Thelife- The 2022
Ford Maverick is here. - It's a small, $20,000 pickup with a highly versatile bed Ford calls the Flexbed.
- The Flexbed allows owners to DIY racks and storage solutions, power electronics, and more.
The stalwart Ford F-150 offers all sorts of interesting features like a collapsible desk in the cab, a fold-down workbench on the tailgate, and mobile-generator capability for running tools.
Its new sibling - the $20,000 Maverick, which was revealed this month - may be substantially cheaper and smaller than the F-150 but has plenty of tricks up its sleeve too. It's geared more toward casual city dwellers looking for something small, efficient, and functional, while the F-150's add-ons take aim at customers who need a sturdy work truck.
The pipsqueak pickup's coolest feature is a highly versatile bed out back dubbed the Flexbed. Here's what it can do.
DIY racks and more
As its name might suggest, the Flexbed's main selling point is its flexibility. With an eye on recreational buyers and DIYers, Ford designed the bed to be customizable and adaptable to owners' needs.
Ford built in a handful of pre-threaded holes for owners to mount whatever they'd like without drilling into the sheet metal. There are also several vertical and horizontal slots designed to snugly fit pieces of dimensional lumber for homemade racks and storage dividers.
By sliding in a couple of boards horizontally, for instance, buyers can create multiple separate storage areas. With a bit more effort and know-how, handy Maverick owners can fashion their own bed-mounted racks for bikes, kayaks, and other gear. Ford also included two tie-downs and four D-rings to help secure cargo.
In the bed, Maverick buyers will find a QR code they can scan to get ideas about how to use their Flexbed.
Electric power, but less than other Ford trucks
While the 2022 Maverick may not be able to power an owner's house like the electric F-150 Lightning, its Flexbed does sport a household outlet for powering small power tools or tailgating gear.
Behind a panel, Ford included a 12-volt access point where owners can wire in their own extra bed lights or other accessories. People typically need to jerry-rig that sort of thing by stealing power from the taillights.
Multi-position tailgate
The Maverick's bed may only be 4.5 feet long, but that doesn't mean it can't haul larger items like full-size sheets of plywood. Dropping the tailgate down extends the bed floor to a more standard six feet, but that's to be expected from any pickup.
By adjusting support cables on the sides of the tailgate, owners can also set the tailgate to a halfway-open position. That acts as sort of a built-in bed extender and allows owners to haul varying sizes and shapes of cargo more easily. For example, owners can load in up to 18 4x8 sheets of three-quarter-inch plywood by laying them across the half-open tailgate and the rear wheel wells.
Handy storage cubbies
The Maverick doesn't have any underbed storage, but it does offer up to two small storage cubbies, depending on the trim level chosen. The base XL gets none, the XLT gets one, and the top-of-the-line Lariat has two.
The available storage cubbies aren't anything massive, but they do seem helpful for things you might want to keep at hand but don't want bouncing around in the bed, like a bike pump or bungee cords.
Low walls for easy access
A versatile pickup bed isn't worth much if people can't access it easily. Ford says it determined the truck's ride height and designed its bed walls so "almost any size adult can reach over and grab items off the floor." It also says it developed the bed with the fifth percentile female in mind.
Pickups have grown so large that even tall people sometimes need a step ladder to reach into the bed, so this thinking from Ford is nice to see.