NHTSA complaint #383785 (ODI reference 8023601) concerns a 1996 FORD F-350 and was filed on December 3, 2002. The report was geocoded to Indiana based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as fuel system, other:storage, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.

The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: yes, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. A complaint that flags a crash, fire, or fatality is escalated on NHTSA's internal review queue and factors more heavily into any Preliminary Evaluation decision on this make and model. No VIN was supplied by the filer, so this complaint contributes to model-year trend data but cannot be tied to a specific vehicle.

Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same FORD F-350 cohort independently describe similar fuel system, other:storage failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 1996 FORD F-350 shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.