500HD DRW truck is sometimes not enough. This is why so many truck camper owners are opting for higher-rated class 4 or class 5 trucks. For the largest truck campers, though, many are bypassing a better-rated Ford F450, Ram 4500, and a Chevy Silverado 4500HD truck and are buying a Ford F-550, a Ram 5500, or a Chevy 5500HD chassis instead. Those going with a class 5 chassis have two choices when hauling a camper: outfitting the truck with either a custom truck bed or an OEM-style truck bed by Elevation Off-Grid.

Elevation Off-Grid (EOG) builds the best, most capable pickup truck on the planet. As a matter of fact, EOG is the only Ford F-550 and Ram 5500 pickup manufacturer in the world. Pickup is the key word. All class 5 trucks are shipped as a chassis only. EOG has filled the void by offering a Ford F-550 and Ram 5500 chassis with a standard, 8-foot pickup bed.

EOG’s class 5 trucks not only offer a GVWR of 19,500 pounds with a nearly 10,000 pound payload, but also a silky-smooth ride comparable to the Ford F-150 and Ram Power Wagon using the highly-regarded LiquidSpring Suspension (EOG can even outfit F-450 and F-350 with a LiquidSpring Suspension too). Add MIL-SPEC 41-inch super single tires and a custom front winch bumper to the mix and you have a class 5 pickup truck quite unlike anything else on the planet. There’s no doubt about it, EOG’s Ford F-550 and Ram 5500 is not your grandpa’s pickup truck. It’s not even close.

To learn more about EOG and the company’s current offerings, we spoke with CEO and co-owner, Jerime Monroe, at the 2023 Overland Expo Pacific Northwest.

Thanks, Jerime, for talking with us. You’ve got some beautiful trucks and rigs here at the show. Can you tell us about EOG’s current offerings?

Jerime Monroe: Thanks, Mike! Elevation Off-Grid is most commonly known for being the only factory spec F-550 and Ram 5500 pickup manufacturer in the world. We build exclusively with LiquidSpring Suspension. All of our trucks are fitted with a full LiquidSpring Suspension. On the Ford side, we have three different models. Our Limitless, which is a standard-height dually truck, again, standard with a pickup bed. But we can use a series of different flatbeds with that truck. Then our Peak and our Black are big, single wheel conversion trucks that maintain same payload and tow ratings as the dually, but you gain the off-road capability of having a big, MIL-SPEC 41-inch tire. The Peak Edition and Black are both mechanically identical. Peak comes in a little bit lower price point and has a little bit less ancillary features, less forward facing lighting, less rearward facing lighting, or no rearward facing lighting, no Warn winch and Halogen lamps, as opposed to the Black Edition, with about a $20,000 cost difference between the Peak and the Black.

What does each truck sell for?

Jerime Monroe: The Black Edition F-550 is $184,900, the Peak F-550 is $164,900, and the Limitless is $139,900.

What is Elevation Off-Grid’s best seller?

Jerime Monroe: The best seller is the Black Edition by far.

And what’s the clientele for each of those trucks? What are you seeing as far as truck campers?

Jerime Monroe: Our Black Edition is popular with the truck camper market because it has over a 9,000-pound payload rating, and when it’s fully loaded, it still has awesome handling, very minimal body roll, even with a heavy, high center-of-gravity, Host, Arctic Fox, or Eagle Cap, something like that. It carries and maintains and handles that weight very well. The average client for our trucks is basically the guy who wants the best of the best in a turn-key application without any sacrifices. What’s awesome about our trucks is you can pull the camper off and you still have an awesome daily driver.

Can a customer opt for a custom truck bed rather that your OEM-style bed? Do you work closely with any truck bed manufacturers?

Jerime Monroe: Yes, we work closely with Bowen Customs for flatbed applications, including the black editions. They get shipped over to Bowen to have a flatbed put on them or camper bed.

Can you explain the whole process for making an OEM-style pickup truck bed?

