First I wanted to say hi to everyone. I found this site as I searched for a new "home". You see in 2 weeks I am taking delivery of my new 2004.5 Ram and I am in the process of selling my 2000 F350 powerstroke dually crew cab.

My question is basic but wanted some help. I am excited to get my new 3500 quadcab single rear wheel truck. The main reason for a truck is because on the "side" (about 30 hours a week during nights and on weekends) I work on apartment buildings.

Long story short my F350 back seat was always full of supplies and tools, I do NOT want this in my new beauty.

What toolboxes do people like? I am looking into maybe 2 side toolboxes but need HELP.

You see I need the room in the tool box for tool and supplies, anything from light bulbs, a gallon of paint, or my portable tool box with 3 drawers. At the same time I need the bed as big as possible because often i am picking up a fridge or 2 and MANY supplies.

So I need the lenght and width of my bed, and I need tool boxes. So my problem is what give me the best of everything?

Boxes at the front of the bed shorten my bed by say 2 feet as they sit in the bed, are boxes on teh side better?? I mean side boxes look like they take up less room and I can still haul 20 2x4 studs without them hanging out the back Also very important is where to go to get nice looking ones that LAST and look as good as a $42k truck???

Thanks for the help. As you can see I need my new rig for lots of work but want to keep it beautyful!!!!

 

Welcome aboard.

 

I always lean in the direction of Weatherguard/Knaack ....never had any issues with their stuff been using variety of products for years. Most "front" boxes install with J bolts, for easy removal incase you need the entire bed. ?I remove mine from time to time, not that big of a deal. As for the studs, most of the boxes on the market are shallow enough to allow a fair amount of room underneith and still retain the full length of the bed. As always, there are numerous boxes on the market and prices vary all over the place. Never had side boxes, so i cant say. I'd research and actually put your hands on some of your choices before you buy. Smooth operation, stability, and quality cant be noticed in 2-D form.

 

Myself I like the Delta and a few others in the treadplate/diamonplate aluminum (my 2500 is trimmed in gloss black treadplate). We have several work trucks and in those we have a couple of different configurations. We have 1 with the toolbax next to the cab at fron of bed and it hanges on the bed rails. Allows for about 6 - 8" of space beneath it. On 2 of the others we have in bed toolboxes up front as well as 2 side boxes. These trucks are used mainly to haul tools and pull trailers so we only allow enough clearance to get the 5th hitch in there. We could haul say 1 refrigerator in that configuration. But not 2 and the 8 foot studs would hang a little past the tailgate but not too bad at all. Wish i had some pics i could show you but i am not in the same state as those trucks atm. I would suggest getting a pic of the topdown view of the truck bed and then importing pictures of the various toolboxes and resize them and test different configurations that way. That is what we did. BTW all the trucks we use for work are 1 ton long box dually Ho 2003's. Hope this helps. Good luck

 

Here is what I have in mine. Keep in mind, I have a short bed. Well I tried to transfer the image over here, but was not able to. If you look in my photo gallery, you will see the tool box set up I have.

 

That's a pretty slick setup that turns the tailgate into a nice workbench. Where'd you get that? It interests me because I plan to have a shell on my truck and most toolboxes won't fit... that one looks like it might...