2015 FORD F-150 — Complaint #1950990
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about ELECTRICAL SYSTEM: INTEGRATED TRAILER BRAKE CONTROL filed December 18, 2023
NHTSA complaint #1950990 (ODI reference 11560611) concerns a 2015 FORD F-150 and was filed on December 18, 2023. The owner reports the failure occurred on December 16, 2023. The report was geocoded to North Dakota based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as electrical system: integrated trailer brake control, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same FORD F-150 cohort independently describe similar electrical system: integrated trailer brake control failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2015 FORD F-150 shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
I connected the 7-pin trailer wire of my 16' tandem axle enclosed trailer with electric brakes to my pickup. I checked the lights on the trailer. All functioned correctly. I got into my pickup to drive. The integrated trailer brake controller was smoking and getting hot. No error messages popped up on the dashboard. I pulled the fuse for the trailer brake module to prevent the integrated trailer brake module from melting or catching fire. Upon searching the internet, this appears to be a problem with my model year (2015 F-150). Ford dealership re-programs the trailer brake module. This needs to be addressed before the brake controller fails and could potentially catch fire. It also could cause an accident, because the electric trailer brakes will lock up or cease to engage.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1950990 |
| ODI Number | 11560611 |
| Date Filed | December 18, 2023 |
| Failure Date | December 16, 2023 |
| VIN | 1FTFW1EG1FK |
Similar ELECTRICAL SYSTEM: INTEGRATED TRAILER BRAKE CONTROL Complaints for 2015 FORD F-150
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.