You cannot feel it go, because you went with it
Suspension degrades over years, and the driver recalibrates at exactly the rate it happens. Nobody wakes up one morning and notices their shocks are finished.
Which is why the most useful test is not a feeling. It is a comparison. Drive a similar vehicle of a similar age that has had the work done, or drive your own after it, and the difference is obvious in a hundred yards. Described in advance, it sounds like marketing. Experienced directly, it is simply the same model behaving the way it used to.
If you have a fleet, you have the comparison available: two pickups of the same model and age, one of which rides noticeably worse, is a measurement rather than an impression.
What the components are doing
Holding the tire against the road over an imperfect surface. A worn shock lets a wheel keep moving after a bump instead of settling it, and during that moment the tire is carrying less load than it should.
On dry pavement that costs ride quality. On loose gravel or a wet road it costs grip, which is why this is a braking and steering question rather than a comfort one.
The sign you can check without driving anything
The national suspension repair page has the symptom list. The one that needs no comparison and no test drive is on the tires.
Run a hand across the tread of each tire. Cupped or scalloped wear, high and low in a repeating pattern around the circumference, is a suspension signature rather than an alignment one, and it is felt more easily than it is seen.
If that is there, the comparison drive will only confirm what the tires already said.
Replace, then align
The last item is the usual route to a shop, arriving as a complaint that an alignment was done badly.
Worn components let the geometry move under load, so the vehicle is correct on the rack and wrong once it is driven. Alignment is offered here, which means the parts and the alignment happen in the right order in one visit.
About this store
The Boise store runs sixteen services, the longest list in Idaho, and is managed by Tyrel Perkins. Twin Falls and the Idaho Falls consumer store also offer suspension repair.
See the national suspension repair page for all 34 locations.