New! Find answers in a flash with Scout, our friendly AI chat otter.
Try out unlimited access with 7 days of Outside+ for free. Walnut Veneer
Be one of the first to try our new activity feed! Tap “Home” to explore.
Midsize pickup owners rejoice: now you can organize 30 percent more stuff without wasting any space
Heading out the door? Read this article on the Outside app available now on iOS devices for members! Download the app.
How do you organize tools, camping gear, and sports equipment in your truck bed? It’s a complicated problem that requires you to balance factors like security and accessibility, even while dealing with stuff that comes in a variety of shapes, sizes, and degrees of fragility. That problem is even harder if you drive a small truck like my Ford Ranger, simply because you have very little space to work with. But finally, there is an easy solution to all of that.
Decked has been around since 2013, and most truck enthusiasts will be familiar with the brand’s recycled high-density polyethylene, made-in-America truck bed drawer systems. That material is virtually indestructible across exposure to weather, chemicals, and impacts, making it perfect for use in the back of a pickup, but molding it into elaborate shapes is complicated. So, compared to weaker, less weather-resistant drawers constructed from plywood, the old Decked systems sacrificed a lot of space.
Let’s look at what I’m talking about. Above is an image of the old Decked drawers, mid-explosion. Storage space is only available inside the drawers themselves (which are narrower at the bottom than at the top, and inside the bins at the corners. There’s several inches of lost space along the entire length of the system, at the center between the drawers, and large volumes of wasted space all around the wheel arches on both sides. Even in a \ small truck like a Ranger, that likely totals several cubic feet. I enjoyed the ability to organize smaller items while carrying large loads on the system’s totally flat top surface, but never felt like I was getting the most out of the space available in my five-foot bed.
Developing this new system, Decked set out to waste less space.
“We have been listening intently since day one to our customers, and after ten years, we knew what needed to be improved,” explains Decked’s vice president of marketing, Greg Randolph. “Our new Drawer systems feature way more drawer extension, bigger drawers, far less wasted space, and vastly improved topside cargo retention. Redesigning from the ground up allowed us to address these common complaints. We also brought our molding in house and stood up a 70,000 square-foot, high-pressure injection molding plant in Ohio. Switching from low-pressure to high-pressure injection molding allowed us to produce higher fidelity and better quality parts and doing it ourselves allows us to control every piece of the product all along the way.”
The advantages the new system brings are obvious. By switching to one large drawer (on midsize trucks only, systems designed for larger vehicles like a Ford F-150 still run two drawers) with vertical sides, Decked 2.0 will enable you to carry larger objects safely inside, while making better use of space both in the bed and drawer. And, at the corners, those bins are replaced with open voids, accessible both from the tailgate and doors in the top load surface. The system is supported by vertical walls that run the length of the bed on either side of the drawer—those represent the only lost storage space.
Readers who follow me on Instagram have asked if the large, single drawer means you need to move stuff off the tailgate to access the drawer’s contents. While the answer is obviously yes, there’s plenty of spare room on either side to scoot your beer or whatever, so it really doesn’t feel like there’s any additional hassle over the old system. As an advantage, the drawer now pulls out three inches further than before, making it easier to reach anything you have shoved deep inside it.
Another big change is that the floor of that drawer is now made from aluminum slats rather than HDPE, allowing Decked to span that distance with total rigidity, and that surface is then covered by a rubber pad to prevent contents from sliding around too much. The entire drawer system is sealed by a thin HDPE wall that butts against the truck cab, corrugated plastic drawer sides, and a length of rubber weather stripping at the drawer opening, all of which help keep stuff in the drawer while preventing dust and precipitation from whirling their way inside through the complex aerodynamics taking place around an uncapped bed. Just like the old system, you can clean this new one-off using a pressure washer, while stuff stored in the drawer stays totally dry.
Decked claims these changes add 30 percent more available volume inside a 5-foot bed like mine. That’s an enormous difference. Where I pretty much maxed out any available room in the old system with essential tools and supplies I feel I need to carry all the time (Boy Scouts really hammered that “be prepared” message into my still-elastic brain at an early age), loading that same stuff into the new drawers leaves about one-third of the drawer space and the entire side areas open. That means I can move several bulky items of camping gear inside the drawer and under the side load surfaces, freeing up equivalent space inside the GoFastCamper that caps my bed.
