Long Bed Sleeping Platform

Hey all, I just finished this project. It didn't take me more than a handful of hours start to finish. I had a week delay because I changed my mind on the center support beam and needed to get a different piece of wood and some more carpet.

I've never done anything like this and only needed a second hand to pull the carpet taut during stapling. The jigsaw work on the center beam was a bitch, and may have been due to a crappy jigsaw or just my amateur hands with the tool. That said, the important thing is that it will be more than enough support, the cutouts were just to be a little fancy.

I got some ideas and measurements from @airborndad so thanks to him, but in the end I wanted a bit of a different design than he used.

I wanted three separate pieces so I could break the whole thing down, stack it to the side, and fill the bed with equipment.

The actual dimensions of the bed made this pretty easy!

Each platform section is 57x24 (3/4" plywood) and the carpet is super thin grey stuff from Home Depot. I would recommend maybe going 56.75", my pieces are a little difficult to get in place where the shell meets the bed. (57 is perfect for the actual bed, but the shell has a lip that makes these pieces JUST a bit too tight for my liking.)

The slots in the bed are perfect for cross beams and were a major influence on my design. They are 57x7x1. I used .75" plywood for the panels and crossbeams and a 2x9 for the center beam.

The front panel and middle panel are perfectly square 57x24, the third panel needs to be cut to fit the corner wedges and metal frame at the end of the bed.

Here's the setup for the end piece. Started 57x24 and using @airborndad 's advice and my own winging it, came up with this:

It sits really nice in there, pretty proud of this.


The "taper" in the bed starts at 17" and ends just shy of 21". I drew a line from the edge at 17" and went in 15/16" (seriously) at 20 7/8". Nothing wrong with giving yourself a little more room but my fit is SNUG.

Here's the actual width of the final piece between the metal frames.

That was the only difficult platform piece since the others are perfectly rectangular.


Here you can see all three panels stacked together with cross beams glued and drilled to the front and back panels. I wasn't too concerned with the look of the carpet underneath, but it'd be easy to make perfect if you wanted to.

Just so you know, I took the 57x7 pieces, carpeted them, and dropped them in the bed slots. Then I took the 57x24 pieces, carpeted them, and put them in place. Then I traced the outline where the crossbeams lined up with the platform pieces, removed and glued/nailed them together. Then it became a completely finished, carpeted piece that pops into place and doesn't wiggle in any direction.

The three sheets of plywood are pretty damn sturdy but I'm 230 pounds so I wanted some center support. The back and front panels don't really need it because of the cross beams, but the center piece does, as it sits cleanly on top of the wheel-wells only.

My cutouts in the center beam are overkill but I thought it would help with stability overall.


Center beam in place

Front platform slotted in place

Middle section sitting on wheel wells and center beam. This doesn't flex at all with 350 pounds on it.

Final piece in place.

Some overpriced (but awesome) sleeping mats from REI. They're 72" long just like the bed; fuckin perfect!

 

Very cool man!! I'm going to be building a platform for my truck as well. Mine's going to be a little different, but similar enough. Looks super good and I hope mine comes out this good.

 

Thank you much! I appreciate it!

 

Very nice!

 

Excellent job ​

I like how yours ended up with the 3 big pieces and the center support

 

Thank you sir! Your measurements helped me greatly! A+ user you are, everybody take note! I saw his post, asked him for some recommendations and he immediately replied with pics and measurements.

 

Sweet was looking into doing something similar to this.

 

Looks like a quality job all around!! Any flex on the 3/4" ply when you laying on it?

 

Looks real similar to the one I just made! Great minds think alike! I ran mine the other way so it can be half a bed or full. Cross boards are cut in middle and one half is attached to center board. Wood part is fun...carpeting sucks.

 

The front and back pieces have the cross beams so they don't flex at all. Without the cross beams or the center i-beam, the ply would definitely flex under 180+ pounds. With the reinforcement, not at all.

 

Nice work, looks like we used that same cheap ass carpet!

 

If you build it so it's two halves running the length of the bed, it'll hold a lot of weight. In reading all about these platforms, numerous people said they had hundreds of pounds on there and it was fine.

 

Also I threw together a quick and dirty platform as well yesterday, and took it camping last night! Worked great.

 

Home Depot FTW.

 

This might be a dumb question but it can't tell from the pics. What keeps y'all's center board from falling over?

 

Mine is attached to one half of the cross boards.

 

Technically it can fall over. But I cut slots in mine where the crossbeams sit. The middle plywood panel sits directly on top of it. It's pretty tough to move with the panels in place. I wanted it to be modular so I can take it all out easily, or stack it to the side.

 

Care to share the measurements of the long bed? Including height of the wells? That'd be a great help to me as I'm going to be making one of these soon too!
Awesome job on it, it looks super clean and convenient!

 

Your going to need a tape measure to build this. ;-)
Toyota made the notch depths and widths weird for the cross boards. I custom cut all mine to fit right so the ply sits on the boards and the wheel well tops for max support!

 

The bed is 72" long and 57" wide for the most part. It does taper from the bottom to the top so depending on your construction, consider all of that. But 57 across for the slots and on top of the wheel wells is perfect. As above, you may consider a tad thinner if you have carpet and a camper shell.

The wheel wells are 9" high.