TCM visits Bowen Customs to witness the design, fabrication, assembly, and installation behind some of the sharpest camper beds on Earth. This is what happens when camper enthusiasts turn passion into precision metalwork. This is the Bowen Way.
For those who may be new to the brand, Bowen Customs specializes in premium, all-aluminum (for most models) and fully-welded truck camper beds with a unique design that maintains the factory bed floor height. This avoids raising the center of gravity caused by competing custom storage bed solutions.
Bowen’s custom beds also maximize the possible exterior storage possibilities, maintain departure angles, and manage to do all of the above with an aesthetic that turns heads and stops traffic. At a gas station, Overland Expo, or miles into the Burr Trail, you may as well be driving a Ferrari. More on that later.
Bowen achieves their high level of design and aesthetic by evaluating every customer’s truck and camper combination, including tie-down systems, tie-down points, and camper jack clearances. Then they use their experience and computer-aided design to custom develop a bed for that specific truck and camper. The resulting fitment and function are extraordinary.
What really caught our attention about Bowen is the remarkable range of trucks and campers they work with. From Toyota Tacomas and Scout pop-ups, to Ford F-150s and Four Wheel Campers, to Ram 3500s and Northern Lites, to Ford F-550s and Host Mammoth triple-slide beasts, they have truck bed designs ready to go.
After admiring dozens of Bowen Customs beds at Overland Expo and interviewing Brent Bowen last September, we stopped by their Arvada, Colorado factory for a two-day deep dive into their process and capabilities. Fire up the Miller welders. We’re going in.
There was no doubt we had arrived at the right place. Parked in front of the main office was the instantly recognizable Warthog—the personal truck camper rig of Bowen Customs Founder and CEO, Brent Bowen.
That’s right, Bowen’s Founder and CEO not only has a sick Ram 4500, Supertramp Flagship LT, and Bowen Chassis Cab setup, but he drives it to work. And, evidently, he takes it off-road and leaves the resulting dried mud as a badge of honor. Damn right.
More sexy Bowen Custom rigs followed, showcasing the breadth of Bowen Customs’ capabilities. We may be focused on Bowen’s Camper Beds, but they also have a thriving business in Overland Flatbeds, Canopy Systems, Topper Beds, and Crawler Beds. Got a truck? Want to go camping? Bowen wants to talk to you.
Speaking of talking, Stuart—aka Stu—is the person who answers customer inquiries at Bowen. Stu calls himself an “accidental truck camper expert” as he’s had to learn every facet of his customers’ trucks and campers. I kid you not—he was literally citing from memory the lower front wall width and other exterior dimensions on particular Scouts, Four Wheel Campers, Supertramps, Northern Lites, and Hosts. Now we know our campers, too, but please don’t ask us to do that.
For anyone considering a Bowen bed, Stu suggests contacting him before choosing a truck or camper to go over matching and other important decisions to save time, money, and headaches down the road. To help with the process, Stu has an extensive library of images showing different trucks, Bowen beds, and options. Stu will also call you before production begins to make sure everything has been considered and that all decisions are final. Once the laser hits the aluminum, the project is locked.
A few feet from Stu’s office window is his personal Tacoma, Scout Yoho pop-up and Bowen Camper Bed (shown above). Stu has long dreamt of an overland trip to South America, and this is the rig to take him there. Who knows—you might call Bowen and talk to Stu between La Paz, Bolivia or San Pedro de Atacema, Chile. And thanks to Starlink, you wouldn’t miss a syllable.
The Bowen design and configuration process can be as simple as selecting a pre-engineered build from their extensive proprietary library of CAD files. Brent also stated that Bowen is willing to work on anything as long as it, “makes sense, or is really cool”.
Above you see the Bowen Customs CAD station. This is where every truck mounting point, storage option, hardware latch, lock, and door is put into SolidWorks and turned into a Bowen Customs product. Bowen doesn’t believe in designing beds that don’t fit perfectly, and they don’t do ugly.
Once the CAD files for a new bed are completed, they’re sent to a local metal fabrication company with advanced bending and CNC laser cutting capabilities. CNC laser cutting provides the high-precision and burr-free finishes required for Bowen Customs products.
