Building a Budget Bed Cargo Slide | Toyota Tundra | Toyota Tundra | Project Car Updates

Trucks like our 2010 Toyota Tundra are great, but for those of us who have trouble accessing the dishes in the top kitchen cabinet, reaching a toolbox near the cab of your truck can be a bit inconvenient.

This problem can be mitigated with any number of commercially available toolboxes or bed slide-outs but be prepared to drop your entire stimulus check and then some getting hooked up. The solution will be handy, but it won’t be cheap.

We wanted both, and when we realized that used conveyor track was dirt cheap on eBay, or even locally if you live in a town with a solid industrial base. We decided to build our own budget version.

We scored 10 five-foot-long pieces of single-row conveyor track with 1-inch rollers on eBay for $80, which included shipping.

We then used some strategically placed sheet metal screws to connect the track to the bed of the truck, then cut some smaller pieces to extend our rollers out to the lowered tailgate.

Our sliding deck was built from ¾-inch plywood, which we coated with polyurethane for moisture resistance. Long term, we’ll probably go with an even heavier-duty coating, like truck bed liner, seeing as how this is the bed of a truck.

Our total investment was less than $150, or less than 10% of a commercially available slide-out system. It’s a little less fancy, but we’ve got plenty of extra cash in our pockets.

Comments

asphalt_gundam Reader
4/28/21 10:26 a.m.

I'm just in the process of figuring out a similar system, but for under a trailer as a drawer. 4x8 and maybe 8-10" deep should keep plenty of ground clearance and make a place for the splitter, wing, and side skirts to go during transport. I'm leaning towards skate board bearings and square tube. Never thought about conveyor track. Now it has me thinking i should use the skate board wheels for the larger diameter and hopefully less problems with grit/dirt or whatever else might get kicked up in there.

CAinCA GRM+ Memberand Reader
4/28/21 12:08 p.m.

I've used a variant of this design on every truck I've owned for the last 25 years. I use a sheet of 3/4 ply and four 2x4s on edge for the platform. I mount three pairs of 4" tall non swiveling casters using carriage bolts through the top. They wind up leaving about 1/4" of clearance to the bed. Almost every hobby I've been involved in needed a folding table. The table invariably would end up on the bottom of the pile so I'd wind up unloading everything, getting to the table, then loading everything on table. With this setup the table is always easy to get to.

JG Pasterjak Production/Art Director
4/28/21 4:47 p.m.

I should probably add that when I built this a few months ago, plywood was a lot cheaper. I think you could probably still build it for under about $3500, though.