10 Questions To Ask When Buying A Tonneau Cover

One of the more popular pickup truck upgrades or enhancements is a tonneau cover. Whether you are using your truck for work or leisure, a truck is not as functional or complete unless it has a tonneau. However, a tonneau cover can be an expensive purchase and there are some important questions you should ask yourself when you are considering buying a tonneau.

Questions to Ask When Buying a Tonneau Cover
What is your main purpose of adding a tonneau to your pickup truck? Are you looking for function, security, looks, versatility or easy removal?
Hard or Soft that is the question? Hard tonneau covers traditionally cost more and offer more security. Soft tonneau covers generally are less expensive but are more versatile.
How often to you need access to your truck bed? And to what extent? Do you need quick access to the entire truck bed on a daily basis or just occasional access? Both a hard and soft tonneau each answer this question in there own ways. Both hard and soft tonneau’s are available in folding, retracting and hinging designs. Most offer easy tailgate access and select hard tonneaus also lock the tailgate when the cover is locked. A hard retracting or soft roll-up cover can quickly be opened for virtually full truck bed access, without a need to remove the cover. Soft and hard hinging tonneaus can be lifted open but require some extra effort if you need to fully remove them. Soft folding tonneau’s can easily be totally removed or folded forward for bed access. Whereas hard folding tonneau’s can be folded forward for bed access but are more difficult to fully remove.
What’s your budget for a tonneau cover? Soft covers generally cost $150 to $550 where as hard covers start at about $500 and go up to over $2,000.
Who is installing the tonneau cover? Most soft tonneau covers can be installed in 30 minutes to 1 hour by someone with limited mechanical skills. Hard tonneau’s generally can be installed in 30 minutes to 2 hours by someone with limited mechanical skills. However, most covers work best only if they are properly installed. If you don’t line up a rail correctly on a roll-up tonneau if may be more difficult to close. If you missed the correct seal placement on a hard tonneau it may not be as water tight. Soft tonneau covers tend to be more forgiving on the installation than a hard tonneau.
Do you want to have the tonneau on your truck all the time or just occasionally? Most tonneau covers are a clamp on style installation. This generally requires a hand tool or two. However, soft tri-fold tonneau covers install with hand clamps which allows this style of tonneau to be installed or completely removed in econds. Well, 30 seconds to unclamp and perhaps 2 minutes to re-attach to the truck bed.
How tall is your truck? If you have a lifted pickup, a roll-up, snap, folding or hinging cover will be harder to use since your truck is so tall. A hard tonneau, which is heavier, compounds the situation more. If your truck is lifted you may need to get onto the tailgate to operate the cover.
The Bedliner delimma. Do you have this issue? There are 2 basic designed of bedliners; under the rail and over the rail. A pickup truck equipped with a under the rail bedliner will not have any issues installing a tonneau cover. A pickup truck with an over the rail bedliner, (this bedliner is wrapped over the bed rails of the truck bed on each side and protect the top of the truck bed), can be very difficult to install. Especially if it’s an inside the bed mounted tonneau, it squeezes the width of the tonneau. If you have an over the rail bedliner, than most over the rail mounted tonneau’s will work, but the installation will be trickier. If you have an over the rail bedliner, its best to check with the tonneau cover you want to buy to make sure it will can be installed with an over the rail bedliner.
Are you planning to use the top of the bed rails? Will factory or aftermarket bed rail caps limit your choices? Some tonneau’s are mounted inside the bed and some are mounted on the top of the bed rail. Most roll-up covers mount on the inside of the truck bed and this allows you have access to the top of truck bed rail to add tie downs or bed rails (provide your truck has stake pockets). Other tonneau’s mount to the top of the truck bed rails and cover your stake covers if you have them. As for bed caps, all tonneau’s will work with factory bed caps and most aftermarket bed caps. For aftermarket bed caps, if they are smooth stainless steel or molded abs you won’t have too many issues. However, diamond plate bed caps can make it harder to install any style of tonneau whether it’s an over or inside the rail mount. As this kind of bed cap is generally thicker and effects the tonneau seals and tonneau cover fit. If you have bed rails, bed caps or tie downs installed in your truck bed its best to check to make sure the tonneau you are looking to buy with work for you.
Tonneau cover maintenance. How much are you willing to do? Every tonneau cover generally has maintenance instructions. However, the more mechanical the tonneau, the more maintenance is required to extend the life of the tonneau cover. Soft tonneau’s should have the vinyl cover cleaned. Each soft tonneau manufacture suggests various cleaning products and time period. Hard tonneau’s depending on the style generally have cleaning instructions for the top of the cover and retracting tonneau’s has cleaning instructions for the rails and canister.
Author: Scott Bintz
Scott Bintz is the CEO of RealTruck.Com Car and Truck Accessories. He has had a tonneau cover of one kind or another on his truck since 1993.

More Information about tonneau covers can be found in the Tonneau Cover Research Guide

What Brand Of Truck Bed Covers Will Become The Tonneau Cover King?

Posted by adminJune 24, 2009Written by Jane Have you ever wondered why so many products have names that are either accepted as a brand name or become the term most commonly used to describe the product? Look at the success of Kleenex, which has become synonymous with tissue. Some would say this is the same phenomenon that is happening within the truck bed cover market over tonneau cover.



Now the question is which of the vast array of leading manufacturers can make their tonneau cover product become the top brand in the customer’s mind? Here is a list of the best selling tonneau cover brands on the market.



TruXedo tonneau covers include; TruXport, Lo Pro, Deuce, and Soft Roll Up.

