Pickup Truck Camping - Outfitting a Truck Bed and Canopy for Life on the Road

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• published: 12 Jul 2013
• views: 307322

A video tour of my pickup truck camping setup. I've been living in the back for the past few months during my dirtbag climbing road trip. Thoughts on balancing gear storage and livability. Check out the full write up for more photos and details: http://www.desktodirtbag.com/pickup-truck-camping/ I've spent at least 120+ days back here at the time of filming this. This is a great compromise between the elevated coffin style sleeping platform and the backshelf style setup. I'm very happy with this setup! Check out my site: http://www.desktodirtbag.com BG Music: Blear Moon - Cold Summer Landscape Video Transcript: Alright, so I just wanted to give a little video tour of the sleeping arrangement here in my truck this is uh... kind of the mode I have it set up in when I am on the go, on the move, just need a quick place to uh... pull over and sleep for the night and that's why I have the uhh... bed up here in the elevated platform um... I debated a long time about how to best block the windows for privacy especially when you're in public areas like Wal-Mart parking lots and what have you I just ended up using a couple of those sunscreens for your front window to block the sun they work really well for the big windows here in the back and then a couple priority mail boxes disassembled to block the longer side windows um... I've got the uh... cigarette lighter adapters that hook up to my main battery got an inverter so I can charge and run my electronics got a little temperature gauge which gives me the time and temperature, ninety two degrees in here right now, which is terrible uh... yeah, right here you can see are my locks so if I'm parking at a trailhead or somewhere where I'm concerned about someone potentially breaking in, I can actually uh... relatively secure the contents underneath of my platform here protect things like my expensive climbing and backpacking gear I'll put my uh... electronics uh... under there when i'm out about as well So I just wanted to talk a little bit about these locks, I ended up putting hinges onto my tailgate that connect to this upper platform here with these little twist, err, twisting key lock things um, that provides me some relative security if anyone were to try to break in um... you probably can't see it but there's little metal L-brackets down here that actually Keep this uh... entire upper platform from sliding out because if if someone were to try and open the tailgate it'll catch on that and prevent it from from sliding out you can see i can't actually open my tailgate, if I were to break in it's relatively secure. I've got the same thing over here on this side another L-bracket and a lock to keep it in place and in the back this long wooden platform actually sits underneath the lip of my canopy so it can't lift up on either the the cab side or the ah... or the back side here and to get in here You've gotta have the key obviously, it's just a nice little twist lock, pops off it has a different key for each side which is kinda annoying but it is what it is so those fold down you can open the tailgate and then you've got whatever you choose to store underneath here this is where I keep my my gear, typically i have my food boxes under here as well, not for security's sake but just 'cause it's a little nicer to have the boxes underneath but I'm in the Sierra's right now so I've got them in a more accessible location. As i mentioned this is relatively secure storage over here and this is all just free access. I keep my headlamps and other things that i wanna keep accessible in this little metal basket. I've got a brush down there to sweep out the back of my truck, a lot of sand and dirt that infiltrates which is very annoying I need to to clean out my truck now You'll also notice these large boxes i have in here are only about half an inch underneath my platform so there is some sagging when I lay on here but it's relatively supported and not enough sagging that i am super concerned about it and here's a look at my truck when I've got it in kinda basecamp mode where I'm settled for a while and i can dump stuff off at my camp site you may be wondering about that hole there, that was something I decided to cut in for access underneath the table just so i can so i can sometimes access things that might be otherwise a little more inaccessible because of the long uh... shelf or table that we got up there on the back that shelf there is just loose it can move around or lift up or go wherever I want it to go but I'm able to stack stuff on the back there and just put my feet underneath the shelf um... when i'm sleeping back here so it makes for a nice uh... storage area get things out of the way and uh... up above so yeah that was a quick look at the truck camping set up that i've been using for the past few months on the road hope you enjoyed it and if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBOZXgU6j_I