Jerime Monroe: Sure! So, for those who don’t know class 5 trucks, the Ram or the Ford, the wheel base on them is 4 inches longer. So you can’t just take a bed off of a Ram 3500 or 4500 or 3500 and put it on one of these trucks. It won’t fit. There’s no bracketry. The frames are different. And the overall length of the bed is different.

So, on our Ford side, we actually remove the outer bedside and replace the outer bedside only with a bedside that’s 4 inches longer. And we create a filler plate in the front to fill the void from the top view. So we maintain all factory interior bed dimensions. So you can still use all your standard Tonneau covers, basically all bed accessories that are specifically made for an 8-foot bed. They all still work with our trucks. And then all of the bracketry mounting hardware, all of that. We engineered all of the hardware to hold everything, to keep everything in place and maintain the payload rating of the truck.

So that was the Ford. What about the Ram?

Jerime Monroe: Ram is different, there’s a different approach to it. Ram has steel bedsides, so we actually extend the bed, the outer bedside on the Ram, and then the same block-off plate in the front and the same engineering and ultra-high strength steel bed mounting brackets.

Do your builds in any way void a manufacturer’s warranty?

Jerime Monroe: No, not at all. What’s really cool about our trucks is that every aspect of the build follows either Stalantis bodybuilder guidelines or Ford bodybuilder guidelines. So we don’t do anything that Ford or Stalantis-Ram says don’t do. If they advise against welding somewhere, we don’t weld there. We create a bolt-on part that’s an engineered solution to solve that problem without voiding any warranties or jeopardizing the structural integrity of the truck itself.

What’s also cool about our trucks is they’re all FMBSS compliant. They meet all regulations, roll tests, all the lighting, all of that. We took all of that into consideration when we’re developing the build itself.

Okay, let’s talk about a couple of specific rigs. First let’s talk about the Overland Explorer Vehicle’s winning entry for the show. Tell us about the EOG truck with that?

Jerime Monroe: So the winner is 2023 Ram 5500 Black Edition with a full LiquidSpring Suspension. And the kit for that truck is proprietary to us. We did a few things differently to allow us to build the truck the way that we need to, including Amp steps. You never see Amp steps on a Ram 5500 due to the location, basically, or space considerations. It’s a really cool build, and a really cool kit. We got to work with Colin Cook, the owner of the truck. He kind of had the vision, and we actually met him at SEMA last year when we debuted our Ram 5500 pickup. Previous to that, we were only doing Fords. But we had been working on our Ram build for a little over a year prior to SEMA and we got to release it there. He flew out, saw it and placed his reservation deposit.

Colin was very particular about the function and features that he wanted. “Cut no corners, best of the best,” he said. Everywhere you look it has the best that Elevation Off-Grid offers. It has a one-piece wheel it’s made by Hutchinson. It was designed and engineered by Justin Waring of Waring Wheels. It’s actually the only wheel for a single wheel Ram application that maintains a proper offset, so you have the exact same track, front and rear on a Ram 5500.

Very cool. So, what are your overall thoughts on the OEV High Country Rig?

Jerime Monroe: Love it. It came out beautiful. The guys at Overland Explorer Vehicles (OEV), they have such a standout product. Pop-Top Overland killed it with the camper and tray install, fast and clean. It’s unbelievable how great they did in getting it done so fast.

So, what are your thoughts on the Host Everest Rig in your display? What kind of truck is on there? And what are your overall thoughts on the build?

Jerime Monroe: So, that’s a 2022 Ford F-550 Black Edition and a 2022 Host Everest 11.6 triple-slide truck camper. It has all of our camper tie-downs and hitches, all of that stuff which is also proprietary to us. We designed and engineered all that. The client’s name is Lucas, and he takes his family out camping with it. He actually just got back from a trip out to the Oregon coast on the beach. His truck has about every option you can get from us. Sound deadening in cab, full onboard air couplers in every wheel well, the full lighting package, under-body lighting, everything. That is about the most fully-optioned, most badass truck that we build. It’s a perfect match with the Host Everest. It’s a heavy camper. It’s about 5,700 pounds with 50 percent water in the tank, and the EOG truck handles it like nothing else on the road.