The Cheapest New Diesel Pickup Truck In America Gets 29 MPG And Is The Only Diesel Half-Ton Left

America’s truck buyers have an unquenchable thirst for ever more power and capability. However, many of those truck owners also don’t want to be married to a gas pump. As diesel falls out of relevance worldwide, fans of compression ignition engines can find respite in full-size pickup trucks. All of America’s Big Three sell massive diesel trucks, but only one manufacturer will still sell you a half-ton truck with a diesel. That truck is the Chevrolet Silverado 1500, and you can get it with a diesel for not much more than the average transaction price of a new car.

The diesel engine experienced a renaissance in America during the late 2000s and early 2010s. Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz helped lead the charge in changing the hearts of American buyers on diesel power. Over the course of a couple of decades, the Germans slowly carved out a niche that became pretty close to mainstream.

The diesels of the late 2000s were not like the smoky, clattery, and unfathomably underpowered mills that many firms were slinging in the 1970s. Modern diesel engines are quieter, smoother, and significantly faster. These engines also scored fantastic fuel economy numbers — often untouchable by anything but hybrids — and did so without smoking out poor cyclists or pedestrians. They went the distance, too. If you look on your local classifieds it shouldn’t be too hard to find an early 2000s Volkswagen diesel with nearly a half-million miles and pickup trucks with even more miles than that.

In the 2010s, other automakers decided not to let the Germans have all of the diesel fun in America. General Motors introduced the Chevy Cruze diesel in America in 2014. In the years after the infamous 2015 Dieselgate emissions scandal, GM has seen an opportunity to fill holes left by Volkswagen pulling out of the diesel market in the United States. In GM’s opinion, diesel wasn’t the bad guy. It was Volkswagen that ruined diesel. This led to the launches of diesel crossovers but also the Chevy Colorado and GMC Canyon diesels in 2016.

These two mid-sizers were the only diesels in their class. Ford didn’t give America a diesel in the newer incarnation of the Ranger, Ram doesn’t sell a mid-size truck in America, and the import brands didn’t sell any, either. Nissan sent a diesel version of the Frontier to the Chicago Auto Show, but that truck remained forbidden fruit.

What America did see was a flurry of compact diesels bolted into the engine bays of half-ton pickups, with each of the Big Three offering their own take. Of those trucks, only one remains and as of publishing, it’s the cheapest way into a new diesel truck in America. That truck is the somewhat unknown Chevy Silverado 1500 with a 3.0-liter Duramax.

GM Diesels Used To Power America

In decades past, General Motors was the undisputed king of diesel power in the United States.

Diesel engines built by GM subsidiaries powered practically every facet of American life. For decades, if you rode in a train pulled or pushed by a diesel-electric locomotive, chances are that the locomotive was built by the former GM Electro-Motive Division featuring prime movers from GM’s former Detroit Diesel division. Other EMD-built and Detroit-powered locomotives hauled goods around America. These trains are still rolling today, long after EMD fell into the hands of Progress Rail and Daimler Truck took over Detroit Diesel.

The former diesel domination of General Motors went even further than that. Detroit Diesel produced one of the most popular highway semi-tractor engines of all time with the Series 60, many of which are still in operation today. Detroit Diesel also had its hands in power generation and in the marine industries. General Motors was such a powerhouse that it also dominated the intercity and transit bus industries while all of this was happening.

Due to General Motors’ incredible popularity in nearly all sectors of transportation, it was once entirely possible that you could have ridden a train pulled by a GM product to ride a GM-produced bus to a dealership where you bought a GM car. If you ordered parts for said car, it could have been delivered to its destination in a truck fitted with GM power. If you boarded a boat that weekend, there was a chance a meaty Detroit Diesel provided propulsion. For a while, GM even built highway tractors, too.

General Motors has since dialed back on the scale of its transportation operations. Alongside shaving off the massive EMD and Detroit Diesel operations, GM no longer builds highway tractors or buses. For a while, GM even pulled out of medium-duty trucks, though it has since returned to that market. However, General Motors hasn’t completely forgotten about diesel.

If you wish to read more about the flavorful history of General Motors diesel, click here to read my previous work. For this story, we’re leaping forward to the 1990s and beyond.

GM’s Diesel Pickup Trucks Get Serious

While General Motors spent most of the 20th Century being the first name in diesel, it was late to find the ideal formula for diesel pickup trucks.

