Alright guys, I’m not going to prognosticate at length over the situation in the Ukraine. Suffice to say that it is a massive combined arms assault on a country that has suffered enough throughout history.

John Birmingham wrote up his thoughts on this, so today I’ll let him speak through his newsletter.

Check it out.

BLUF: The Swiss Army knife of trucks.

Hey everybody. This is not going to be a typical review with statistics and boilerplate. No, I’m going to talk about how this truck is to live with after about 1500 miles of operation, over the highway, rural roads, and city driving. Also, it must be mentioned that all of this driving was done in less than ideal winter weather using exclusively 87 octane winter mix gas.

What do I mean by less than ideal?

See below. A picture is worth a thousand words, I guess.

Or perhaps this…

Or this, which by the way was a heavy mix of ice and deep snow. Bad stuff.

The Maverick handled some of the worst Ohio weather I can remember, including a fourteen hour long ice storm. This truck reminded me why I ordered the AWD version, although I had some doubts afterward about the additional expense. Well, three weeks later I think getting All-wheel drive was a seriously smart move. These hills are unforgiving in inclement weather, and the Maverick handled them with aplomb.

Alright, the first point, I guess. It must be said that this truck has proven itself to be an all-weather beast. Almost immediately upon leaving the dealer’s lot there was the aforementioned ice storm. This was an inadvertent torture test, right off the bat.

The Maverick crawled as well as our Subaru Outback, a vehicle that is legendary for sure-footedness in bad weather. By no means did the Maverick act like an old-school truck- even in four wheel drive trucks are infamously squirelly on the ice due to their light rear ends. The Maverick does not handle like a traditional truck!

Which brings me to my next point. This vehicle handles like a beefy sedan, if that makes any sense. In fact, its ride is much more like an Outback than a traditional truck. This, in my opinion, is a very good thing. I’ve operated a lifetime’s worth of trucks, and while they definitely have their uses, their ride usually sucks.

Not the Maverick. It didn’t handle like a tactical vehicle (which my previous truck, the Jeep Gladiator, did). It didn’t feel top-heavy around curves, or like the rear end was going to break free. No, the best I can say is that it felt sure-footed. Comfortable.

Yes, a comfortable economy truck. Seriously. And you really can fit three adult men in the backseat, although this is really a four-adult vehicle. But in a pinch, it will do for five. Just don’t plan on driving to Kansas like that.

Something I need to mention is this truck’s economy and efficiency.

See below, and please note the MPG readout, which according to my manual calculations is .6 US GAL low.

If you know anything about trucks, 28.9 mpg indicated and 29.5 real world is astonishing mileage. This on 87 gas, mixed highway/rural/hauling/city driving while breaking in a brand-new engine.

Note: 3500 miles on truck. Mileage is now 30.5 mpg indicated, which is pretty close to accurate. I did the math. A non-hybrid truck that gets over 30 mpg? Seriously.

Now let me tell you my options, and you will see why I am so surprised.

My friends, due to the uses and circumstances this truck will be used for, unfortunately I bought the least efficient Maverick.

I needed the extra towing capacity, so this has the “4k tow option.” Also, it is AWD, which unfortunately precluded my purchase of the hybrid version, which is what I really wanted.

But how can I argue nearly 30mpg? I’m shaking my head about this, and I haven’t babied this truck or even put it into its special “eco” mode. No, most of the time it was in “Normal” or “Slippery.” Also, we need to talk about the economy of the purchase. My other options were the bed extender (which gives you nearly seven usable feet of bed space), a 110v inverter in the cab, and rubber mats.

So, let’s get this straight. An AWD truck that gets over 29mpg with a ton of bells and whistles for LESS than 30k? It’s true. (Actual MSRP 27,005, which Team Ford of Steubenville, OH honored. By the way, a professional and excellent buying experience by the people at Team, and I was a new customer!) I took a base model and loaded it up, and so far I have used each option.

A few features that took me by surprise?

Power locks, power windows, a WiFi hotspot (that works well), remote start! See below, the app on my phone.

However, there is no cruise control on the XL. Whatever; I’ve found that at speed (about seventy MPH) you barely need to feather the gas anyway. For a base model work truck, this thing is loaded. Seriously.

