ABC Prepper

After a lot of thought, searching, and confusing, I finally decided on and ordered a JCR "Chase Rack". I'ts not a perfect solution for me, but it's pretty close. It's well made from fairly thick steel. It looks nice and matches the lines of the Gladiator cab. And it came with a steel "molle"-like back panel to protect the rear glass of the truck.  The delivery was quick (under a week) and the parts arrived well packaged and in good shape. Only downside was that there weren't any instructions included. While disappointing, the install was still pretty straightforward. Hardest part was deciding which nuts (some locking, some not) went where. The whole thing took me about 90-minutes to install (in a super hot Tucson garage. ugh.) I'm going to use this headache or "chase rack" as the starting point to build upon for the full rack. The plan is build and install extension side rails off it (welded on, probably). Plus some kind of fold-up rear...

 First: I love my decked system. It's really good. I like how much equipment I can store and the super easy access to everything. But there are a couple of downsides to the unit. First, is that when the drawer is extended (out), I can't use the tailgate as a pseudo workbench, which is what I typically do when at a remote location like our cabin. This is one of those "duh!" moments; I should have realized it. The fix is to find some other surface to work from and/or carry/build some kind of portable work table with me.  The second issue is what I call the "bed depth" issue. The decked unit takes up about 12-inches of useable depth in the bed. This means things that one could just toss in the back no longer are really secure when driving down the road. In fact, there's only about 4-inches of effective bed depth for containing a load that I put on top of the decked drawers.  The solution to this latter problem is to build a headache bar and side rails that ...

 Purchased and installed a second-generation Decked drawer system for the Gladiator.  Unit came damaged from the factory (the shipper evidently used it for pinata duty). Long story short: I managed to get the system installed, and Decked is sending some replacement parts. Overall, I'm quite pleased with the unit. Will need to build a headache rack to protect the rear wind from items I carry on top of the unit, plus I'm going to build some side rails ("stake bed style") to keep stuff in side-to-side.