In the 1980s, GM lost ground in the diesel truck wars to Ford and Dodge as both mounted large diesel engines to their trucks that delivered both power and fuel economy. GM’s answer came in 1992 with the 6.5-liter Detroit Diesel V8, most of which were fitted with turbochargers. Upgrading the engine and boosting it got power figures up to 215 HP and 440 lb-ft of torque. Unfortunately, like a bad comedy routine, the 6.5 was initially competitive, but as time rolled on the competition once again left it behind. Over at Ford, F-Series trucks of the early 2000s equipped with International Harvester-developed and Ford-branded Power Stroke 7.3-liter turbodiesels were making 275 HP and 525 lb-ft of torque when attached to manual transmissions.

Thankfully, GM already had a plan, from my retrospective:

Before the 6.5-liter Detroit ended production in 2002, General Motors was already working on a successor. In 1997, General Motors and Isuzu entered into a 60-40 joint venture in a new company called DMAX. Detroit Diesel was also sold to Daimler Truck North America in 2000. Together, the companies worked to create America’s first common-rail, direct-injection diesel truck engine. Not only would their engine be a technological leap forward with the aforementioned technologies, but it would hit the ground running with 300 HP and 520 lb-ft of torque, finally putting General Motors past Dodge and Ford’s entries.

The 6.6-liter Duramax LB7 made its debut in 2000, finding itself saddled in 2001.5 three-quarter and 1-ton trucks. Along with a Bosch high-pressure fuel system and direct injection, those early Duramax engines featured aluminum heads, a fixed-geometry turbo, and 32 valves plus a cast-iron block.

The Duramax V8 has been a staple of General Motors’ diesel trucks ever since. However, you might have noticed that I mentioned that the diesel in America’s cheapest diesel truck is a straight-six. What’s going on there?

The General’s plans for post-Dieselgate domination didn’t end with economy cars and diesel-ified crossovers. The company was, in a way, planning for a huge return to diesel power that hadn’t been seen in decades. In addition to the Chevy Cruze, GMC Terrain, and the Chevy Equinox, GM also wanted to put diesel power into the Chevy Colorado, the Chevy Express, the Silverado 1500, the Chevy Tahoe, the Chevy Suburban, and the luxury equivalents of those vehicles. Yes, that meant that until the 2025 model year, you were able to buy a Cadillac Escalade 600D, which had a silky smooth diesel engine under the hood.

The 3.0-liter Duramax has been vital to this expansion and it started with the General Motors Global Propulsion Systems Torino group in Italy. As Automotive News Europe writes, GM Turin was chosen to be the heart of diesel development. The technical center, which Automotive News Europe says was created after the GM-Fiat Powertrain joint venture failed in 2005, has a primary function of reducing engine fuel consumption across the GM portfolio. [Ed Note: Italy has for decades been a dominant force in Diesel development, with the famous VM Motori having built diesels for Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge/Ram, Land Rover, Alfa Romeo, and many more. -DT]

The Torino facility was responsible for the development of the Opel 1.6-liter “Whisper Diesel” that was mounted into the Cruze, Equinox, and Terrain vehicles. As GM noted to Automotive News Europe in 2018, it had five diesel engine families in production at the time. Of those diesel families, only the 6.6-liter Duramax V8 wasn’t designed in Torino. Yep, if you have a diesel Colorado with the 2.8-liter four or a diesel Cruze with the 1.6-liter four, engineers at this technical center had a hand in bringing your engine to life.

GM confused some in the automotive industry when it sold off its European operations in 2017, but kept the Torino technical center anyway. GM said it kept the Torino center as it saw the facility as an important piece of GM’s internal combustion development. The facility would later be sold in 2020.

The Technology Behind The ‘Babymax’

Another diesel to come out of Torino before its sale was the 3.0-liter LM2 Duramax straight-six. This engine was built on a scalable architecture allowing diesels with models as small as 1.5-liter three-cylinder engines. YouTuber The RV Connection got an interview with GM powertrain engineers, who explained what made the clean-sheet design LM2 different.

Engineer John Barta started at the back of the engine where the timing system resides. It starts with the crankshaft. A chain connects the crank to the high-pressure fuel pump. From there, another chain coming off of the fuel pump leads to the camshafts. Also connected to the crank and moving down is a wet belt that drives the oil pump. A wet belt is exactly as you picture it. Wet belts are basically timing belts that are constantly drenched in engine oil.

Barta mentions that the oil pump in these engines have a variable displacement, so the pump puts out only the exact amount of oil that’s needed when it’s needed. This prevents waste and according to Barta, is more efficient. The use of a wet belt also aids efficiency. Lewin elaborates:

The wet timing belt promised multiple benefits over a traditional dry timing belt. Lubrication from the engine oil was supposed to reduce wear and noise. More importantly, though, it reduced friction, which would provide an efficiency benefit, with fuel savings of around 1%.

