I don’t usually think of the Ford Maverick as a truck. That’s not a slight; in fact, it’s a compliment, because what I do think of it as is a very capable and affordable do-anything sort of vehicle. The idea of the Maverick excites me the most when I think of it in its cheapest hybrid form ($25,315), because it is an inexpensive five-seater, four-door vehicle that gets 37 combined mpg and has out back what you could treat as, with a tonneau cover, a massive trunk or, open, a usable if short truck bed. It’s a Swiss Army knife sort of machine, something you could take into almost any unknown situation and find that you’re pretty well equipped to handle whatever happens. It’s a vehicle I happily recommend to people who want something inexpensive and useful for a huge variety of use cases. Deep down, though, I think it still is a truck, fundamentally, or at least wants to be, so I figured it was time to do a sort of review on the Maverick that’s a bit more focused. Specifically, how is it at doing, you know, truck stuff?
What do I mean by truck stuff? Great question, disembodied voice; help yourself to some canapés. I think for this test there are two basic defining truck things I want to focus on, two of the most utilitarian things that also tend to be the two things that people who don’t own trucks tend to ask people who do own trucks to loan them those trucks to do: move items that are not the sorts of things you’d want in the interior of your normal car and move huge items that simply won’t fit in your normal car.
These also happen to be the two categories of tasks that I tend to do when I use my own truck, the 1989 Ford F-150 David got for me a while ago, and it is very much A Truck, and it has a name, The Marshal:
I often use The Marshal to haul crap and tree limbs and other forgotten detritus to the dump, and I often use it to haul my advanced personal watercraft to the lake, the HMS Terror:
Yes, it’s my shitty canoe. It’s probably worth noting that I used to haul my shitty canoe to the lake on the roof of my Nissan Pao:
…so technically you don’t actually need a truck to do this, but the process of getting the canoe on the Pao’s roof and tying it down and then stashing all the lifejackets and other gear was all kind of a colossal ass-pain, and just shoving the thing in the bed of the F-150 has made life vastly easier.
I suppose I should mention that the Maverick that was kindly loaned to me was a Tremor edition one. Well, to be even more specific, the one loaned to me was the most expensive Lariat trim level, with the 2-liter Ecoboost engine making 250 horsepower/277 lb-ft of torque, bolted to an eight-speed automatic, and with the Tremor package that gives “advanced” AWD and a one-inch lift with slightly better breakover, departure, and approach angles, along with better tires and a bunch of decals, all for an extra $3,495.
I really don’t care about the Tremor package in the context of this review. The name never fails to make me picture old people with very shaky hands, or perhaps a mild earthquake, and, really, if intense off-roading was my goal, I don’t think this is the vehicle I’d choose, Tremor-ized or not. From what I’ve read, it does just fine for mild off-road use, but if you want a rock climber or a serious off-roader, this really isn’t it.
I do like the bits of orange trim the Tremor package adds, though, like in the grille bar that incorporates the turn indicators and the tow hooks:
Beyond that, though, for the purposes of what we’re discussing today, we can ignore all the Tremor stuff; this review is valid for any Maverick.
Okay, so let’s get to it, and see how it does with our two key truck tasks!
Task One: Hauling Crap You Don’t Really Want Inside Your Car
There’s two main categories of crap you don’t really want inside your car: crap that is filthy in some way, or crap that is destructive in some way. In the filthy category, this can include brush or tree limbs or gravel or mulch or 140 pounds of creamed sturgeon, unbagged, or trash or whatever. Anything that would normally require you to, if you had it in your trunk or SUV, spend too much time with a vacuum and some paper towels getting everything decent again.
The other category is stuff that, if shoved in the trunk or back of your SUV, would tear up headliners and seats and carpet. The stuff I decided to haul to test fits into this category.
I have a roughly 9-month old puppy who is almost as big a full-grown dog named Juno. Juno is half Husky and half Australian Shepherd, a pretty intimidating combination for someone like me who is more used to dogs that are sweetly and pleasingly stupid. Juno is both smart, and, because she is still a puppy, a dummy.
She’s very sweet, but she makes some really terrible decisions, and because she’s surprisingly clever, can usually make those terrible decisions happen. The most common of these is figuring out ways to escape the house and yard. I’m pretty sure I saw her working a combination lock at one point.
