2020 RAM 5500: what breaks, and at what mileage

The failures owners actually file about

Owners have reported 6 named failure modes on the 2020 RAM 5500, and the three most-reported carry 64% of everything filed, so the trouble here is concentrated rather than scattered.

Other brake problem leads with 3 reports and about 0.1 per 1,000 vehicles.

Seat belt or retractor failure follows with 2 reports, median 15,000 miles.

Other wheel or tire problem follows with 2 reports, median 225,000 miles.

By system, the reports fall mostly into brakes (3), airbag (2) and wheels (2).

How bad it is when it goes

Across the named modes, 3 mention a crash and 3 an injury. Those are the words owners used in their own complaints, and NHTSA does not verify them, but they are the closest thing in this data to a measure of what a failure actually did.

The average severity weight across every report on this year is 9.27, where a stalled engine or a failed airbag weighs many times more than a rattling trim panel, and a figure this high means the reports are dominated by failures with safety consequences rather than annoyances. The weighting is set out in full on the methodology page.

What the top failures cost to put right, as editorial estimates for an independent US shop rather than figures from NHTSA: other brake problem at $300–$1,800, seat belt or retractor failure at $200–$900, other wheel or tire problem at $200–$1,500 and differential or transfer case failure at $900–$4,200. Dealer labour, a seized bolt or a part that is no longer made can push any of these past the top of its range.

18% of the reports on this year sit in the engine, transmission, drivetrain or cooling systems — the four where a repair bill is usually four figures.

How often, against how many were built

Scaled by an estimate of how many of these cars exist, the 2020 RAM 5500 draws about 0.4 per 1,000 vehicles, which puts it in the 71st percentile of complaint rates among 2020 vehicles we can rate.

That denominator is the weakest number on the page and it is fair to say so plainly. Rate per 1,000 uses a fleet-size estimate derived from recall paperwork for this exact model year. It is a lower bound.

The working figure is 27,801 vehicles. If the true number is twice that, every rate on this page is half what it says; the ranking against other 2020 vehicles, which is what the risk score uses, is far more robust than the rate itself.

Recalls on the 2020 model year

NHTSA has issued 10 recall campaigns covering the 2020 RAM 5500, affecting an estimated 81,773 vehicles. A recall is a different kind of evidence from a complaint: it is the regulator and the manufacturer agreeing that something has to be fixed, and the fix is free for as long as the car exists.

The campaigns cover service brakes, hydraulic:foundation components:hoses, lines, visibility:windshield wiper/washer:linkages, fuel system, diesel:delivery:fuel pump and engine and engine cooling:engine:oil/lubrication. Whether the work was actually done on the car in front of you is a question only the VIN can answer, and the manufacturer or NHTSA will answer it free.

One caution about reading these together: a recall usually raises the complaint count for the same part, because owners who read about it go and file. The mileages stay informative; the counts get noisy.

Where 2020 sits in the model line

Across the 6 model years of this car that carry enough reports to score, 2015 comes out best at 62 and 2022 worst at 76.

Within the 2013–2021 generation specifically, 2015 is the strongest year at 62 and 2014 the weakest at 68.

The limits of complaint data

11 owner reports; fleet size estimated from this year's own recall paperwork. Every count on this page is therefore a floor: it is the number of owners who went to the trouble of filing with a federal agency, which is a small and self-selected fraction of the owners who had the fault.

Of those 11 reports, 6 carried an odometer reading, so the mileages here describe 55% of the sample rather than all of it. Owners also round: readings pile up on multiples of ten thousand, which is why this site publishes "about 90,000 miles" and not "91,438".

The failure modes are assigned by software reading the owner's own words, which is accurate in bulk and wrong in individual cases. A mode with a handful of reports may contain a misfiled one.

And nothing here predicts what one car will do. These are other people's complaints, filed years apart, on cars maintained by strangers. Read the page as a map of where this model year has previously gone wrong, then have the specific car in front of you inspected.