In recent years, pickup trucks have gone from work trucks to practical trucks for capability and adventure. Consumers use them as work trucks and lifestyle trucks, and with truck caps you can completely customize the truck’s applications. A lot of this is thanks to the ridges and grooves found in truck beds. Luckily for you, a pickup truck doesn’t necessarily have to be high on the truck hierarchy to keep up with all of a driver’s modern demands.
Now, here’s a question for all you pickup truck owners out there. What is the point of all those ridges installed into the truck bed? Not all trucks have them, but for those that do, it’s an interesting design choice. All those grooves pickup truck manufacturers are installing in truck beds and the walls of truck beds serve a purpose. Not only are they convenient, but they help with compartmentalizing small items and supporting longer ones.
What is the deal with grooves in my truck bed?
Truck beds are perfect for carrying resources and materials, but they can’t keep them from toppling over. Utility track systems, aka cargo management systems or rail systems, can be handy for overcoming this hurdle. Many automakers offer them to hold items in place, but they can be a costly add-on. If you don’t want to spend the extra dough, a lot of trucks come with a feature in the truck bed that makes it easy to compartmentalize and store items: ridges.
Let’s say you bought some plywood for your next DIY project. Ram Truck and Ford have both designed truck beds with grooves in the floor and the walls of the bed to hold plywood in place. You can use this feature to create horizontal compartments if there are items you want quick access to. These ridges can also support help longer items that extend over the end of the truck bed, like pipes or long wooden boards.
If all else fails, tonneau covers and truck caps can give consumers more options. Tonneau covers help improve fuel efficiency, but they also make it easy to contain items by placing a lid of sorts along the top of the truck bed. A truck cap basically adds a whole other compartment for cargo or passengers, depending on how you customize the interior. Some can even be transformed into a camper with a tent, like the GFC Camper on the Jeep Gladiator.
