Any preferred brand of wheel bearings, or are they all pretty much equal? Should I stick with Ford original parts, are aftermarket?

With my experience, wheel bearings are just wheel bearings. I recently replaced mine, the OEM ones last 120K miles and I got a Ford dealership around here to replace them for pretty cheap.

Buy American Made!!!! Temkin seems to be one of the better made bearings and yes there is a difference in bearings. The quality of steel they use and the tollerances they are made under will have a derastic effect on the life of them.