When the resulting laser-cut aluminum pieces are delivered to Bowen, the fabrication and welding team gets to work. As Brent brought us to the fabrication and welding area, he explained how they only hire the best welders and pay them well to retain their talent. Of eighty welding job applicants, Brent said only ten passed Bowen’s written and welding tests, and only two were brought on board.
Once the welders joined Bowen, they were taught what Brent calls “The Bowen Way”. He believes this stringent hiring and training process is an important reason why Bowen builds what he calls, “the Ferrari of custom truck beds”. Now you know why Bowen Beds turn heads. It’s both cultural and by design.
For the best quality, Bowen employs TIG welding with scallop welds. Brent explained that TIG welding is stronger and more precise than MIG welding. After completing these scalloped TIG welds, the team sands smooth many of these amazing welds to make seamless bends and angles.
Bowen beds, upper and lower storage boxes, and garages are all-aluminum, but their chassis-cab models employ a steel torsion-free sub-frame and steel floor. And like the aluminum components, the steel floor and sub-frames are welded in-house.
Toward the front of the fabrication and welding area is where completed aluminum parts are sanded and prepared for powder coating.
During this process, every square inch of the aluminum is sanded for the best possible powder coat adhesion and a uniform finish.
While sanding, the team meticulously inspected each part, marked even the smallest scratch or imperfection, and massaged the aluminum until every surface was perfect.
We had to look very closely to spot the scratches and ‘imperfections’ they were focused on. We could see the scratches and imperfections once they were pointed out, but they wouldn’t be obvious to the untrained eye. As the team told us, their goal is finished parts with nothing that powder coat needs to hide.
It may sound funny to say that the finished sanded aluminum pieces were beautiful, but just look at these compartment doors. The Bowen team does gorgeous work.
Once an aluminum bed, boxes, and other components are completed by the fabrication and welding team, they are dry fitted to the customer’s truck by the install and assembly team. This ensures the fitment, mounting point alignment, and required fuel line and electrical passthroughs are within Bowen’s tight tolerances.
In the above photo, the installation and assembly team has hand-carried a newly completed deck to the customer’s truck and is lowering it into position.
With the bed resting on the truck frame mounting points, the team checked every installation point for alignment, inspected tolerances, and looked for any potential issues with fuel or electrical lines. This is where careful design and project planning meet a customer’s actual truck. It’s also the last chance to make any necessary changes before the bed, boxes, and other major elements go to powder coat.
Once the components of a Bowen Custom bed are completed, inspected, and pass the dry fitting test, they’re loaded onto a pickup and delivered to a nearby powder coating company. During our time with Bowen, we took a short drive over to see the powder coating facility and process.
Above: Parts await powder coat at Bowen’s local powder coat vendor
Now we’ve seen a lot of powder coating set-ups in our years with Truck Camper Magazine, but this was by far the largest and most impressive dedicated powder coating facility we’ve encountered.
Bowen uses polyester powder coating for its proven durability, UV resistance, and weather protection. Before applying the powder coat, each part is sanded, degreased with a phosphate wash, and pre-baked at 300 degrees to dry. This process ensures the best possible adhesion.
Every bed takes approximately ten pounds of powder coating and then bakes at 425 degrees to fully cure. From what we experienced, the powder coat company would be a great place to work during Colorado’s cold winters. The multiple ovens radiated massive amounts of heat.
Bowen Customs standard powder coat color is BK-01—aka, Bowen Black. In addition to black, you can pick custom powder coat colors including what’s we found in stock at the powder coat facility. If you want your Bowen Bed to perfectly match your truck color or any other exact color, you can also get color-matched paint for your final finish.
Above: The installation and assembly area at Bowen Customs
Once the powder coating is completed, the parts are delivered to the installation and assembly team. The installation and assembly area has three bays for installing and assembling the beds, boxes, and other elements into a finished Bowen Customs bed.