Anyway, I needed to shore up some fencing in her backyard romp-about area, so I went to Tractor Supply Company (who should just become a damn sponsor for us by now) to get a big roll of fencing and metal fence posts. These are heavy, bulky things with sharp, scrapey edges that would turn upholstery and carpet into a shredded mess that looked like a few cats got drunk and started to discuss politics, and things ended in pawticuffs and clawticuffs.
In this context, the Maverick did just fine, despite the short bed, because even if the bed is short, it’s still well-designed, and the bedliner material is rugged and effective at taking abuse. Those posts had to go in diagonally, which was fine, and the plastic edging on the lip of the bedsides proved useful as well, doing a good job of protecting the paint.
The bed has a number of considerations taken to help maximize the available space. The humps over the wheels are both squared-off to allow things to be placed on top of them easily, and there’s notches in there to accommodate a 2×4 laid side-to-side to act as a sort of shelf. If you’re hauling long sheets of plywood, the tailgate is designed to be propped at an angle to keep the sheets nicely level.
So, yes, it’s a short bed, but it’s thoughtfully designed and has a nice, tough liner, which makes it generally quite good at the basic truck function of hauling sloppy or destructive things. The bed also has a couple nice convenience features like a panel with a light and a standard 120V wall-type power outlet connected to a DC-to-AV inverter, and another cubbyhole that can store things and has a 12V power pigtail right next to it so you could use it for something that needs power, like a compressor or margarita maker.
Here’s the compartment, and the 12V leads are in that little panel to the right:
The Maverick works pretty well as a truck for the hauling messy/damaging things function, and that’s a very common truck use. You may not be able to get the volume you’d get with a full-sized bed, but for many people’s demands for this kind of thing, the Maverick can pull it off just fine.
Before I get into the second Truck Use, there’s two interior details I want to point out. First, these door handles:
I don’t mind them at all, but a number of people who got in the truck were baffled by or just uncomfortable with their use. I think the open-endedness is just not what many people expect out of an interior doorhandle/armrest? Again, it didn’t bother me, but some passengers were really off-put by them.
This next one, though, did bother me:
This rotary shifter is dumb. It just wastes space. If there was ever a good context for putting a column shifter on a car, this is it. Stick the PRNDL on the column, and free up all that space for another cubbyhole or something, anything. It’s just silly.
Okay, back to Truck Things!
Task Two: Hauling Really Big Things
Alright, now we get to the tricky part, hauling the HMS Terror. The Terror is not a particularly long canoe, I think it’s about 12 feet long, but a 12-foot long object is still a very long object to move around. I mean, it’s two six-foot party subs, just less tasty but more water-tight. The Maverick’s five-foot-something long bed is less than half the length of the canoe, so it’s not exactly ideal.
Normally, in my old F-150, the canoe fits mostly in the bed and rests propped up against the tailgate, sticking out maybe a foot or so, not much at all. I don’t need to tie it down, because there’s no way it’s just going to fly out of the bed, since 90% of it is fully within the bed as it is. With the Maverick, it’s a very different story.
Even set in as diagonally as possible, at least half of that canoe is outside the bed, and while the folded-down tailgate adds about a foot and a half more useful length, it’s still by no means something I’d feel comfortable hauling around without tying it down.
There are good tie-down points, though, both in the floor of the bed and sliding ones along those two side rails. With the canoe secured with a heavy duty cargo strap, I felt comfortable driving the thing all the way to the lake, even though it extended the length of the truck by a solid five or six feet or so.
You had to be especially aware of your long tail while driving, and I can’t say it’s ideal, but I can say it did work. I got there just fine, nothing flew out of the bed, and the Maverick did perform its truckly functions. I think this would essentially be the same situation for any really large object you might try to haul in a Maverick.
It’s not great, and definitely takes more prep to make it actually work, but it did basically work.
But it could be better. A lot better. And I think I know how.
The Maverick Needs A Midgate
Of all the vehicles currently on the market today, I can’t think of any that would be as drastically improved with the addition of a midgate than the Ford Maverick. You remember what a midgate is, right? Of course you do. But, in case someone is reading over your shoulder, I’ll remind you. A midgate is an opening panel on the back part of a truck or truck-like vehicle’s cab that extends the bed space into the cab. The Chevy Avalanche is a well-known truck with a midgate; here’s a picture of what it looks like from inside an Avalanche with the midgate open:
For the Maverick, I think the rear window can stay intact and just a lower midgate would be fine, which could be accessed by folding the rear seatbacks forward, much like you do when folding a back seat down to gain access to a car’s trunk.
