Storage Solutions
W&F drawer system plus lots more gear!
The problem with offroading is that you need to bring a whole lot of stuff with you to cover all sorts of contingencies as well as creature comfort.
As a beginner, you really shouldn’t rush out and buy all sorts of gear yet. Wait until you get several trail runs under your belt so that you have a good idea of what you really need and want to schlep with you. As long as you are traveling with a group, someone else will have all the tools & recovery gear necessary.
As your experience compounds, you will begin spending your Starbucks allowance on Jeep junk! You will soon realize that the backs of Jeeps are not as roomy as they appeared in the showroom, whilst recovery gear is a lot bulkier than it appeared in the catalogs!
The online world is full of products designed to organize your storage space in offroad vehicles. Prices range from under $10 up into several hundred.
Here are some of the storage solutions that we personally have in our Jeep, just to give you some ideas.
When everyone first gets started, we fill our trunk with large heavy duty plastic tote bins, like the kind you find at Costco, Lowes, Target, Home Depot, or Walmart. They work fine, and are stackable to some extent. Take the time to make labels for them and itemize the inventory, so you can find stuff quickly. Separate the “trail stuff” from the “daily driver” stuff, so you know which bins can stay in the garage during the workweek.
X-cargo storage system attaches to roll cage.
There are a couple problems related to using tote bins. Some stuff gets heavy quickly, like tool rolls and (steel) recovery gear. That translates into reaching deep into the trunk while lifting these elongated weighted boxes — which can be hard on the back muscles. The other issue is that these totes will fill up your available storage space quickly, which makes it difficult to add luggage, camp chairs, coolers, grills, etc.
Our original tote bins took up 2/3 of our trunk, leaving us just a couple feet of open storage. If you have the option of lowering the back seats, it helps a lot. But that may not be a solution if you have pets or children.
We found a set of storage bags on Amazon that attached vertically to our interior roll cage, alongside the side windows. They weren’t very expensive, but featured a metal support to keep them rigid. There are straps & pockets on the exterior of the bags for small tools and such.
As our collection of recovery gear and tools grew, I wanted some way to permanently stow the heavy stuff without eating up most of my trunk area. We began to investigate drawer systems. Most of the systems stacked vertically, like file drawers, which was fine for dedicated overlanding/camping, but still occupied more trunk space than I wanted to lose. Prices ran from several hundred and up.
We finally settled on a wooden drawer system made by Wheels & Feels. On sale, our system ran under $500. It consists of a large, central drawer with covered cubby spaces alongside the wheel wells on either side, so as to fill up the entire floor of the trunk but only around 7 inches tall. The lockable drawer has a tilting top, which allows you to access the Jeep’s “basement” storage compartment under the trunk floor, so that you are not sacrificing original Jeep storage.
We use the side cubby compartments for long, narrow stuff such as recovery ropes, shackles, jack handles, breaker bars, fire extinguisher, and smaller odds & ends. The main pullout drawer contains our first aid kit, tool rolls, spare radios, winch controller, tire repair kits, and more recovery straps.
The only heavy item that we could not stow is our unijack, which is too big for the drawer. So we keep that in the back corner of the trunk, in a soft sided grocery trunk tote to keep it from sliding around.
This new arrangement only cost us several inches of vertical space (which we do not miss) in return for a lot of horizontal trunk free-space.
Fold down tailgate table for Jeeps
A great accessory to add is a rear tailgate fold down table. You can find these online for under $70; just don’t waste money on the Jeep-branded versions. By the time you park and unfold the table — everyone knows you are driving a Jeep! Slim canvas pouches can be strapped to the underside for stowing cutlery and paper plates.
The tables are super convenient for food consumption or prep, but also come in very handy as a general workspace. Definitely a “must have”.
If you want to splurge, you can find some pretty elaborate tailgate tables with a hutch shelf and extendable table top.
Some things are better to store outside of the trunk, such as traction boards and spare gasoline. Vietnam Colonels may love the smell of napalm in the morning, but I will take a pass on the nauseous odor of gasoline in a Jeep!
Side brackets that cover the rearmost side windows are a good solution… if your weekly parking is secure. If not, you will have to remove and store stuff when you return from your runs. Fortunately, these brackets are easy to remove or re-attach — just loosen the clips that mount to the rain gutters. Only takes a couple minutes.
We found our side brackets on Amazon, and they ran us around $75 each. To install, the bottom of the bracket is a “J” hook that just slips under the hardtop; and the top of each support has a clip that tightens (with one screw) onto the rain gutter. Our side brackets included mounting hardware for traction boards. Rotopax water or gas containers have their own mounts, which you just attach to the center plate of the side brackets.
If you want to get fancier, you can find side brackets that feature fold-down tables or molle panels. Shop around and have fun; you don’t have to buy what we bought. We don’t get commissions from anyone.
“The side brackets clip tightly to the rain gutters, but we found that after being aggressively shrub brushed on a trail run — the brackets were able to slide slightly. Our solution was to drill holes and insert small screws/nuts into the rain gutter alongside the bracket clips, thus “boxing them in place” and preventing any sliding.”
While we are on the topic of Rotopax containers, there is another way of mounting them. Instead of the side mounts, Rock Slide Engineering makes a wide ratchet strap with metal mounting plates that you tighten around your spare tire. The system is simple and robust, and can hold two Rotopax or other accessories. Before we acquired our side brackets, that is how we carried our extra fuel and utility water.
Let’s talk briefly about roof racks and rooftop storage. Although they look really cool, most owners of roof racks rarely use them. (The exception are overlanders/campers with roof tents.)
The problem is that, at trade expo’s and in showrooms, the racks are on demo hardtops-only — mounted on trestles so as to be only a few feet high. They are so reachable, even by us height-challanged five-sixers. Oooh, think of all the crap we could stow up there!
When mounted atop a Jeep, slightly lifted and probably sporting 35 inch tires — those rooftop racks are way out of reach. Our webmaster, Vince, is nearly six foot tall and very strong — yet even he cannot manage heavy cargo without a ladder and a second set of hands.
My wife and I are shorties. Two telescoping ladders would be absolutely necessary for us. Take into account a protective tarp and some ratchet hold-down straps — accessing whatever is topside becomes extremely burdensome.
The other thing that the brochures fail to mention is urban parking. Out in the bush country, under the open sky — rooftop storage appears invitingly low. When tape measured, a Jeep with 2.5 lift and 35 inch tires, adorned with a high quality roof rack and batwing awning, calls for a minimum seven full feet of garage clearance. Add an inch or two for safe measure, and very few indoor parking facilities are tall enough.
Home garages are even worse. So before you fall to temptation and attach that roof rack — take some measurements of where you plan to park.
