Forget The Bathroom Scale, The 2021 Ford F-150 Can Weigh You And Your Payload

Big payload capacities are great, but taking advantage of them involves a lot of guesswork as many times truck drivers don’t know how heavy their load is.

That won’t be a problem this summer as the 2021 Ford F-150 will be offered with newly available Onboard Scales, which estimate cargo weight in real time.

As drivers load up the truck, the approximate payload weight can be displayed on either the infotainment system or FordPass app. If that’s too much of a hassle, you’ll be thankful for the F-150’s “smart taillamps.”

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They operate like the battery charge indicator on a smartphone and display bars indicating how much of the truck’s payload capacity has been used. When all four bars are illuminated, the truck is fully loaded. If you keep loading, the top lights will blink to tell you the F-150 is overloaded.

The truck also features a scale mode, which “zeroes out the current load and allows for approximate weighing of additional items loaded into the bed.” If you’re so inclined, you can leave the bathroom scale behind and hop in the bed.

Besides the onboard scales, the 2021 F-150 is gaining a Smart Hitch. It measures the tongue weight of connected trailers and “provides guidance on weight distribution” as well as whether or not the hitch weight is too low or too high. It can even guide owners through properly tensioning a weight redistributing hitch.

Furthermore, the truck will be offered with Continuously Controlled Damping this June. Designed to improve ride and handling characteristics, the dampers adjust to the situation at hand.

When potholes are detected, the dampers firm up and this helps to prevent the tires from dropping as deep into the hole. The tuning is based on the selected drive mode and Ford noted in Tow/Haul mode, the dampers are tuned to deliver a “smooth and confident driving experience, easing truck and trailer responses to road conditions while providing connected, precise, and linear steering despite a heavy trailer or load, helping reduce stress on the driver while towing.”