With a midgate, the Maverick’s bed could be extended by several very useful feet, at the temporary cost of the rear seat passenger accommodation, but since most long-bed pickups don’t have back seats anyway, this hardly seems like a big drawback. The extra flexibility offered would be considerable, as the short bed could be easily transformed into a longer bed with the simple act of folding down the rear seat.
This is hardly rocket science; remember, the Subaru Baja had one of these, along with the Japan-only Toyota Bb Open Deck, the pickup truck version of the Scion xB. And these were both similar unibody sorts of designs, there’s no reason this type of midgate couldn’t be incorporated into the Maverick.
So, to recap, if you’re looking at the Ford Maverick in terms of its abilities as a truck, I’d say for common truck-requiring duties, it can perform reasonably, but it is hampered in its ability to haul really large, especially long, things easily and comfortably. If the Maverick had a midgate, its utility could be improved quite dramatically, though.
And, regardless, the Maverick is still an excellent and inexpensive do-whatever sort of vehicle, the kind of thing that should be considered if you’re just looking for decent, cheap, basic transportation, not even necessarily a truck.
Ford, if you’d like me to Sawzall a midgate into the next press Maverick you send my way, just shoot me a DM, okay? Great!
[Ed note: I feel like there’s a much simpler solution to this:
Ford sells this Yakima Rack that seems like it would entirely get the job done… Just saying! – MH]
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I have never understood the “smelly dirty” cargo thing as a reason to buy a pickup. I have never ever hauled anything that I am not willing to put in a minivan or my station wagon. Loose gravel is the main one that I really need the pickup for, but I have actually hauled loose gravel in the minivan too, just lay down an $8 tarp and problem solved.
I don’t get it.
Some people live in areas where you need to haul trash to the dump yourself, probably something you’d rather keep outside. Certainly represents a small fraction of pickup users though.
Gasoline, painting supplies, manure…just a few off the top of my head.
I have carried all of those in my station wagon just this week, it’s remarkable how much those are not an issue.
Not looking to argue, but I find it hard to believe you had an open/leaky container with gasoline or paint supplies(esp. oil) in your wagon. If you did unbagged manure, I’m impressed and lift my hat to you sir.
Mine is car parts. While I did take home a transmission in the back of my Sorento, getting it out with my engine crane without destroying the hatch was a task, and the entire trip home I was wrought with anxiety that ATF was going to pour out of it and overwhelm the $8 tarp.
Compared to the F150 I (stupidly) traded for it, I’ve hauled patio stones, gravel, top soil, greasy car parts, you name it. All it took was a broom or a pressure washer, then I could fold the tonneau back down and load up the family’s luggage for a trip.
An open bad can save you a ton when doing landscaping, as many landscaping companies will sell “by the scoop”. For $35 they’ll literally dump a large enough bucket of soil to challenge your average 1/2 ton payload. I live out of town, so delivery is expensive for most things.
I know, I also own a pickup, and like I said, loose dirt or gravel or rock or whatever is really the only thing it can do that my station wagon can’t.
I’m more willing to load that in my SUV than car parts that permanently stain and/or introduce odours to the cabin. The tarp doesn’t stop leaking engine/gear oil or ATF.
At the end of the day, the truck does everything the SUV does, with less limits on packaging of what you’re hauling. A proper sealing tonneau makes the argument that unless you need temperature controlled transport, the truck is the more practical hauler without sacrificing seating.
I’ll add that while it edges out my former truck on long enough highway runs, my V6 Sorento typically gets nearly identical fuel economy to the:
-crew cab
-4×4
–3.55 rear gear
-6.5′ bed
-3.5L ecoboost
F150 I had. Which is insane because the truck weighed about 1500lbs more and is shaped like a brick.
SUVs are not efficient vehicles, we need to stop pretending they’re anything more than a less practical truck.
Gasoline, fermenting lawn clippings, household garbage with rotting chicken trimmings for a 1.5 hour ride. And that was just yesterday.
