Aluminum does have fatigue crack issues. Knowing that, there's 20 years of experience building sports cars out of aluminum and over 70 years of experience building aircraft out of aluminum. It would be reasonable for Ford to leverage that knowledge to design a truck where fatigue cracking can be minimized and the structure can be designed to tolerate some fatigue cracking, resulting in a vehicle with a 20+ year lifespan.
As you pointed out, even steel has it's issues. I'm restoring a truck that's over 40 years old right now. To do it, I'm pulling the entire vehicle apart, to inspect the frame and all the structural elements. I've already identified a couple of elements in the cab that need to be replaced.
Company I work for had a program that designed for Windows. All it does is connect to a device in the field, download data, and configure the device. To use it in the field, our customers had to carry a laptop with them. Some of these locations were very remote. We ported the app to Windows CE but the handheld we were bundling it with cost $2,000.
In late 2008 or early 2009 I suggested we port it to iOS and Android, so that the customer could use a tablet or a mobile phone in the field. I was told by management that those were fads that wouldn't last. In Early 2010, after they dropped support for the CE version, I demonstrated how porting to Android and iOS could be done. I pointed out that once it was working on Android and iOS for mobile, it would be a short leap to get it to work on the Apple laptops our customers were showing up with. Was told it would be too hard to maintain multiple platforms. (We're only talking about a few thousand lines of code and a GUI for the Windows application). In 2012 when I brought it up again, I was told they had looked at it and decided it would be too expensive to build a "mobile" version of the application. Customers still have to carry a Windows laptop into the field.
While the example is an application, I think it's representative of what's going on with mobile websites. Upper management neither takes mobile seriously; nor, are they willing to invest equally in multiple platforms.
Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?