The Best Truck Bed Tents for Comfortable Camping On-The-Go

Buyer's Guide to Help You Find a High-Quality Truck Bed Tent

A truck bed tent is a great alternative to the classic tent. In this buyer’s guide, we’ll cover the advantages of a truck bed tent over a traditional one and discuss what you should be looking for when buying one.

What Are Truck Bed Tents?

Tents are traditionally pitched in soil. This gives the tent a solid place to stay while also keeping the tent in place, thanks to pegs holding the tent down. Unfortunately, pitching a tent can be inconvenient if you don’t have a good place to pitch it, either due to a lack of soil in the area or because the ground’s too wet to work with.

That’s where truck bed tents come in. Truck bed tents make use of the wide space provided by the bed of the truck. These tents are designed to fit the specifications of truck beds and can be securely fastened with the help of straps, cables, and cords.

Why Do You Need a Truck Bed Tent?

You can set up camp anywhere you’d like

One of the great things about truck bed tents is that you can basically sleep wherever you can drive your truck. Now, you may be thinking that there are not a whole lot of places you can pitch a tent, but not everywhere is an ideal camping ground. Sure, you could pitch a tent over mud, but that’d be extremely messy and difficult to deal with. There are, of course, other ways to set up a tent and keep it in place without using pegs, but they’re usually just more work.

Why bother putting in all the extra effort when you can just use the free space provided by your truck bed? I know I don’t want to do more than I need to. Truck beds have more than enough space to sleep in, and they’re also made to carry heavy objects, so they’re safe for a few people to sleep in.

They’re convenient for multi-day travels

Another helpful use of truck bed tents is to serve as a sleeping area during road trips. Multi-day road trips can be pretty exhausting, and you’ll end up burning quite a bit of money on fuel in the process. You’ll be spending even more money if you plan on sleeping in motels during the evenings. With a truck bed tent, you can skip sleeping in a motel and save some extra cash.

Of course, I don’t think you should just sleep on the side of the road.; it can be dangerous to camp anywhere that isn’t protected. Ideally, I would look for a camping area to set up shop at. At the very worst, I have an additional option in case there aren’t any good places to sleep for the night.

Things To Consider When Buying a Truck Bed Tent

Bed size

Different truck models have different bed sizes. The bare minimum truck bed length for most car companies is around 5 feet and 8 inches, with the standard being around 6 feet. You may also find large truck beds at around 8 feet. Obviously, you’ll want to pick the tent based on the size of your truck bed.

Tent sizes are flexible enough that they can accommodate truck beds of different sizes, but they can only do so much. In particular, standard-sized truck bed tents won’t fit in smaller truck beds. I would always check a product’s page for more information and, ideally, see if they have a compatibility list posted anywhere.

Design

Like regular tents, truck bed tents come in various designs. Some tents are tall and give you great views through their windows. There are also tents that provide less space vertically but have plenty of room in total. The shape and design of the tents themselves don’t matter all that much, as you mainly need enough room to sleep in. Still, design is worth considering for aesthetic and practical reasons.

Tips When Using a Truck Bed Tent

Set the tent up before dark

You should always aim to set up the tent before dark; I try to whenever I go camping. Even though some truck bed tents are easy to set up, you’ll save yourself a lot of trouble setting up the tent while the sun is still up.

Don’t rush pitching your tent

Just because you have to set it up before dark doesn’t mean you should rush doing so. Rushing the process will only result in a haphazard setup, and the tent may even collapse if you do a poor job.