It’s all about your perception of value. I generally recommend buying over leasing any day of the week, and have never leased a vehicle in my life. Why? You get absolutely nothing out of it. You’re basically renting a car for 3 years. And those mileage limits? Ridiculous. And unless you put down a big fat down payment (“capitalized cost reduction”) your payment is probably gonna end up close to what you could buy it for anyways.
To your friends point, sure, if you have problems in your lease, at the end of the term you can turn it in no harm no foul, but if you decide to keep the truck, not only did you lease the vehicle for 3 years, now you’re financing for how long? 60 months? 72? Now it’s taken you almost 10 years to pay off a vehicle.
If you buy the vehicle and you have problems in the first three years, that’s what the warranty is for. If at 2.5 years, you don’t like it and the truck turns out to be a dud, claim everything under warranty, and sell it fully repaired in good faith to a dealership. But if you love it, in 3 years you’ll probably have a good chunk of equity in it (5-10k at least) which you can do what you want with. You can use that as a down payment on your next truck, you can sell it and keep the cash, whatever you want. If you love it enough to keep it, congratulations, you’re halfway/over halfway done with your financing terms! It’s almost 100% yours! It’s YOUR money when you buy, it’s the dealers money when you lease.
As a side note, I’m not hating on anyone that leases. I get why people do it. Lower payment, new car every three years. I get it. Just me personally, don’t think I could do it.