Enthusiasts hate wet belts. Not only does using a wet belt mean that the belt that runs the oil pump is now a maintenance item, but if one of these belts fails, it can clog up the engine’s oil pickup and passages with rubber chunks, potentially killing your engine if you don’t notice it in time.

Thankfully, GM says that the wet belt in the 3.0 Duramax should be replaced every 150,000 miles. That said, replacing the oil pump wet belt does require dropping the transmission, so it’s not the most DIY-friendly procedure.

Moving up, we arrive at the fuel pump. Barta notes that the cylinders get fuel at a maximum fuel injection pressure of 36,500 PSI. Fuel is delivered using a twin-piston pump and rides on the common rail before being fired through injectors located at the very tops of the cylinders. The solenoid injectors are Denso G3.5S units and they’re good for up to 10 injections per combustion cycle. The design of the engine is also designed to shape the combustion of each charge in a way to reduce noise in addition to lowering emissions. GM-Trucks.com has more details on that:

First, the whole engine is state-of-the-art, aluminum head and block with thin steel cylinder sleeves and seven main bearings for the crankshaft. Combustion processes were among the driving forces underpinning design theory, so the cylinder head is essentially flat and the bowl-shaped pistons have zero relief cuts for the valves. That was important for efficiency.

Simulation, and single-cylinder engine studies showed that having very vertical valves would not only allow a simpler bowl shape in the pistons, but that very shape would allow inlet-generated swirl to be maximized at every point. Swirl is produced and governed by dual intake runners feeding each cylinder. Oh, the ceramic glow plugs gave GM the highest compression ratio consistent with power and emissions, as well as allowing ignition to -22°F without a block heater. FYI, most of the engine development and engineering, as well as primary calibration took place in Turin, Italy. That’s GM’s center of diesel excellence.

Barta further notes that the engine’s design allows for a 15:1 compression ratio, which is good for lowering emissions. Like pretty much every modern diesel, a variable geometry turbo allows for power to come on soon and hard. In this case, Barta says you get an electronic actuator and the snail is good for 29 pounds of boost. Further helping the engine along is a charge air cooler and very short piping, meaning there’s a smaller column of air to compress for hopefully faster spooling. At launch, the LM2 Duramax was good for 277 HP and 460 lb-ft of torque. About 95 percent of that torque hits at 1,250 RPM, too, so practically off-idle.

Other technology noted in the LM2 Duramax include swirl valves in the intake runners which helps emissions and a rotary valve to control coolant flow to distribute heating and cooling where it’s needed. GM also says that the use of ceramic glow plugs allows the engine to start at -22 degrees Fahrenheit without a block heater and stay running.

Finally, we arrive at a big question and it’s why the LM2 Duramax is a straight-six when the competition was building V6s. The answer to that is simple. Straight-sixes are buttery smooth and as Work Truck Online reports, there’s greater efficiency from not having to run two banks of engine internals. These diesels were meant to be powerful, yes, but they were also designed to feel and drive similar to a gas engine. GM was so obsessed with smoothing out this diesel that the trucks with these engines have centrifugal pendulum absorber torque converters which are said to further reduce vibration.

Half-Ton Diesel Power

General Motors launched this engine, lovingly nicknamed by enthusiasts as “Babymax,” into its light-duty trucks in the 2020 model year. It joined the Ram 1500 EcoDiesel and the F-150 Power Stroke in offering Americans three great choices for half-ton diesel power. Sadly, GM just missed out on being able to compete with the Nissan Titan Cummins, which bowed out of the market in the 2020 model year. Still, for GM this was big news as it was the firm’s first half-ton diesel since 1997.

Here’s what Car and Driver said when the publication drove the truck at the tail end of 2019:

With this new diesel, Chevy now offers five different engines for its half-ton cash cow. And this one’s good. The turbocharged and intercooled 3.0-liter inline-six twists out 460 lb-ft of torque at 1500 rpm and makes a respectable 277 horsepower. The aluminum-constructed powerplant uses a variable-geometry turbo, air-to-liquid intercooling, and a new low-pressure exhaust-gas recirculation system to boost efficiency and responsiveness. And this engine is mighty smooth, thanks to the inherent balance of its inline-six configuration and because it’s mated to General Motors’ 10-speed automatic transmission featuring a mass-damper-equipped torque converter. Yes, this means that the 3.0-liter diesel manages not to shake Chevy’s moneymaker to pieces.