Toward the back of the install and assembly area, we discovered a special customer project: a brand new Toyota Tundra and a Kimbo truck camper. Brent explained that this was the first Kimbo truck camper Bowen Customs had built a bed for, requiring additional CAD design work. This project definitely passes both of Bowen’s ‘makes sense’ and, ‘really cool’ requirements.
Before Bowen boxes can be assembled, latches and hinges need to be fitted and installed. At dedicated tables at the back of each bay, we watched the team methodically install and test each moving part for alignment and smooth operation.
Another critical element are the rubber gaskets that seal out the elements. Here, gaskets are being installed with a rubber mallet.
Just inside the first bay door, the team removed the tailgate, taillights, and disconnected the fuel line and electrical harness on a customer’s truck. Then they used a gantry to carefully remove the pickup bed. Once the bed was removed, the team power-washed the frame, suspension and other chassis components.
So what happens to all the removed truck beds and tailgates? If the customer doesn’t want their bed or tailgate, they go into a gated tailgate holding area for pickup—no pun intended—by a company that specializes in selling truck beds and tailgates.
With the bed removed, Bowen’s electrician got to work. Figuring out the wiring and fuel lines is one of the most important and intricate parts of the installation process at Bowen. For example, each wire on this older RAM needed to be identified and routed for fitment with its new Bowen bed. Anyone who thinks this is easy hasn’t encountered much automotive wiring.
Once the wiring was sorted, the electrician prepared an aluminum junction box where the wiring would be neatly presented on the rear of the truck.
During our factory visits, we see what’s happening during the two or three days we’re on site. That doesn’t always include their standard operations, or every facet of their process. Thankfully, being in person means we can talk to the leadership and production teams about more than what’s happening before us.
Case in point is the assembly process shown above. In this instance, the customer’s truck was in for service, which is why the boxes were installed directly onto the truck bed. When assembling and installing a new Bowen bed, the team assembles the bed and boxes on a platform and then installs the entire assembly on the truck using a gantry.
Look closely and you’ll see a few familiar faces from the fabrication and welding team. This truck is being picked up by the customer later that day. To get the truck assembly completed, quality control inspected, and out the door, the fabrication and welding team joined the effort.
It was impressive to watch the crew adjust each compartment door until it was perfectly level, every latch until it confidently closed, and every panel until it aligned and fit just right. From that experience—and many others during our visit—it was clear that the Bowen production team takes pride in the high bar set by Brent. The pace on the floor was fast and efficient, but never rushed. The process spoke to an unrelenting commitment to quality.
Final quality control is handled by Brent and the management team. They check every bolt, seal, and surface before turning a Bowen Customs product over to the customer. Brent said the reason he believes Bowen is performing so well in the marketplace is because of this focus on quality, and how they take care of their customers.
Above: After our visit, Bowen Customs sent a photo of the completed Kimbo and Tacoma
During our time at Bowen, it became clear that a good number of the production team members were not only truck camper enthusiasts, but truck camper owners as well. While it’s not rare to have this kind of passion for truck camping within the leadership team (although it’s not the norm), it is rare to have this level of enthusiasm for truck camping within a production team.
It’s not a stretch to state that this passion for truck camping bleeds into the products the Bowen team manufactures. If you truly love truck camping, how can you not want every Bowen Custom rig to be the best it can be, look awesome, and perform? That vibe was loud and clear at Bowen Customs.
On that note, something Brent said during our visit really stuck with us. He brought up two of his favorite business books; Good to Great by Jim Collins and Excellence Wins by Horst Schulze. The title of the second book has become a guiding statement that the management and production teams follow, both quietly and out loud.
Between the passion for the product, the carefully hired team, and this no-compromise, ‘Excellence Wins’ credo, it’s clear how Bowen Customs has become a phenomenon in the Overland market and is fast becoming a force to reckon with in the broader truck camper arena.
On balance, a Bowen Customs bed is not an entry-level or off-the-shelf product by any stretch of the imagination. That stated, for anyone considering a truck and camper rig with a high-end custom flatbed or storage bed, Stu is awaiting your call.
For more information on Bowen Customs, visit their website at bowencustoms.com. To request information on a Bowen Customs bed for your truck camper rig, click here.
