Bed Liners and Truck Campers

It's a common question among those new-to-truck-camping: Do I leave my bed liner in the truck bed when I load the camper, or take it out?

Before giving you the consensus answer, let's ask another question: What kind of bed liner? Obviously "spray on" bed liners aren't going anywhere. However, there remain two other kinds of bed liners: The big plastic "protects your sidewalls and bed floor," and the rubber mat style that simply protects the floor of the bed. We happen to have the latter installed in our truck bed.

Consensus of users? If it's the big plastic kind, take it. Why? The most often cited reason is that the camper can slide around on the slick plastic liner, giving you a less-than-desirable issue of stability. In some cases, the extra space taken up between the wheel wells (in order to protect them) may make loading difficult--if not impossible--particularly with campers that have a wide "box" or "tub" as some call them. Many also bring up negative issue of lugging the extra weight of the bed liner around for no good purpose.

In our case, our truck also yanks around a fifth wheel. Rather than remove the fifth wheel hitch rails (a difficult job) we've left our rails in place. This leaves large areas of the truck bed "lower" than the hitch rails. To fill the gap, as it were, we measured the height of the hitch rails above the bed (and liner) and cut piece of plywood of suitable height to go around the rails. The camper sits on both the hitch rails and the plywood, and seems to "like it" thus far. We've found the rubber mat holds the plywood in place better too, so we've left it in place.