Why NHTSA Splits the F-150 (and How YearTell Merges It)

The home-page diagram is the same rule in a picture: three NHTSA strings, one F-150 record.

NHTSA complaint counts are self-selected reports. They are not normalised for sales volume and they are not a reliability score. YearTell does not publish stars, “best year” lists or advice to avoid a vehicle.

This guide reports NHTSA owner-complaint and recall counts for the Ford F-150 from the 2026-09-07 snapshot. 37,844 owner reports are on file across 35 published model years (1991–2025). 2013 has the highest complaint count (2,976).

Older model years have had longer to accumulate reports, so a high lifetime total is not evidence that a year is worse to own. YearTell does not adjust these figures for how many vehicles were sold.

Where a system dominates the file, it is named below as a count, not as a diagnosis. Open the year-page for the component table, the recall list and a short set of owner narratives.

Years that appear most often in NHTSA complaints

Recall campaigns are manufacturer safety actions filed with NHTSA. A year can have many complaints and few recalls, or the reverse. The two series answer different questions.

If you are comparing two adjacent years, use the equal-exposure comparison when one exists. That window holds age constant so the later year is not punished for having had less time on the road.

A practical read: open the year you are shopping, note the system named most often, read every recall campaign, then skim the owner filings for that system. Take that list to a mechanic. Do not turn the complaint total into a score.

Model-year records cited

• 2013 Ford F-150
• 1997 Ford F-150
• 2018 Ford F-150
• 2011 Ford F-150
• 2016 Ford F-150
• 2004 Ford F-150
• 2012 Ford F-150
• 2015 Ford F-150
• Ford F-150

NHTSA stores complaints against the model string the filer or the catalogue used that day. Popular trucks therefore appear as F-150, F150, F-150 SuperCrew and other cab names. A search for one string misses the others.

YearTell strips body-style suffixes and hyphenless twins onto one consumer nameplate. F-150 and F-250 stay apart because they are different weight classes. Ambiguous strings wait for a person to approve the merge.

The home-page diagram is that rule drawn: three NHTSA boxes, one canonical F-150 record. Click through to the F-150 hub for the year table.

If a listing or a forum post uses F150 without the hyphen, YearTell still sends you to the F-150 record. The same is true for E-350 and other hyphen twins. Weight classes stay split: an F-250 is not an F-150.

The home-page diagram is the same rule in a picture: three NHTSA strings, one F-150 record.

How YearTell builds these numbers

Counts are not a reliability score.