2022 Chevy Silverado 1500 LTD LT Trail Boss: First Drive Review

This tech-packed, extended cab pickup designed for comfort is still ready for an ugly day’s work.

Sometimes, pickup trucks need to be pickup trucks. They need to get dirty doing some proper damn work and spend less time running kids to lacrosse practice or overcompensating for a short guy’s potency issues.

The problem is it’s sometimes unclear if a 21st century truck is really up to ugly jobs. The driving technology is certainly on duty for most makes and models as even the biggest and most powerful pickups now drive as easily as any SUV or crossover. Throw in electronic power steering, amped up suspension, AI-assisted and anti-lock brakes, etc., and even a three-ton truck capable of towing a grade school can cruise suburban streets peacefully.

However, can a high-tech pickup designed for comfort and safety inside and out tug up its truck nuts and do some proper work with similar ease? To put the modern, smartass truck to a dirty work test, we got a hold of the handsome 2022 Silverado 1500 LTD LT Trail Boss.

Available in six trims, the various incarnations of the Silverado never quite tip the scale at three tons, offering a curb weight between 5,190 and 5,240 lbs. The choice of options can come with engines ranging from a 3.0-liter , 6-cylinder diesel, a 5.3 liter V8 and a 6.2 liter V8. That batch of engines will put out 277 to 420 horsepower. If you want to jump into this Silverado hoedown, the MSRP starts at $52,500.

The Trail Boss differentiates itself from its Chevy pickup sisters by offering an extended cab for more comfortable people transport. That means the Trail Boss option brings on a standard or shorter truck bed. The Silverado most hauling and towing-centric trim offer a larger truck bed for maximum cargo capacity. Even without the full-length bed, the Trail Boss’ V8 helps you tow more than 13,000 lbs.

Another element that could potentially push the Trail Boss away from hard labor duty is its off-road ability. The suspension on the Trail Boss offers a 2-inch lift higher than the standard Trail Boss. The off-road edition also gets Goodyear Wrangler DuraTrac tires, 18-inch aluminum wheels and performance recovery hooks for front end pulls.

All assembled, the 2022 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 LTD LT Trail Boss is a big, pretty, amply muscled pickup truck designed to carry people in comfort on the road and off out in the wilderness. We honored that beauty and strength by forcing into landscaping duty – driving the Chevy far out into a farmer’s field repeatedly to load up more than 300 gallons of debris-filled dirt for cross-town transport. 

That’s 10, beat-up five-gallon buckets of rock-studded soil filled, loaded, unloaded and emptied (…repeat…), moving from the middle of nowhere to a job site. The Trail Boss had to roll through the muddy furrows just to have its truck bed scratched and stained with filth – and she did it with aplomb. Just to show off, the Silverado 1500 LTD LT Trail Boss cleaned up dutifully afterward without so much as a scratch on the cargo bed. 

So, as far as the 2022 Silverado 1500 LTD LT Trail Boss is concerned, it’s possible for the modern pickup truck, designed for comfort and easy driving, to do a day’s ugly work before turning around and settling back into a civilized life again.