Also, I’ve decided to include a “scale” image of the truck so it can be compared at a glance to a real full size Silverado. See below.

So, we’ve touched on the price point (amazing), the efficiency, the size, and the creature comforts and ergonomics (excellent!). Note: After 3500 miles, this is by no means a cramped-feeling economy vehicle. On the contrary. The cabin feel is much like a Subaru Outback, which is a good thing. Even the backseat is roomy, comfortable. This was a real surprise! I’m still looking for compromises, and I haven’t found one yet.

Another experience that might be helpful for urban readers. Observe.

Let’s show a few pictures of what this thing can actually do, what it is really capable of.

Yes, you can haul a family’s worth of bicycles.

Also, no problem with a few eight-foot kayaks.

Can it haul a heavy load? At this point I must mention that this particular truck is rated at 1420 lbs of cargo, or about 750kg. Well, see below as I approached that with a load of frozen, soaked mulch.

As you can see, the Maverick wasn’t really tested by 15 bags of mulch, 1 bag of diatomaceous earth, and three bales of wood chips. Also, I drove home in a snow squall under occasional white-out conditions. When I arrived, I swung onto my frozen yard and went on the dirt back to the barn. 3500 mile note: Truck is good to go for mild off roading with factory tires, and a good bad-weather vehicle.

BS the Maverick “isn’t a truck.” If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and looks like a duck, it’s a duck. Or, in this case, a truck.

Now, I haven’t hauled hay yet, but I decided I’d get this review out there for you all. At this point I am very confident that the little Mav can haul either 16 or 18 square bales no problem at all.

Note: I did haul some hay at 3400, I started conservatively at 16 bales. Wow. This thing is a hay-hauling monster! Easy to load, and after doing sixteen bales I know I could have done 22, no problem. This ties with my old Silverado! No power/squat issues, feathered pedal, like usual, to get up to highway speeds. See below.

After several weeks with the grey beast, it is no wonder at all to me that the entire production run of the 22 Mavericks is sold-the-hell-out by the middle of January.

This truck lives up to its hype.

It is solid as a rock, and it is efficient as hell, both in dollar terms and energy usage.

Five stars.

I’d say go and get one, but good luck with that. Your best bet to own a Maverick would be to special order a ’23 from a dealer in August. Ford guarantees that special orders will charge MSRP only, a small miracle in 2022/23, and the people at Team fulfilled Ford’s promise to the letter.

Bottom line: This truck was worth the eight month wait.

The above image is the ideal way to pass a winter, at least IMO.

I get so sick of the sludge and ice. The endless gray and white, the treacherous driving and conditions. For Pete’s sake, it’s semi-dangerous just to go out and take care of the animals, you have to watch every step. The other day I fell while carrying a bucket of water. Fortunately, all that happened was a change of clothes and a dust off, and I was good.

Maybe in twenty years I won’t shake something like that off as easily, though. I truly hate ice packs and ice in general, along with frigid temperatures and bleak skies. The snow we had sometime in the past hasn’t entirely melted; there are still dirty lumps of it scattered about my mushy yard.

Yeah, you may have picked up on the fact that winter isn’t my favorite season and it’s had me down. It’s not a matter of having writer’s block rather than being bogged down in the day to day necessities of keeping the house OK and warm throughout some fairly challenging weather. The endless minutiae of maintaining a household while Mother Nature launches her annual assault on your budget and nerves.

A lot of the time I use the winter to write. For some reason this season has been different. Now, I have been maintaining my patreon site without major problems, but actually picking up the thread on my latest manuscript has been a bit of a bother.

I dunno. I think part of the problem has been that I am imagining a new world, an alien world, and what I want to bring across to my readers is a feeling of how profound it would be to actually step foot on a world literal dozens of light years from home, being among the very first. There are also a whole range of questions that come with this. Ethics.

Sometimes you just have to sit back, look at something, then go do something else. It’s a trick I learned as a mechanic. If a problem is kicking your butt, walk away or get a second set of eyes on it. Otherwise you will surely break something or you’ll injure yourself. So, I guess this lousy winter is serving the purpose of walking to the other side of the shop and having a smoke break. Giving me the opportunity to turn the problem over in my head, to examine all the weird angles.

