When you come to the difficult decision of buying that new truck, how do you proceed? There are several, OK many many, things to consider. You must think about what kind of freight you haul. Where you haul it. How many nights are spent on the road. How comfortable you want to be. And how long are you going to keep this truck.
If you haul refrigerated freight or pull a dry van, and spend more than a couple of nights on the road, an aerodynamic Mid-Roof with a fairing may suit you. But if more room or comfort is needed a Condo-style cab/sleeper may be better for you. If you stay out months at a time, maybe an aerodynamic custom sleeper would give you a higher quality of life while on the road. No matter what sleeper you need, an aero cab is the starting point.
Tankers and flatbed trailers with a lower profile load don't really need the height of a condo sleeper. If you don't need an upper bunk or the extra space, a Mid-Roof without the fairing works well. If you get home every night, a day cab is the perfect choice, with or without fairings. Dump truck or other vocational type operations would use a day cab, utilizing a body that hurts fuel economy the least, hard to do sometimes.
Dealers have software that can help you decide that the best horse power/torque ratings, transmission, rear end gears and tires would work best in your application. I know we all want as much HP as we can get, but in most applications it is not needed and it takes fuel to make it. If it is there to use, you will. Save the insane HP for the hot rod in the driveway, after all we are running a business. Making a profit is the goal, and with fuel being our number one expense, there is a way to spec a truck to get all you can out of a gallon of fuel.
Go to your favorite dealer, sit down with a sales person and start talking trucks. It's possible the perfect truck to fit your operation is on the lot and you just need to make a deal. There may be a truck on another dealer’s lot they could transfer to your dealer. It's possible you need to order the truck that works best for you, whichever is the case; try not to buy the wrong truck for your application. I've seen people buy a truck then try to change it to fit their operation, they wound up spending more than if they had ordered a truck and waited for it. In the end they wound up hating the truck and sold it much sooner than they had planned, it just didn't fit their operation.
There may be a truck that’s very close to what you want, different tires, higher HP than you wanted. Utilize these differences in the deal making process; get the HP turned down at the dealer’s expense. If there is a different truck on the lot that has the right tires see if they will swap with the ones on the truck you are looking at. Maybe the color is not what you would choose but all else is perfect, could you live with it for a discount on the price, I might, and maybe you will grow to love it.
Ordering a truck is a process that takes time, if you order one, get what you need, get the best deal you can and have fun choosing the options. There were fourteen pages of options for our order spec. Everything is spelled out, weights, lengths, HP, torque, trans O/D or direct and how many gears, gauge options, dash switches, seats, mattresses for the sleeper, you name it (almost) there was an option. The dealer should go thru this spec with you, line by line, in order to get the right truck for you.