Truck bed drawer build

I built a truck bed drawer to store stuff in my truck bed out of sight and be able to sleep on top of it with my gear underneath when I am camping. I am a carpenter apprentice by trade and this was my first "cabinetry" project, I learned a ton and want to remake it better eventually now that I have been using it for almost a year. These photos are from when I first built it but I will take some more and add if anyone is interested.

I built this using 3/4" presanded plywood from home depot, a circular saw, a straight edge with some clamps, 3 inch construction screws and some glue. I left a cutout in the deck where I can keep my big tool box or a cooler when I am camping. behind it is a long and narrow stash spot that is perfect for firewood, a shovel, or a hi-lift jack. The drawer just slides on the bottom plate of the build, its still easy to slide out even when loaded with hundreds of pounds of stuff.

Thats enough rambling for now, just wanted to share and maybe give some design inspiration to anyone thinking of doing this.

 

Nice, I plan on doing something like this at some point. It’s added to the long wishlist of things I never seem to have enough time for but am constantly researching! Thanks for the inspiration. I like seeing how others design it. Do you like the way it pulls out or would you ever want to go to with drawer slides?

 

Looking good, not having to unpack everything in order to sleep is a game changer. You finish the wood with anything?

 

Nice job

 

With this size drawer I would not use drawer slides. However with a full width drawer, fully loaded with tools I think it would be a bit too heavy without slides, but for my purposes the slides would also have to be very heavy duty and very expensive. If I remember correctly, I was considering some 60in 500lb capacity slides that would have doubled the overall material cost. With the pre-sanded plywood it slides very smoothly and satisfyingly, even with dust and dirt buildup inside, and the leverage allows it to sort of lock in place at any position, even when parked on a reasonable hill (I think I built the drawer 1/4" shorter than the deck which has been perfect).

I have been considering painting the top with some sort of bed liner type finish but I haven't got around to it and probably never will. It's held up fine unfinished.

 

Love it! Looks just like mine without the sliders!

 

Also wanted to add that anyone considering sleeping on theirs might want to consider sourcing formaldehyde free plywood, it greatly reduces the "plywood smell" that can be a bit overpowering when inside a small space like a camper.

Also this design was able to support 1200lb of concrete bags on top of the deck, a full width drawer would have a lower load capacity

 

Nice work, I didn't have a pocket hole jig when I first built mine, would have made assembly much easier. Any concerns with strength of the drawer having the pocket screws on the inside like that rather than the outside?

 

It’s held up too abuse for the last two years. I used a shit ton of wood glue as well which helps!

 

Love it. Still waiting to see an example of someone doing v-groove slides instead of the typical drawer slides. Would give me a lot more confidence in weight handling and abuse

 

That would eat into the storage space a lot more than traditional slides, I imagine. But maybe I’m not picturing what you are.

When I did mine I captured the rails with a strip of ply above and below, so the bolts only really need to keep the rail sucked in against the cabinet rather than bearing all the load in shear. Came out solid but I kind of regret using so much material in the end, weighs a lot. And so do the rails themselves, which is another point in favor of keeping it simple like OP

 

You can recess the wheels into the drawer and put the track in the groove indent of the bed. Lose maybe 1/2" after all that?

 

Ah yeah that’d be neat, if you could avoid drilling the bed. Definitely simpler just to use drawer slides since you get stuff for “free” that you’d need to build otherwise (latches, end stops, vertical retainment) and they’re still rated to like 500lbs, so good enough for camping gear.

I have seen some builds that used skateboard bearings and square tubing to construct side-mounted slides. I’m sure that’s cheaper but again more junk you gotta design

 

If you value economy, maximizing space, durability and simplicity then forgoing slides is the obvious choice. I haven't found myself wishing for them once.

 

I will note you had to add a floor pan to achieve no slides with smoothness

 

While it is possible to build truck bed drawers without a floor pan/base plate in theory, in practice it will give much better results to use one regardless of drawer slide style for a couple reasons.

1. The vertical supports for the deck will be much stronger and sturdier if they are joined at the top and bottom, this will help resist lateral forces. This is the main reason, just imagine standing on a 3 sided box vs a 4 sided box.

2. Truck beds aren't flat, this would limit your design choices because you could only place vertical supports in the channels in the bed

3. It would be more difficult to get accurate measurements because you don't have a flat plane to measure and build from

I used 1/2" ply for the bottom plate and 3/4 for the rest to save that extra bit of space to make sure my circular saw could fit in my drawer and my softopper could clear the deck.

 

Very nice build. I’m going on 8 years of frequent use with mine. I used 3/4 sanded ply on top, laminated pine craft boards for sides, and 1/4 inch ply on bottom for a dust shield. My drawers are only half depth and used heavy duty slides. Drawer faces have been added. No regrets on design or materials. Mine slides in and out easily allowing full use of bed when needed.

 

You have a not of novel ideas going on with your design, thanks for sharing. Making it easily removable is a great idea. The shape of the wheel arches in the 2nd gen look a lot easier to work with than the 1st gen, those flat insides are helpful.

Do you have any pictures of the cubbies on the sides? Is the large storage area to the left of the drawers full depth and also accessible from the front cut out? Or there a horizontal partition dividing the front storage area from the rear?

 

Yes 2nd gen has some advantages. I owned an 82 pre gen 1 and built a bd box for that one as well. It had a steel bed and rounded wheel wells which were a challenge to work around.

the cubbies are open spaces covered by a full length board which sits on 1x2 rails connected to the side boards. I’ve circled it for a better view. This allows me to either stuff smaller items in front/rear of tire well or full length items like fishing rods on top of well. I can take pics of that if you are interested. Originally there was a center support that divided the front from the back large storage area. But I found that I occasionally needed full length storage, so I cut out the section behind the large cubby and added a slide in/out partition which can be placed perpendicular as a divider for the large storage area. I didn’t take pictures of that but can if you want to see what I did.