Picking a Bed Cover for Our 2022 Ford Maverick Hybrid

The Ford Maverick isn’t the first pickup truck for which we’ve bought and installed a bed/tonneau cover; it’s the second, in fact, with the first being our long-term 2021 Ford F-150 Limited hybrid. With the F-150, we took the cheap approach, spending just $189 for a soft roll-up cover. With experience gained from that purchase, we splurged for a more expensive bed cover for our long-term 2022 Ford Maverick Lariat hybrid after naming the truck our Best of the Year and Best Pickup Truck of 2022 earlier this year.

Related: We Bought a $189 Tonneau Cover for Our $78K Ford F-150

Is it logical to buy a $189 bed cover for a $78,000 truck and a $1,100 bed cover for a $31,000 truck? Not really, but that’s what happened. Let’s run through lessons learned from buying an inexpensive soft roll-up cover for the F-150 and why we decided to buy the Bak Industries Revolver X4s hard roll-up cover for our Maverick.

Lessons Learned

We got what we expected with our F-150’s $189 cover, maybe a little less. It does the trick, but it has shortcomings we wanted to avoid with the Maverick’s bed cover.

For one, the F-150’s soft roll-up bed/tonneau cover requires frequent adjusting to keep it taut. Perhaps the canvas stretches as it ages or the tension adjusters don’t hold well, but the cover needs adjusting to not only regain its tension, but also prevent the occasional unlatching while driving. This happens even though the cover is installed to spec, and we’ve tried troubleshooting with the manufacturer’s recommendations when the cover doesn’t stay latched. Even though Velcro keeps the sides of the cover in place, it’s still unnerving to have the rearmost part of it flip up when towing a trailer at highway speeds. Adjusting the cover is easy, but it’s annoying to continually have to do it.

The decision to get something more premium for our Maverick also stemmed from knowing we wanted better usability and aesthetics. The F-150’s soft roll-up cover secures to the bed rails with Velcro that sometimes takes two tries to lay down straight. Then there’s the arched crossbeam designed to shed water. It doesn’t always stay in place while laying the cover down, and it can also flip upside down. This creates a depression in the cover where water can collect, defeating its purpose. And while the canvas cover matched the F-150’s surrounding plastic trim well, it was somewhat unsightly sitting on top of the bedrails versus alternatives that sit more flush.

Enter the Bak Industries Revolver X4s

We chose the Revolver X4s because it’s a hard roll-up cover, which is both easy to open and can also hold up to 400 evenly distributed pounds, according to Bak Industries. The all-black X4s also sits nearly flush with the bedrails for a clean appearance. Like our purchase of the Maverick itself, Cars.com bought the $1,100 cover independently; there’s no partnership with the manufacturer.

Bak manufactures all of its bed covers in Springfield, Mo., and it arrived in less than the quoted 20 days from ordering. Installation was a breeze, requiring only a nine-sixteenths wrench. Bak also recommends a torque wrench to torque the mounting hardware to 10 pounds-feet. Installing this hard cover wasn’t any more involved than our F-150’s less expensive cover — read Bak’s installation guide to understand what’s involved — and it took less than an hour from start to finish. One note: At some point during installation, perhaps through user error, the passenger-side end cap sheared off of the cover, but Bak provided a replacement piece at no additional cost.

So far, the cover looks great on the Maverick’s 4.5-foot bed, and it’s held up to hours of steady highway driving without any of the issues of our F-150’s cheap cover. Yes, the cover was a substantial 3.5% of the truck’s total retail price, but we think it’s worth it. Why? Besides the reasons listed above, the Maverick’s cab simply can’t hold as much as the larger F-150’s, so we’ll be relying on the Maverick’s bed to serve as a large trunk. Because of this, we wanted the bed to be better protected and easier to access since we’ll be using it more frequently. Will we be as impressed down the road? Stay tuned as we continue our yearlong evaluation of the Maverick hybrid.

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• How Does the 2022 Ford Maverick Handle the City?

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