Offroading + Tonneau Cover

I couldn't find anything about this on the forum. I'm sure it's been posted before.

When we take our trucks off-roading, whether that's fire roads or bumpy conditions, are we supposed to remove the tonneau cover? I bought my truck used and was fortunate to get the low profile tri-fold hard cover with the sale.

 

This is a interesting question and I dont have a good answer for you, but I have some experience.

I dont have a cover, but I recently installed some custom bed bars that mount to the bed tracks. I notice when I go over things that flex the frame a little bit, I can hear the bars banging around and trying to keep the box square. I am thing of cutting about 1 inch out of the center of the bars and slide a smaller diameter bar in and weld it on one side. This will give my bars the ability to get smaller or bigger depending on how much the box is flexing.

So, I believe the box does flex a decent amount with the frame. I would assume a cover would have enough flex on its own to be able to make up for the bed flexing.

 

Did you mean unfortunate to have got that OEM tonneau cover?

I wouldn't go desert run with it but I wouldn't think twice about removing it for 99% of offroading most people would ever do.