I’m pretty confident that in the end this small break will make for a better product, which is what I owe my readers.

Catch ya, and this time I’ll try not to be such a stranger.

Seen above is my brand new truck, a 2022 Ford Maverick. No, this will not be a full review; that will come at about 1000 miles or so and after some big jobs. There is a long list of things that have to happen with this vehicle, I special ordered it and then waited for a very long time for it to show up.

I hadn’t owned it ten minutes when I hauled a load of animal feed home.

This is what we do with trucks. We put them to work. But before that happens, a lot of things have to go right. This time, it didn’t. This wasn’t Ford or the dealer’s fault at all- it was the screwed up reality we have all dealt with during the pandemic.

Here’s what happened. Ordered this truck in the late spring to my specifications. I had heard about the new Ford Maverick trucks, and I heard they were super useful and very fuel efficient.

The rumors were true, but more on that later.

So, I made a small deposit at the dealer (Team Ford in Steubenville, OH) and a short time later I received a welcome email from Ford. So far, so good. I knew there would be a delay in my order because this was the first year of production and hey, 2021. Need I say more?

I won’t go into all that happened, but I will say that between my dealer and Ford I was kept more or less in the loop about the various events and stages my vehicle was caught in.

Commodity shortages. Factory teething issues. The infamous chip shortage. All of these things, directly due to the piece of sh*t pandemic, all played a role in my seven odd month wait on the new vehicle.

The chores kept piling up, undone, during this purgatory.

Finally, I received the long-awaited email from Ford that my truck had shipped from the plant. It rode the rails about a month, and then it was delivered in the precise timeframe that I received from Ford.

My dealer worked feverishly to prep the truck, and then the fine day arrived when I went in for delivery.

Kudos to Team, the process was painless and hassle-free. No up charges, dealer markups, exorbitant fees, or games. I paid what was owed at the agreed upon amount and term. Then they handed me the keys and I drove away, discovering things as I went.

Now, this is not a review of the Maverick. That will come in a couple of weeks after some major chores. One of these chores will be the hay bale challenge, where I see how many square bales will fit in the bed. I bet sixteen, a friend says eighteen. But I digress.

A few quick impressions.

One of the options I ordered was the bed extender. I am very glad I got this; it removes easily and for smaller loads it serves as a sort of cargo organizer that keeps stuff from rolling around in the bed. Also, with the locking tailgate it cannot be removed if the tailgate is locked. This is a neat feature I discovered upon delivery.

Another thing that is cool is that the base trim (which is what I ordered) comes with a WiFi hotspot. Really? WiFi in a work truck? It’s true.

Also got rubber floor mats and a 110 hookup in the cab. The rubber mats got put to the test immediately with all the mud, plus someone spilled cleaning solvent in there first thing. With the mats? Not a problem.

This thing also comes with electric locks and Ford’s app that allows you to remote lock or start the vehicle, as well as track it. These are deluxe features in a twenty odd K truck. Seriously?

There’s more, but that will have to wait on the review.

One last thing. Now, this is not a true number because the engine is still in the break-in phase, but I have been shocked by the fuel economy.

My truck is basically the least efficient Maverick because of the features I ordered. It is AWD, a must in these hills. In snowy conditions you can’t do anything with a 2WD truck around here. Unfortunately, Ford does not make a hybrid AWD Mav, so I was stuck with the turbo 2.0 gas engine. Also, I ordered the 4k tow package that comes with different gearing and a beefed up 8 speed transmission, and I’ve heard that affects the mileage as well.

With a couple of hundred on the clock, mixed rural/city/highway miles and a new engine I’m getting 27.1 mpg. This number will probably go up with time.

This is astounding mileage. The truck I traded in had almost ten mpg less, with a similar tow and cargo capacity.

The hybrid version of the Mav is reported to get 40 odd mpg on average, and I believe it. But 27 odd in a work truck is no joke at all. There are many sedans that can’t match that number, let alone work vehicles. Good job, Ford engineers!

The process to get this wonderful little truck was painful, to be sure. None of that can be blamed on either my dealer or Ford, however. The seven months was a simple function of supply and demand, mixed in with pandemic economics.

Finally, the Mav is sitting in my driveway.

Full review this month.