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Cheaper bed extender option ?

Big Kahuna

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So I have the Ford one - it's ended up sitting in my garage for the last year. I discovered something pretty quickly - 99% of the time the bed extender is useless.

Here's why. When you don't need the extender it folds into the bed, making the bed area useless for anything that won't fit in the section it creates.

When you do need it, it's only good for specific things that will fit and most of the time on a truck with a bed this short you don't need an extender - you'll have things hanging out the back.

The tailgate option to have the slight angle is actually super useful for lumber etc.

So in my experience - especially somewhere that gets a lot of rain - I find the tailgate extender not that useful most of the time.

A good example of the problem is I was on a trip to Ikea - I got there and it started raining. I have a tonneau cover so I thought no problem. I bought the stuff I needed (quite a lot of furniture in their boxes). I got out in the parking lot and realized I could fit everything in the bed of the truck under the tonneau cover and it would be dry - EXCEPT that I had the stupid bed extender in there. So I had to open the tailgate and extend it out - THEN it was raining and the back of the bed got all wet. Luckily the stuff was damp but ok but it was a huge pain in the ass.

I got home and was annoyed so I hung up the bed extender in the garage.

This was Feb 2022 and I haven't used it since. I got Elevate CS racks and anything that won't fit in the bed goes on the racks AND I got a cargo box on the racks for anything else. So everything stays dry and locked up.

Now there are plenty of times a bed extender could be useful, but for most people most of the time you'll end up finding it annoying when you want to put bigger things in the bed and don't want to extend it and open the tailgate, especially in a bad area or at a parking lot when running multiple trips etc.
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wjg

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So I have the Ford one - it's ended up sitting in my garage for the last year. I discovered something pretty quickly - 99% of the time the bed extender is useless.

Here's why. When you don't need the extender it folds into the bed, making the bed area useless for anything that won't fit in the section it creates.

When you do need it, it's only good for specific things that will fit and most of the time on a truck with a bed this short you don't need an extender - you'll have things hanging out the back.

The tailgate option to have the slight angle is actually super useful for lumber etc.

So in my experience - especially somewhere that gets a lot of rain - I find the tailgate extender not that useful most of the time.

A good example of the problem is I was on a trip to Ikea - I got there and it started raining. I have a tonneau cover so I thought no problem. I bought the stuff I needed (quite a lot of furniture in their boxes). I got out in the parking lot and realized I could fit everything in the bed of the truck under the tonneau cover and it would be dry - EXCEPT that I had the stupid bed extender in there. So I had to open the tailgate and extend it out - THEN it was raining and the back of the bed got all wet. Luckily the stuff was damp but ok but it was a huge pain in the ass.

I got home and was annoyed so I hung up the bed extender in the garage.

This was Feb 2022 and I haven't used it since. I got Elevate CS racks and anything that won't fit in the bed goes on the racks AND I got a cargo box on the racks for anything else. So everything stays dry and locked up.

Now there are plenty of times a bed extender could be useful, but for most people most of the time you'll end up finding it annoying when you want to put bigger things in the bed and don't want to extend it and open the tailgate, especially in a bad area or at a parking lot when running multiple trips etc.
You should have popped out your bed extender, put it in your back seats (fits nicely) and closed up the tailgate and tonneau after loading the boxes. Problem solved.
 

Big Kahuna

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You should have popped out your bed extender, put it in your back seats (fits nicely) and closed up the tailgate and tonneau after loading the boxes. Problem solved.
I wasn’t by myself, had my 2 kids with me otherwise that’s a good idea.
 
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