Ford F 150 Supercab Diesel
Problems & Worst Years

Shifting is nearly the whole story with the diesel Ford F-150 SuperCab. On the 2019 — the heavier of the two years at 412 total occurrences — the top four entries are all transmission complaints: random shifting and jerking at safety severity (148 occurrences), erratic shifting and downshifting (110), slipping with random gear changes (106), and hesitation with gear slipping (8). Combined, that's roughly ninety percent of the year's file describing one system misbehaving in closely related ways.

The 2020 tells the same story at lower volume and lower stakes: 234 total occurrences, none at safety severity, led again by transmission jerking and shifting issues (52), hard shifting (22), and slipping with power loss (21). It adds two secondary items the 2019 doesn't feature: 33 reports of engine knocking paired with sensor failures, and 23 of backup camera malfunction.

A complaint file this concentrated makes the buying process unusually simple to plan. The test drive is the whole ballgame: drive long enough to get everything to full temperature, include both gentle around-town shifts and firm highway-speed acceleration and deceleration, and pay attention to any jerk, flare, slip, or unrequested downshift — the specific behaviors owners named. On a 2020, listen for knock and confirm the backup camera works every time, not just once. On either year, service records showing transmission attention — repairs, updates, or replacement — change the calculus meaningfully, in whichever direction they point.

Between the two, the 2020's smaller total and absence of safety-severity entries make it the comparatively cleaner sheet in this data. Hold that lightly, for the usual honest reasons: complaint counts capture what owners filed with NHTSA rather than measured failure rates, the newer year has had less time to accumulate reports, and the state of the specific transmission in the specific truck you're considering — verified by a pre-purchase inspection and paperwork — matters more than which model year it happens to be.