One of the key reasons that trucks are so popular in the United States is that modern pickups are offered with pretty much every interior feature imaginable, but do people actually use all of it? Trucks offer loads of interior space and automotive designers have taken advantage of all of that space, adding extra screens, massaging front seats, reclining rear seats, and loads of speakers. Trucks have also become incredibly advanced in terms of premium infotainment technology, with huge touchscreens in the middle of the dash, digital gauge clusters, and steering wheels lined with controls. All of the features offered in modern trucks seem great, but how many of them are really useful to the average family? Today, we take a look at the top five features my family actually use in my truck.
Everyone Needs a Charging Port
The item that my family uses most in my truck – and what most families probably use most often in all sorts of vehicles – is charging ports. My Ram has USB charging ports below the infotainment screen in the dashboard, inside of the center console and on the back of the center console. This allows passengers in the front and back to each plug in and charge their phone on long trips, and thanks to the wireless charging pad, we can even charge tablets and other items in addition to our phones. Even for the daily drive, we all take advantage of the ease of charging our phones on the road, making charging ports the most commonly used feature of our truck’s interior.
Massive Center Console, Ideal for a Purse
The next feature of my truck that my family actually uses is the huge center console. While it can obviously store all sorts of items, my wife uses it to easily store her purse. When we are in a vehicle without a roomy center console, she has to either hold her purse, jam it next to her in the seat, or put it down near her feet on the floor. The first two options aren’t ideal for long trips and setting the purse on the floor risks getting it wet or dirty, especially in the winter. Fortunately, the huge center console has plenty of room for her purse and she still has easy access to it when she needs to grab money for a toll.
Storage Compartments Under the Rear Floor
This feature is currently specific to the modern Ram 1500, but my family actually uses the storage bins in the floor of the rear seating area. These bins are the perfect size to hold things like a half-gallon of milk or similarly sized liquid containers, keeping them upright and removing the risk of spills on the way home from shopping trips. In one of my previous trucks, we had a half gallon of milk leak on the way home from the store and it made for a very inconvenient issue, but any leaks now are contained by the underfloor storage bin.
We use one for “clean things” like groceries and we use the other for dirtier things. Normally, I keep extra tow hitch balls in one, along with WD40 and other things that we might need for towing trips. We have also used the underfloor storage bins to hold dirty tools when towing a car to the race track, so that any mess from those tools didn’t get onto the interior upholstery. When those track trips end, the bins were very easy to clean out.
Get the Full Floor Mats
The fourth of the top five truck features that my family actually uses is the full floor mats that are offered as a factory option. Sure, there are lots of companies that make floor mats that might cost a bit less than the factory-offered mats, but in my experience, the full factory mats are the best option. In most cases, the factory mat options are designed to clip into points on the floor, keeping them securely in place, and the high-sided designs of the factory mats helps to keep water, mud, melted snow and other moisture from getting to the carpeting.
Obviously, this is an item that my family uses without thinking about, but from spilled drinks and food to massive amounts of mud being tracked-in on shoes at horse shows, the factory floor mats in our truck have paid for themselves many times over. I pull them out, hose them off, let them dry and the floor is clean. The factory carpet underneath looks like it just rolled off of the assembly line.
Wireless Entertainment Input for All
Everyone in my family has their own musical tastes and the best way to keep the peace on long road trips is to let everyone spend some time running the DJ booth, as we call it. The wireless phone interface system in pretty much every new truck makes it easy to pair phones in advance; then, during the trip, the passenger can select phones of different members of the family to play and enjoy their music. In trucks with the ability to connect to multiple phones at once, it is even easier to let the kids connect to the infotainment system and play music, all without disconnecting the adult driver’s phone from the system.
Fortunately, my son is old enough that his musical tastes are enjoyable for everyone – we aren’t bumping down the street to Baby Shark – so this one works better when you have older children.