Access tonneau covers by Agri-Cover include; Limited Edition, Lorado, Roll Up, Literider, and Vanish.

Extang tonneau covers include; Solid Fold, Revolution, Trifecta, RT, FullTilt, Classic and Platinum.

Lund tonneau covers include; Genesis Tri-Fold, Genesis Roll Up, Genesis Hinged, Genesis Seal and Peel, and Genesis Snap.

Retrax, pickup truck tonneau covers are a retractable hard, Lexan type material.

The tonneau cover manufacturers mentioned all strive to improve their products for better fit and ease of function. Truxedo, Access, Extang, Lund and Retrax offer tonneau covers that are either soft, roll up, snap, hinged, retractable or hard including covers that work with a toolbox. Each maker has applications for every make and model of pickup trucks from the newest models to trucks that are twenty years old. As the pickup body styles have changed so has tonneau covers adapting to guarantee a great fit. The difference in price will range with the type of cover and its features but look to spend at least $250 for a quality tonneau cover.

New materials that are lighter, stronger and weather resistant are integrated into the production of new products. A good example of this are the Retrax tonneau covers that feature a retractable, polycarbonate or more commonly known as Lexan, cover. This innovative lightweight, weather resistant and nearly indestructible material combined with smart design and engineering is making the Retrax tonneau cover a favorite among truck owners who can afford it.

TruXedo, Access, Extang, Lund and Retrax are the brands to watch who that will redefine tonneau covers and possibly make their brand become synonymous for tonneau covers in the future.

For a full review of all the tonneau covers and truck bed covers available from Truxedo, Access, Extang, Lund and Retrax, visit Ultimate Truck and Auto Accessories.

http://www.ultimatetruck.com/

Pickup trucks have become transportation for the masses

Apr 5, 2006 12:00 PM, Paul L. Hollis

U.S. sales of just over 16 million vehicles per year
Trucks, including pickups and sport utility vehicles, still make up 53 percent of the U.S. auto market, according to Autodata Corp., and they generate a big chunk of the Detroit Three's revenue.

It's always an amazing sight to drive into the parking lot of a civic center or arena where a farm meeting or show is taking place. Rows and rows of pickup trucks typically fill the parking lot — all sizes, colors and conditions. A testament to the importance of the pickup truck to agriculture, as an industry, and to farmers, personally.

For most farmers, the pickup truck is like their second skin — it's their office, their dining room, their observation deck, and their shop — maybe even a warm, comfortable place to catch a few winks during a typical 12 to 14-hour day. Some farmers speak of their trucks with a tone of reference and a gleam in their eye usually reserved for their children, wife or dog.

Pickup trucks have become a topic of some discussion this year with state legislators in Georgia, as they consider a bill that would change state law and require pickup drivers and their passengers to wear seat belts. It's a sign of the times.

Pickups have been exempt from Georgia's mandatory seat belt law for decades now for reasons that are debatable. Some opine that rural voters wouldn't stand for the government telling them what to do in the privacy of their own trucks, so lawmakers left them alone for political reasons.

Believe it or not, there is a link between pickup trucks and politics. The strongest markets for pickups, according to Ford Motor Co., are the red states — named for the color used to denote Republican victories on election maps. These states are considered by political analysts to be more culturally conservative than the “blue” states. In fact, if you compare state-by-state pickup truck registrations with votes in the 2004 presidential election, you'll see that George W. Bush won the top states in ratio of pickup trucks to cars.

But in reality, Georgia's move to mandate seat belt use in pickup trucks probably has less to do with politics and more to do with the rising popularity of the truck in recent years among the masses. These days in Georgia, you're likely to see as many pickup trucks circling I-285 around Atlanta as you are on a rural road in the southwest region of the state.

Almost one-fifth of all vehicles registered in Georgia today are pickup trucks. Nationally, the best-selling truck racks up more than double the sales of the best-selling car. U.S. automakers have all but ceded the car market to Toyota and Honda, but Ford, General Motors Corp. and Dodge still manufacture most of the world's pickup trucks.

There are even those who delve into the psychology of owning a truck, like Dr. Charles Kenny, a psychologist and president of the consumer psychology firm Kenny & Associates. His job is to interpret consumer buying behavior for GM, Toyota and Nissan, and he theorizes that the truck enhances feelings of masculinity. “It's about gender identity, what it means to be a man. A man's truck helps him feel more masculine. I worked with contractors during the summer, and they used to argue about who had a better truck. But they weren't just talking about the truck. That was about who they are, and it came to symbolize their masculinity,” says Kenny.

Emotional needs filled by the purchase of a certain kind of vehicle can range from validation of sexuality to pure power, he says.

Crossed gender lines
But the popularity of trucks hasn't only crossed the rural/urban cultural divide. It also has crossed gender lines. It's interesting to note that every automaker has at least one woman involved in designing, engineering or marketing its pickups, and they say they're adding more in response to the growing number of women who are buying trucks.

Women engineers have pioneered advancements in pickups such as adjustable brake and gas pedals, larger and more plentiful storage compartments, and softer, more car-like rides.

But this new breed of truck engineers hasn't forgotten their customer base. Truck owners want a tough, solid-looking aggressive vehicle, says a female engineer for Nissan trucks. “Once you start getting into their world, you start seeing through their eyes. It's all about image. When you are out there on the road, it is your personality that you're expressing — that high ride height and upright grille. It's about being tough like a tank…the one thing you don't want to be is cute,” she says.

e-mail: phollis@farmpress.com