2022 Ford Maverick XLT cargo test | Truck enough?

Pickups today are so big — that’s easy to confirm in any parking lot, where these trucks strain the margins of a typical parking space. And “full-size” is bigger than it used to be: Today, a midsize Ford Ranger is about the size of an F-150 from a couple of decades ago. Even the compact 2022 Ford Maverick is bigger in many ways than the old-generation Ford Ranger. Yet it and the Hyundai Santa Cruz are the tiniest trucks on the market.

The arrival of a little Maverick for a few days of driving recently was a chance to answer a big question: Is the Maverick really much of a truck?

Sure, it has a pickup bed, sort of. As a consequence of having a four-door cab, the bed’s tiny: a hair over 4.5 feet long, and a hair under 4.5 feet wide. When I said the Maverick was bigger than small trucks of yesteryear, that didn't include bed size. The old Ranger came with 6- and 7-foot-long boxes. I owned a couple of Chevy S10s back in the day, which had 7.5-foot boxes, and they could haul a lot of cargo. One memorable load was a brand-new, crated-up, double-door, 7-foot-tall Sub-Zero refrigerator. That fancy icebox was so big, it took four cursing men to maneuver it into the kitchen. But a compact pickup hauled it.

Such a load would probably be too big for a Maverick. Its four doors make it a passenger car or compact SUV in a sense, one that leaves your luggage out in the rain. It’s great at hauling people, but does so by sacrificing some of what actually defines a truck.

Maverick isn’t alone in having a compromised bed size, of course. The smallest bed on an F-150 is only 5.5 feet long. At least Maverick edges out the Santa Cruz box, which is a mere 4-footer.

With a shell on it, I used to use a truck bed as a … bed, sleeping off the ground on backcountry outings. The only way to do that in a Maverick is by dropping the tailgate — assuming it’s not a cold night, you’re not in bear country, and you’re under 6 feet tall so your feet don’t dangle.

But Ford's got a tape measure. Its engineers know the bed's short, and they did a lot to mitigate this with their Flexbed system (explained in the video at the bottom of this post). For example, you could haul lumber by making use of the many tie-downs and cleats, and the tailgate can be angled partially open to support level sheets of plywood. The bed's short but clever.

So the utility test for this particular Maverick would focus on volume. Besides, I needed a load of garden compost, so there’s that. The cargo capacity is rated at 33.3 cubic feet. A cubic yard of material measures 27 cubic feet, so the math says it should fit — and flush with the top of the box, even. So we were off to the materials yard to test that. Plus, it would be interesting to see how a front-end loader would drop the compost into such a small target. Would they maybe even refuse to try?