Midgard!!!!! I mean mid-gate!!!!!!
I just want a Maverick that isn’t made by Ford lol
Hyundai Santa Cruz?
Honda Ridgeline?
If they made a Ridgeline that got 35 mpg, I’d be all over it.
Suzuki Mighty Boy?
If Toyota made a truck that size with a hybrid around the same price, I’d be all over that shit. Honda would be alright too, the Ridgeline gets a lot of flak online but everyone I know who’s owned one liked it.
Tremor edition?
Because blue pickup?
https://youtu.be/Tlzvh0cR9q4
Sort the cross between Dune, Footloose, and that movie about the killer tire but without the tire.
https://youtu.be/hVKgY1ilx0Y?si=MtudegZ-YAKMg2ND
I love the idea of a midgate, and everything about this article.
I also just want Toyota to make a similar small unibody pickup (the ‘Stout’?). I’m ready for the small pickup wars. We would all win.
Aah a classic humorous Torch story. Ìv been missing these. It’s a type of story you enjoy reading even if you don’t care about the subject.
I haven’t driven a Maverick Truck but did own my Grandmother’s Maverick Sedan through High School. A notes few notes, while a 12 foot canoe will extend out of the back of a shortbed pickup it really is no longer than a full sized truck that fits a canoe. They are both the length of the canoe. Don’t forget your red flag. I like the pass through but make sure nothing breakable is in the area when designing. On a third note I once hauled an 8 foot convertible couch on the roof of a Plymouth Valiant. It worked great but loading and unloading were a bitch.
Also Torch I recommend watching the Tremors Trilogy it is a far batter truck mascot for a truck version called tremor
We had a Maverick, the car, back in the day. I was pretty little and about the only thing I remember is it smoked like crazy sometimes and the cracked seats were awful to sit on. It was replaced by a very used Fairmont which was a welcome upgrade haha.
Winterlong brewing makes a stout called Terror, named after the ship and Erebus too for a pair
My wife would love one of these. She’s always bringing home a table or chairs or some other furniture piece to refinish that she’s found chucked out at the curb. I figure it’ll be about as easy to park on our street parking in Philadelphia as her 2022 GLI. The Maverick and the GLI are about 13″ inches apart in length
Every vehicle in Hell is controlled via those dumbass Ford rotary gear selectors. (And powered by transversely-mounted Cadillac HT4100s.)
Torch I am actually somewhat disappointed that your mind doesn’t go to the seminal 1990 smash-hit Tremors. No love for the graboids??
A tremor is when your hand is shaky, tremors is grabboids. It’s a really crucial pluralization.
I’m still standing on my roof. Is the battle over?
Great idea, but there’s already an incredibly common accessory for that purpose:
https://www.backrack.com/original-rack/2022/ford/maverick
The real utility of the Maverick is that it cars and trucks for an unbeatable price. Throw in the hybrid, and it’s environmentally aware as well. It is not a long-bed truck. It’s not a 3 row SUV. It hauls me and my family around comfortable and allows me to also do light truck duty as well. I don’t have to plan ahead to go get mulch. With a cheap bed extender, it safely hauls my kayaks to the lake. It has a reasonable towing capacity, so I can use a trailer for sheet goods if I need to. I think it’s wrong to compare it to “real” trucks; that’s just not what it is. Also, an entry level “real truck” is substantially more expensive than a nicely optioned Maverick.
Torch, you should still tie the canoe down in the F-150. That thing is going right on the ground if you hit a bump going uphill
Yeah ‘unsecured load’ is a major ticket around here.
Jason, you own a sawzall, and those PRNDL and traction controls are digital, so why not sawzall them away from the center console and 3d print them onto a dash/column mount? Ford wanted people to open source 3d printing ideas with that Maverick and it would be quite the maverick modification to do and share.
Midgates are pretty expensive on what is sold as an entry level vehicle. Much cheaper (and not mentioned that I’ve seen) is a hitch based truck bed extender. I have one and find plenty of uses, even with an 8′ bed.
It’s great for occasionally borrowing my parents’ old canoe, which is 15′ I memory serves. That’s ungainly for lifting onto things by oneself, a piece of cake to toss in the bed. It also counts as the rear point of the truck, which keeps you legal better compared to this cantilevered nonsense. My kingdom for a red rag!
