Here's What Those Ridges On The Bed Of Your Truck Are For

In recent years, pickups have gone from workhorses to practical transport ideal for business use and adventure. Owners rely on them for work during the week and play at the weekend, and those with the budget for it can add on truck caps to completely customize the pickup's capabilities. Luckily, a pickup doesn't necessarily have to be high on the truck hierarchy to keep up with all of a driver's modern demands, with most companies building in multi-functional design elements.

One distinctive design found on most modern trucks is all those grooves that automakers install in truck beds and the walls of those beds. They actually serve more than just an aesthetic purpose. Not only do they help make the truck bed more structurally sound, but they're also convenient in how they assist owners with compartmentalizing small and large items.

Pickups can be long vehicles, and there are a lot of ways auto manufacturers can improve the strength of a truck bed and avoid twisting that impacts on-road dynamics and practicality overall. By installing grooves, ribs, or even seams into metal, manufacturers can greatly increase its strength. Every such molding, bead, or line adds to the structural rigidity of the truck bed: what stops it from twisting or flexing like a flat sheet of metal might. 

Another reason why those ridges can be useful? Many trucks are designed with drain holes in the bed, to keep it from filling up with water if it rains or wet items are stored back there. Then it just comes down to basic physics: Instead of having water splash around or collect in a pool, these ridges act like raised columns in the truck bed that can channel the water into the drain holes, or alternatively just out of the tailgate.

Truck beds are perfect for carrying resources and materials, but they can't keep them from toppling over. Utility track systems, aka cargo management systems or rail systems, can be handy for overcoming this hurdle. Many automakers offer options to hold items in place, like the RamBox shown above, but they can be a costly add-on. If you don't want to spend the extra dough, a lot of truck bed ridges are designed to make it easy to compartmentalize and store items on a budget.

Let's say you bought some plywood for your next DIY project: Ram and Ford have both designed their truck beds with grooves in the floor and the walls to hold wooden boards in place, so as to create horizontal compartments and stop things from rolling around freely. These ridges can also support help longer items that extend over the end of the truck bed, like pipes or long sheets of plywood or plasterboard.

Best of all, these customizations work with options like tonneau covers and truck caps. Tonneau covers help improve fuel efficiency, but they also make it easy to contain items since they work as a removable lid on top of the truck bed. Meanwhile, a truck cap basically adds a whole other compartment for cargo or passengers, depending on how you customize the interior. Some can even be transformed into a camper with a tent, like the GFC Camper on the Jeep Gladiator.