We drove the Silverado 1500 Duramax mostly in and around central Oregon’s valleys, exploring the outer reaches of prudence to maximize fuel efficiency and to experience the truck in a way no sane person ever will. The result was fuel economy that no one is likely to reproduce—an OPEC-enraging 40.6 mpg in highway driving, according to the truck’s onboard computer. To achieve this feat, however, we kept speeds below 60 mph, left the air conditioning off (and soaked our clothes with sweat in the process), folded the side mirrors, shifted manually, and applied only butterfly kisses to the accelerator pedal.

The publication was quick to note that real-world fuel economy wasn’t as crazy. Their Silverado 1500 LTZ Z71 package crew cab scored 26 mpg during regular 75 mph highway driving. That was 1 mpg better than a Ram 1500 Limited with an EcoDiesel

The crazy thing is that the Silverado is now the last diesel half-ton left standing. The Ram 1500 EcoDiesel was introduced in 2014 and was killed in 2023. Ford introduced an F-150 Power Stroke V6 in 2018, just to kill it in 2021. The Nissan Titan Cummins died before the Babymax even arrived on the scene.

That Babymax has gotten better, too. As of 2023, it’s now known as the LZ0 Duramax and GM upgraded it with new fuel injectors and new pistons plus new turbo turning. The combustion bowl is also noted to have a new design. Those mild changes are good for a power boost to 305 HP and 495 lb-ft. Car and Driver now notes that if you’re buying an internal combustion Silverado 1500, the diesel has the most torque of the entire range.

Here’s Car and Driver‘s test of the LZ0 showing improvements:

All of that power is delivered in stoic silence too. At both idle and wide-open throttle, the diesel Silverado is significantly quieter than its braggadocious 6.2-liter gas counterpart, recording 41 decibels at idle and 71 decibels at wide-open throttle. We drove both a Trail Boss and a ZR2 (our test numbers are for the latter), and in both cases their aggressive all-terrain tires made more noise than the engine. At least, that’s what we told the cop who pulled us over for speeding about 10 minutes into our first drive in the Trail Boss.

Speaking of speed, the revised Duramax makes for a noticeably quicker Silverado. When we tested the first-generation engine in a 2020 Silverado LTZ, that truck hit 60 mph in 7.1 seconds and ran the quarter-mile in 15.5 seconds at 88 mph. The 2024 ZR2, despite weighing an extra 145 pounds and wearing Goodyear Wrangler Territory MT tires, dispatched 60 mph in 6.8 seconds and cleared the quarter in 15.3 seconds at 89 mph. The revised engine feels even more responsive than those numbers indicate—witness the huge improvement in 30-to-50-mph top-gear passing, which drops from 4.2 seconds to 3.6.

And here’s a comment on that review from someone claiming to be an owner:

As an actual owner of one of these trucks (ok, it’s a 2022 Sierra, crew cab standard bed but same engine… the LM2, so the 277hp variant) I felt compelled to comment after reading other comments.

Who cares about the cost of DEF? It’s $15 for two and a half gallons and that’s good for 2-3k miles or so without towing. That’s, what… the cost of 4 gallons of 87 octane? Add up the 3-5mpg benefit of this engine vs gas over those same 2-3k miles and you’re making money. Where we live diesel costs just a few cents more than 87.

Change the fuel filter every 20k miles, it’s $30 and takes 5 minutes. Big deal.

These things are super smooth and super quiet. The 10-speed transmission helps a lot and makes the truck feel quicker than it has any right to, honestly. We tow a 19 foot Yamaha boat and the truck feels like it does when nothing is behind it. I’ve put a cubic yard of dirt in the bed on more than one occasion and other than probably exceeding payload capacity, there was no change in the driving experience.

We’ve taken two long road trips from our home state of SC, one to Denver and one to San Antonio. Averaged a hair over 26mpg for both and a high of 37mpg in Denver over a 50 mile stretch between Golden and Garden of the Gods. Cruising at 70mph the rpm’s hover around 1600 and rarely downshifts to go up a hill.

My opinion, GM nailed it with this engine.

In terms of fuel economy, the original iteration of the 3.0-liter Duramax is good for up to 29 highway mpg in two-wheel-drive trucks and down to 22 highway mpg in the beefy off-road ZR2 model. Yet, these numbers are much better than the gas engines, where Car and Driver notes that the diesel ZR2 gets 6 mpg more than the 6.2-liter V8 gasoline model.

