How Ford and Carhartt Designed a Super Duty that Puts the Heart of the Worker First

On chilly days in Michigan, Steve Gilmore often bundles up in a warm, worn-in Carhartt jacket when he’s steering his snowblower or hauling firewood.

It’s not just a jacket. It holds special meaning for Gilmore, chief designer for Ford Vehicle Personalization. He inherited the wheat-colored jacket about 15 years ago from his father, Roger, a retired millwright at an Ohio aluminum plant.

“He said I needed a good work jacket for doing work outside my house,” Gilmore recalled. The hand-me-down is a good fit, considering he “grew up knowing Carhartt was what you wore to work.” 

The truck’s manhole-inspired wheels came to life as Ford’s customization design team took a field trip to the Carhartt store in Detroit. As team members stood outside the shop, Gilmore recalled, they noticed a manhole cover and talked about how that could inspire the wheels. 
 
“When we shared that idea with the Carhartt design team,” he said, “they agreed that this was the type of thing we all could get behind. It represented the streets of Detroit and the hard work that our customers do every day.”

Like Gilmore, Bhavna Mistry, a color and materials designer for the Ford customization design team, also felt a strong connection to Carhartt while crafting the truck’s design. Her grandfathers were manual laborers, a blacksmith, and a woodworker/carpenter. 

“The rugged outfits they wore to protect themselves weren’t just clothing,” Mistry said. “They were a badge of honor for the cycle of hard work they lived every day.”

Mistry tapped into her family’s manual-labor lineage when choosing textures and finishes for the Carhartt-themed truck.

“I wanted the person stepping into this Super Duty to feel that same sense of protection and pride I saw in my family’s workshops,” she said. “This project isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s about honoring the people who rely on their gear and their trucks to build the world, ensuring the interior is as tough and purposeful as the legacy that inspired it.”

Inspired by Carhartt’s iconic duck canvas, the seat material was engineered to capture both the rugged, heavy-duty construction of the textile and the rich, tactile feel of Oiled Walnut. The material is commercial-grade, built for extreme durability, with abrasion resistance and soil and liquid repellency to protect against spills. 

Triple-stitch, inspired by Carhartt workwear and accessories, provides superior seam reinforcement. These stitches are applied throughout the interior with a focus on purposeful placement and functional design.

In arriving at a design vision, the Ford and Carhartt teams leaned toward subtle, not flashy. Gilmore described the truck’s Carhartt branding, such as colors, seat materials, and stitching, as more of a whisper than a shout.

The neutral color palette — darker tones, earthy hues, blacks, grays, and whites — matches the spirit of both brands, making the truck familiar to Carhartt fans and right at home on a jobsite. 

Ben Ewy, Carhartt’s vice president of global product design, said designers picked darker tones and practical materials to improve wear and tackle grit and dirt.

Exterior graphics favor restrained halftone fades along with thorough-body color that allows the truck’s sheet metal to not be forgotten. Meanwhile, finishes feel durable and broken-in, but not pristine, thanks to a focus on texture, depth, and other elements.

Ewy said that whatever Ford and Carhartt designers decided upon, everything had to emphasize functionality and durability. The design teams worked together “the better part of a year,” Gilmore said, highlighting the seriousness and depth of their collaboration, and taking their work well beyond a one-and-done promotional exercise.

One especially thoughtful, purposeful design touch involves placement of the Carhartt logo on the truck. Ewy said while Carhartt’s logo is stitched over the heart on its workwear, when it came to the truck, the Carhartt logo went on the fender vents over the engine — the heart of the truck.  

By positioning the logo on the truck’s left side, the designers wanted people “to have an emotional connection with us,” Ewy said. “We want to let them know that we honor them, we love them, we respect them.”

The logo’s placement and other facets of the truck’s design underscore the authenticity of the Ford-Carhartt partnership and the respective brands.

“The connection between Ford and Carhartt is wonderful on so many levels,” Ewy said. “First off, we’re both companies based in Dearborn, Michigan. Family companies with these great foundations built in Detroit, the city of hard work.”

 “And,” he added, “both brands are coming to life in a bigger way with us coming together.” 

John Egan is a contributing writer based in Austin, Texas.