SHED,here's the cool thing about your truck vs the Ford. Your truck has a fuel heater and an inlet air heater in addition to glow plugs, the 7.3 doesn't have all that, but its not his fault he just bought the wrong truck for really cold temperature operation, but he's doing the right thing with his truck, so are you. Ford produced a report on low temperature versus wear and in their R & D they concluded that the colder the temp the more wear occurs. The coefficient of expansion of the aluminum piston is about 6 times that of the steel block, so the colder the engine is on start up the more the block bore has shrunk and of course so has the piston, but when it fires the piston starts to expand at a rate 6 times faster than the steel cylinder its riding up and down in. You see the problem. As temperatures stabilize the clearances become normal like they were designed to be for operating clearance.
Everyone who said they take it easy while it is still cold is wise to do so, also its a proven fact the sooner you start to drive the more heat is build up in the engine, cooling system, and drive train therefore the warm up is actually faster with less wear than it would be if you just let it idle until it gets warm with no load.
Personally I never just start up and drop it in gear and go. Having adjusted valves back in the solid lifter days I noticed how long it took before the oil got the the rocker arms. On one of my first engine builds a long long time ago I actually saw a couple of rocker arm balls gauld up from lack of lubrication during the first start up. That was before I learned about pre-lubing the engine before the first start, like I said a long long time ago, but it taught me a good lesson on how long it actually takes for all parts of the engine to receive lubrication so I'm like a 30 second when hot and maybe 50 seconds when cold before I put it into gear and start ideling down the driveway. Works for me, I've never have been able to put more that 320, 000 miles on the same engine, so I can't say how much longer one would last if someone didn't wreck it or trade it off. I hope you can still be friends with this guy, wouldn't want him watching my back in an emergercy if you were enemies.
02 2500HD LT D/A SB CC 4X4 BLACK, Westin stainless nerf bars, BW GN Hitch,Racor 60S post oem fuel filter, Oil Guard bypass engine oil Filter. All synthetic fluids. Kennedy boost valve, edge, Modified air intake,EGT & Boost digital gauge,TransferFlow combo fuel & tool box, Air Lift Suspesion Bags Rear & compressor with remote, Bilsteins front & rear, Frontier front replacement bumper.