One of the most exciting, and perhaps challenging, storage opportunities for any truck camper rig is the back seat of the truck. Unless you opted for a single cab truck, you have either an extended half-door cab, or a four-door crew of space just beconing to be utilized.
So what’s back there?
Here’s our backseat spiel:
On our first truck, a 2005 Chevy Silverado 3500 gas extended cab, Angela and I stacked plastic storage containers full of off-season clothing and the items we quickly learned did not need to be in the camper day-to-day. Why I brought an iron on that first trip I’ll never really know.
When we bought our second truck, a 1998 Dodge Ram 3500 12-valve Cummins, we had a very important mission for the back seat area. We removed the back seats and installed a vegetable fuel tank. In combination with a Greasecar kit, we ran the truck on various vegetable oils for the better part of six-months. Then the fuel became harder and harder to source eventually leading us to tie the system off and run on diesel again.
We had the Dodge for about five years before purchasing our current 2013 Chevy 3500 gas crew cab truck. This time we were forced to get a crew cab as Chevy did not offer extended cab trucks for their short-bed 3500 series.
It’s incredible just how space a crew cab’s rear seat area offers. Chevy back seats are split and fold up towards the back of the truck allowing for many possibilities. We folded up the larger of the two halves and put two 31 1/4” x 17 5/8” x 13 7/8” Sterlite heavy duty black plastic containers with built-in lids and latches. These stacked perfectly to the height of the front seats.
In those two containers we stored the same kinds of things we stored in the back seats of the 2005 Chevy Silverado, minus the pointless iron. Additionally, we put our cat’s required bags of litter in one of these containers keeping it out of the camper. And who would leave the house without a folding cat stroller which fits in front of these two boxes?
On the other side, sleeping on the folded down seat, is Harley himself. Yes, we store a cat in our backseat. Under Harley’s seat we put camping chairs and roadside emergency gear.
As we travel, we often use the extra space in the Sterlite containers to store tied bags of aluminum and glass recyclables until we find a recycling area. That gets ridiculous at times, but I refuse to throw out easily recycled materials; especially aluminum. We all have our quirks.
Now that you know way more than you’d ever want to know about what we put in our backseat, it’s your turn. Tell us what you store in your truck’s backseats, how your store it, and why.
Do you put bikes back there? Maybe a portable boat? Do you have a special storage solution or containers? Are the seats full of dogs, cats, and a well traveling squirrel? We want to know.
This week’s Question of the Week is, “What do you store in your truck’s backseat?”.
Click here to read fellow readers’ back seat storage solutions.