I totally agree with you on this. I bought the hitch based bed extender for my Maverick and I use it when carrying my kayak, or other long materials. for $80 it has considerably increased the utility of the little trucklet.
Yup, plus the mid gate kind of ruins the real reason people buy pickup trucks- to keep nasty and damaging cargo (regardless of size) out of the passenger compartment. It’s not a new idea, it’s been done before, but never caught on for a reason.
These are also a super common and affordable accessory that also solves the ‘long item’ dilemma.
https://www.backrack.com/original-rack/2022/ford/maverick
I do not think is a good idea for a $20k truck, but considering how often Mavericks are a $36k-$40k truck out the door, it makes sense to be somewhat disappointed at all the ways it’s still engineered like a $20k truck
it only works for a few boards, and isn’t really safe imo putting them through the window, I’ve done it on a taco a few times. Always worry about it smashing through the windshield on a fast stop, or smacking me in the head.
This confuses me. You’d rather stick boards into your cab than fold down the tailgate?
if they are on the floor of the truck, the are imo much safer and easier with the tailgate up and locking them in the back. I’ve driven with stuff way out the tailgate plenty of times.
The mid-gate idea to combat the short bed is a good idea, and would get rid of my issue with it. I routinely have longer pieces of wood or similiar in my truck, and it barely works with a 6.5 bed. A 5 foot bed is a no go for A LOT of people who would buy this truck and use it for work, but now can’t. Mid-gate would probably work for 80% of those folks. I do think a 6 foot bed on this and the ranger is an obvious seller and I can’t figure out Fords refusal to do it.
I saw a Ranger Tremor yesterday, it’s just so stupid to me. But not quite as dumb as a f250 tremor that won’t even fit on the trail or roads you are supposedly “tremoring”.
Anyways, give me a 6 foot bed and a basic truck with a shifter and I would ditch my Tundra for this. Always loved my 2004 taco, so small and did just what I needed.
How long a piece of wood are you hauling around? I have hauled up to 12′ boards in my 5’8″ short bed Ram.
I’ve done 16 footers a few times. And I can see it happening in the future. I want a flatbed but they are surprisingly expensive to put on!
For 16’ers I just borrow my friends trailer.
I have a trailer lol, I just don’t want to deal with it at the lumber yard if I am popping inside for some screws and shit. That’s me being lazy though.
GM and Ford truck grilles these days look like they are designed after a hamburger, and now this Tremor adds what appears to be orange cheese between the headlights. Can’t say I relish the look, but some astroturf sticking out from under the hood would complete the ensemble.
I have seen Mavericks doing truck stuff. At a county fair one was hauling hay bales for 4H and I know someone who tows a small camper with a Maverick. I look at it more as replacement for my crossover than my pickup since it’s the basi platform as my CX-5 but better packaged. As Torch showed it’s too short for watercraft without a rack or trailer and from what I’ve seen rhe bed is iffy for bicycles. I don’t think I can fit my MTB using a tailgate pad so I would end up with a hitch rack. A roof rack for kayaks doesn’t bother me, I’m tall enough and strong enough to hold a 10′ kayak overhead and roll it into a J cradle.
Towing and long stuff are the weak points, and why a Maverick can’t replace an 8′ box and a V8.
The Maverick does have an openable rear window. It even has power assist on the Lariat and maybe the XLT (although probably optionally if that’s the case.)
Matt, the rack is indeed nice and looks awesome to boot, but all that lifting and lashing is a lot of work. Jason is on to something here. It would be a nice option to have.
I used to have a Honda Accord coupe with a roof rack that I regularly used to carry sea kayaks, canoes, 4×8 lumber, sheetrock, you name it. My wife even called it “the pickup.” For carrying long and/or wide stuff the Maverick looks significantly more difficult for that task, because you either have it hanging six feet out the back (that picture lol!) or you have to lift it onto a rack that’s above that tall cab.
With the Honda, two of us could simply lift the whatever about chest high and drop it right on the rack, where it’s perfectly balanced front to back and doesn’t stick out past the car on either end. 60 seconds to tie it down with a couple of cam straps. So much easier than whatever you’re trying to do in the back of that Maverick.