Something bizarre happened with the launch of these trucks and it’s that the 2020 and 2021 diesels had notably worse capacities than gasoline models. In 2020, a Silverado 1500 with the Babymax cost the same as an equivalent truck with the 6.2-liter V8. Yet, you sort of got a worse truck.

Trucks with the 3.0-liter Duramax were initially limited to 9,300 pounds for towing capacity, a far cry from the 13,400 pounds offered by the 6.2-liter V8 option. Both engines commanded a $2,495 upcharge over a 5.3-liter V8 and it seemed like the 6.2-liter mill was a better deal.

Thankfully, GM rectified this problem as of 2022. The Babymax diesels now tow up to 13,300 pounds thanks to an optional beefier rear differential and an optional heavier-duty suspension package. That’s still 100 pounds short of a properly equipped truck with a 6.2-liter V8, but at least it shouldn’t feel like going diesel nets you a penalty. Car and Driver‘s measured 60 mph acceleration time of 6.8 seconds is also pretty impressive for a full-size diesel pickup truck. That’s nearly as fast as my old Audi TT was. The EPA also rates the current engine as high as 23 mpg city and 29 mpg highway in certain two-wheel-drive trucks (26 MPG combined).

It’s hard to tell from anecdotes on the Internet, but it seems like a lot of folks with these baby Duramax engines do like them. I have found some issues reported including an important transmission recall, faulty injectors, and limp mode issues. However, every vehicle is going to have some that have problems. Those that do like their Silverado 1500 diesels sometimes even say they get 700 miles of range out of the standard fuel tank, which is neat.

With that being said, you have to know that diesels come with lots of caveats. You will have to maintain modern emissions equipment, which can get expensive. You will also have to deal with that wet belt, fill the truck up on diesel exhaust fluid, and keep your fuel filters clean. Oh, and depending on where you live, diesel might be significantly more expensive than gasoline. So, the diesel is something that you’ll want to commit to. Most people will have no problem with a gasser and others can play with the EV version of the Silverado.

The Cheapest Diesel Pickup Truck

So, the biggest question of them all. How much does it cost?

Chevy doesn’t appear to directly advertise the cheapest diesel variant, so I went to the configurator to find out. The cheapest 2025 truck it let me configure was a 2025 Chevrolet Silverado LT with a double cab, a standard bed, and two-wheel-drive. This truck was valued at $48,100 throw in the diesel engine and the price jumps to $51,145. Finally, you have a $1,999 destination charge on top of that before you start negotiating your way down.

That means the cheapest diesel truck in America right now costs not much more than the average transaction price of a new car!

You can get the diesel in a variety of configurations and higher price points. Car and Driver notes that if you configure a Chevrolet Silverado 1500 ZR2 for a base price of $70,995, the engine you get is the diesel. If you want the 420 HP and 460 lb-ft of torque 6.2 V8, that’ll cost you around $1,500.

But let’s say you stick with the cheapest truck. What do you get? Chevy gives a lift of headlining features:

– 13.4-inch diagonal color touch-screen display and 12.3-inch diagonal reconfigurable Driver Information Center
– Front 40/20/40 split-bench seat and 10-way power driver seat
– Available 20-inch painted-aluminum wheels with machined-face and Grazen-painted pockets
– LED reflector headlamps and signature daytime running lamps
– Chevy Safety Assist

Getting a Silverado LT means a largely monochrome color palate, 17-inch alloy wheels, cloth seats, a 3.23 ratio axle, wireless charging, an engine block heater, and Google built-in for your infotainment system. Hey, that’s not a bad truck! The options list is also wild from being able to make your truck a Texas Edition, adding black badges, adding a plethora of active safety systems, different wheels, different axle ratios, and more.

While $51,145 is not cheap, it saves you a chunk of money and gets you more featured compared to other base diesel trucks. A 2025 Silverado 2500HD with the 6.6-liter Duramax V8 starts at $55,409 for a base WT trim with a standard cab, no options, and a long bed. Over at Ram, a Ram 2500 Tradesman with a regular cab, steel wheels, and a Cummins 6.7 is $55,045. Meanwhile, the cheapest Ford F-250 with a diesel is $58,295 and once again, you’re getting a base model work truck.

While I do like the bigger diesels offered in the bigger trucks, it appears that getting the Babymax nets you the biggest bang for your buck. Of course, that assumes the kind of truck you’re looking for is a half-ton to begin with. So, if you’re looking for diesel power in a new truck, want to spend the least amount of money, and don’t need anything more than a half-ton, it looks like there’s really only one choice.