Please read the article on Overland Tech and Travel, here, for some solid background on aftermarket brakes. You can gain a lot with a simple change in pads and a brake fluid upgrade. You can also waste a lot of money on "upgrades" that aren't.
And I'd like to hear more about the Porsche race car too!
Thanks John! Great article. Learned a lot.
Update: Took my truck into Les Schwab since they were right by my house. (Working up my skills to do my own pad replacement, but I had a feeling something else was wrong with the brakes). Turns out that I had a stuck caliper (or maybe the piston) on the driver side front and that was putting most of the braking work onto the passenger front. The tech said that the passenger pads were cooked and looked like bricks. The passenger front was getting really hot and smelled terrible after my last trip so I knew something wasn't right.