Hey maybe just set up your Maverick with that hideous high front low back and the canoe is easier to load on the roof rack?
I think we need to start a change.org petition on putting shifters back on the column instead of the rotary ones, or just in general.
Even the Lightning has the stupid electronic fold down shifter, you know what else would make a fancy flat work space without having a special button to fold the shifter down and out of the way, putting it back on the column!
Another reason I love my Ranger EV, column shifter, just so simple, everyone chasing the solution to a problem that was solved for the past 86 years.
Also think that’s probably a good idea on the mid-gate, may be a way Hyundai could jump ahead if they put one in the Santa-Cruz, think it’s bed is even tinier than the Maverick’s. Maybe not the best example with the boat as I’m not sure you’d have the height clearance needed for the front of the boat to fit through, but for lumber and such probably would work great. My Ranger has a 6′ bed and sloped from top of tailgate to bottom of the front of the bed an 8′ 2×4 sticks out the back about a foot, easy peasy.
The Baja and Santa Cruz baffle me. Are those tiny beds really useful?
“The Baja and Santa Cruz baffle me. Are those tiny beds really useful?”
I have never driven a Baja, so can’t speak for that. I do own a Santa Cruz, and for what I’ve needed it for, absolutely. I don’t really need “big truck” capabilities.
I’ve hauled a washing machine over 100 miles. My wife and I bought a bunch of miscellaneous furniture and it all fit very nicely in the bed (and cabin). My runs to Lowes or Home Depot for things are modest: a few bags of mulch for instance. It works great for that. It will never haul a ton of bricks to the job site, but I don’t need it to.
That said, having a pass-through to the cabin would be a great feature. But it has never prevented me from getting something moved. I do have the bed extender fence, and the Santa Cruz gate can also be held at a higher non-flat angle like the Maverick’s.
The dumbest part is the superdutys still have a column shifter, so they wouldn’t even have to make a different part
BRING BACK PUSH BUTTON TRANSMISSIONS!!!!
No I don’t think the Maverick is Truck enough, or really ute enough. A Truck’s main purpose should be to haul things, not people.
Personally I think Ford should make 2 more Maverick body styles.
Interim: Short bed 2 door. Every Auto parts store in the country would buy the hybrid one.
Lot term: Long Bed 2 door.
So they could sell 12 of them?
If you’re a consumer, the most important purpose of any new vehicle is to haul people. End off. Trucks included.
It’s not a conspiracy that the only people ordering *new* single cab trucks are fleets and financially-secure empty nesters- that’s just life. Sure, young single people drive regular cab trucks, and people like Jason Torchinsky own an old regular cab truck as an auxiliary vehicle, but they are almost always the second or third owner, making them irrelevant to the new car selling conversation.
Does Torch enjoy the luxury of simply sticking his canoe in an 8ft bed and calling it good? Yes.
If ‘Major’ were to need replacement, would he drop $40-50k on a new 2024 F150 XL regular cab/long bed to maintain that privilege? I’m gonna say no. There is absolutely no way most people’s significant other would be cool with tying that much $$$ up in a vehicle that can’t haul the whole family. And a new Maverick isn’t really cheap enough to change that conversation. For your average person, a new regular cab truck is as much of a frivolous purchase as a 2-seater coupe.
Honestly I see a lot of fleets phasing out regular cab trucks too. Our auto parts places just drive compact sedans or CUVs. Tow trucks have 4 doors to haul the passengers of the vehicle they are towing. Our power company F150s and f350 4x4s are all extended or crew cab. Cable company crews have switched from vans to Maverick hybrids with a utility cap. Even if your crew is only ever 1-2 people, working out of a single cab sucks. (I did for years…) It’s nice having a warm dry place to store your lunch box and hang your wet clothing.
Heck single cab pick ups are all over. People don’t buy new because they cant.
I’m a consumer and I rarely haul people ever, dogs yes, but they take up less space.
More and more people are not having kids, more and more people can’t afford things they don’t use. There are a lot of businesses where a long bed F-150 does not make financial sense but a Long Bed Maverick Hybrid would.
Also a single cab truck doesn’t have to be like the single cabs of old, they can be like the new Tacoma. Just extend the cab enough for seating and some storage. That being said unless said area has windows that open I think they should delete the windows. It would be a great place for dogs if the windows rolled down