2024 Ford F-150 has 4 surprises owners should love

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — After 100 years of making pickups, you might think there was no room for improvement to seemingly elementary components like the bed, trailer hitch, tailgate and rear bumper.

The 2024 Ford F-150 begs to differ.

Thanks to a combination of creative engineering and advanced technology, the updated F-150 offers a series of features to make towing, hauling and bed access — core functions for every pickup — easier and more convenient. The 2024 F-150 is on sale now.

The new features are:

• Pro Access tailgate

• Pro Trailer Hitch Assist

• Rear bumper access step

• DIY bed dividers

2024 Ford F-150 trim levels and prices

• XL: $36,770

• STX: $43,895

• XLT: $47,620

• Lariat: $65,195

• King Ranch: $73,735

• Platinum: $73,735

• Tremor: $64,150

• Raptor: $78,330

• Raptor R: $110,225

Source: Ford. Prices exclude $1,995 destination charge.

Pro Access tailgate

Frustratingly, two of a pickups’ core jobs are frequently in conflict: Towing trailers and getting cargo in and out of the bed. There either isn’t enough room to lower the tailgate for bed access with a trailer hooked up, or the lowered tailgate bumped into the trailer hitch.

To remedy that, Ford broke the 2024 F-150’s tailgate into three section. Keep them together the bottom-hinged tailgate opens downward, like always. But when there’s no room for that, or you want to reach in and garb something that’s resting against the tailgate in the bed’s rear, the tailgate’s middle section opens like a door, avoiding trailer interference and allowing people to step right up to the bumper for cargo access.

Hinged on the right side, the tailgate has detents to hold it open at 37, 70 or 100 degrees, depending on how much space you have and how deep you need to reach into the bed.

It gets you 19 inches closer to the bed than leaning in over an open tailgate — a big deal when you’re removing heavy cargo.

In the tailgate’s conventional, bottom-hinged mode, power opening and closing also is available.

Rear access step

While other automakers already offered steps that fold out from beneath for easy access to the bed, Ford has long offered a step — and handhold that deployed from the tailgate’s top when it was lowered to get into the bed. Called the integrated tailgate step, it was wider and in some ways more convenient than steps that deploy from under the truck’s body.

That complicated mechanism won’t fit in the top of the three-piece Pro Access tailgate, though.

To make up for that, Ford has added a step that deploys from below the bumper, making it easy to step into the open center section. There’s also a convenient handhold molded into the rubber strip across the tailgate’s top.

In addition, Ford made the top of the rear bumper wider, so it’s easier to use it for a second step into the bed.

Pro Trailer Hitch Assist

The 2024 F-150 goes one better than previous models’ Pro Trailer Backup Assist, which uses camera views and a steering dial to make it easy for even novices to back up to a trailer.

The new feature, Pro Trailer Hitch Assist, controls the vehicles' steering, speed and brakes to maneuver the hitch ball precisely under the hitch. Ford says the feature combines digital cameras with machine learning and artificial intelligence.

DIY bed dividers

Borrowed from Ford’s smash-hit Maverick compact pickup, slots molded into the ’24 F-150’s bedliner create places to insert 2x4 boards, dividing the bed into separate compartments for gear, or just keeping items from rolling out of reach from the tailgate.

It’s a money-saving alternative to buying aftermarket bed dividers, which start at $239 on Amazon — roughly 21 times the cost of a 16-foot kiln-dried 2x4 at Lowe’s.

What else is new?

Other features newly available on the 2024 F-150 include:

• Head up display

• 12-inch instrument cluster

• 12-inch touch screen

• 5G modem for over the air updates and other connectivity.

• “Stolen vehicle service” to alert the owner to broken windows and other intrusions.

Contact Mark Phelan: 313-222-6731 or mmphelan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @mark_phelan. Read more on autos and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: The 2024 Ford F-150 pickup’s back end is full of surprises