But I needed to install the system before I could do that. Pulling the old one out of my truck and then bolting it into a friend’s was a good reminder that the simplicity of the previous product brought some advantages, even if it wasn’t terribly efficient. Removing and reinstalling those old drawers took maybe an hour-and-a-half and could have been handled by one person. The new Decked involves a lot more small parts, a fair amount of head scratching, and some trial and error with fitment. I’d tell a friend you need them for an entire afternoon and make sure you have a truck’s worth of flat, dry floor space to lay parts out on while you puzzle your way through assembly.
The big downside with Decked has always been that HDPE is slick, and the system typically covers the tie downs provided inside a truck bed. With the old system, you could add tie-down tracks by bolting them to the steel supports inside the load surface. Doing so cost a little extra money, but provided multiple, reconfigurable tie-down points. On the new system, Decked provides three mounting points for D-rings on each side (and gives you four of those D-rings to fill the six locations). That partially addresses the problem from the beginning, but ultimately provides you fewer options for attaching stuff to the load surface. The optional closed-cell foam adhesive traction pad also helps, albeit for an eye-watering $500.
Along with the squared-off drawer (replacing the tapered shape on the old system) come new, squared-off storage boxes. These also make better use of space. The Halfrack ($150) and Sixer ($90) are extremely robust Pelican Case alternatives that feature much more user-friendly latches, and a really convenient folding handle.
I’m using a Halfrack to store my recovery straps, shackles, pulleys, and other related items. Not only is all that stuff heavy, but you sometimes need to carry it for a few hundred yards if you’re helping a stranded vehicle other than your own, and the secure latches and comfortable handle help there.
Other stuff I’m loading into the D-Co Bins ($125 for a set of three), which are a more robust alternative to the snap-lid bins all of us organize our basements, and are also custom-fit to take up one-half the width of the drawer. Those are strong enough to house tools, kitchen gear, clothing, or whatever you can come up with, and make even better use of space thanks to thinner, less robust construction. All these new boxes also nest together when stacked, so work as well on top of the load surface as they do in the drawer. The system ships with one Halfrack, one Sixer, and a Bin. The extremely large volume of the new drawer necessitates that you use boxes or bags to keep small stuff from rolling around.
The great thing about drawers is that they make their contents easily available, even while the rest of the bed is filled with stuff. Here you can see my jack, tire tools, Fix-a-Flat, WD-40, and emergency jump starter. I never need to worry about this stuff in normal driving, but the second I need it, it’s right there in front of me, organized and ready to go. (Photo: Wes Siler)
There’s also an open catch-all bin at the rear of the drawer that makes a great home for frequently used odds and ends like lighters, multitools, bug spray, hand sanitizer, and such. It’s sized to fit a 12-back of beer sideways on either side of the single latch.
The open voids on each side of the drawer run past the wheel arches, all the way to the cab. There’s a large door on each side over the rear portion, and a small one up front, by the cab. Not only do these voids provide access to check tightness on the new turnbuckles that attach the system to your truck’s bed tie downs, but they make versatile use of awkwardly shaped spaces left unused by the original Decked drawers system.
I’ve already found use for the rearmost void areas by stuffing camp chairs and my large camp stove’s legs, plus awning stays for the GoFastCamper’s windows into them. The front part of the void I haven’t figured out yet, since it’s mostly wheel arch below the load surface, but I may use that to stash emergency clothing layers, a backpacking quilt, or similar backup items it’d be reassuring to have along, but which I don’t need frequent access to. Should you want to organize small items using those areas, the system ships with two deep and two shallow bins that nest into the rear access doors. I may use mine to store fuses, nuts, bolts, filters, and other spare parts.
Right now, I’m packing the truck for a three-month trip to Baja Sur. It’s never easy to fit 300 pounds of dogs, all our camping gear, plus the clothes we want to wear in civilization into such a small truck. But compared to the trip we took down there in my first Ranger to get married, right before the pandemic was declared in 2020, I feel like I have loads of space to spare. And I packed the truck that time using plastic bins instead of drawers. Not only does the new Decked system make it feel like I’m working with a larger truck bed, but it does that while organizing all the stuff we’re carrying better than ever before.
Walnut Plywood Finish Enjoy coverage of racing, history, food, culture, travel, and tech with access to unlimited digital content from Outside Network's iconic brands.