Bowen Customs Aftermarket Truck Beds: A Cut Above the Rest

There’s no doubt about it. The aftermarket truck bed has revolutionized the truck camper industry. Ten years ago, it was hard to find a truck camper with a custom truck bed. Today, they seem to be everywhere, and for good reason. The amount of storage that they provide is hard to pass up. Things like garages for spare tires, bikes, and kitchens, as well as additional water tanks, air compressors, and batteries can be integrated with ease. One company that has had a major impact on the aftermarket truck bed market is Bowen Customs. Indeed, the growth of this relatively new, Colorado-based company has skyrocketed. As a matter of fact, the top rig at the 2024 Overland Expo Mountain West featured a Bowen Customs truck bed. Previous show winners featured Bowen Customs truck beds too. This is no accident. Compared to the pedestrian truck beds produced by other manufacturers that are plain and boxy, Bowen Customs truck beds are sleek and sexy. There probably isn’t a finer looking truck bed in today’s market. To learn more about this growing force in the truck camper camper industry, we spoke with the owner of Bowen Customs, Brent Bowen.

Hi Brent, thanks for talking with us. Can you tell us a little bit about your business and what products you offer?

Brent Bowen: Good question, Mike. We started off building flatbeds and canopies in 2019, your traditional style beds, with a little bit of that “Aussie” touch to it. Then pretty quickly, we got into what we call our camper beds and now topper beds. The biggest difference being that both the camper bed and the topper bed have been engineered to lower the floor of the bed back down to factory bed height. For campers, that’s important, obviously, to keep the camper down nice and low. Then for toppers, that lets you have more standing room on the inside as opposed to a flatbed, which is typically much higher off the frame. Our core offering is those products.

What is the weight difference between the OEM bed and your custom truck bed?

Brent Bowen: It depends on which truck we’re looking at and which model of bed we’re looking at. Just for example, the difference between an aluminum Ford bed, factory bed and a steel Ram bed can be up a couple of hundred pounds. But typically a Bowen Customs truck bed is about 100 pounds more than a factory bed. Our flatbeds are about the same weight, if not a little bit lighter. Once you start adding garages, then it obviously goes up a bit. Then the chassis cabs, they have a steel sub frame, so those get even heavier.

You mentioned the garage. What type of things do you offer in your beds to outfit them besides traditional storage boxes and compartments?

Brent Bowen: In addition to the traditional storage and that dropped floor height, the garage is a real popular option. They range in size from 18 inches all the way up to 60 inches like we have on our Warthog Rig that Truck Camper Adventure wrote about. There are a great number things you can store in them. A lot of people put their full-size spares in there, up to a 43-inch spare on the chassis cabs. We can do refrigerators, bike slides, a bunch of things like that. As far as other accessories go, it’s not a ton, but just little features here and there. We’re coming out with power systems for the garages, things like that.

What about air compressors? Does Bowen Customs offer those?

Brent Bowen: Not currently, but we work with several companies that will install one. Juniper Overland is just down the street from Elevation Off Grid and does all the chassis cabs, and they do a lot of lighting, too.

What about adding things like auxiliary water tanks to your truck beds?

Brent Bowen: Yes, we can add water tanks. Depending on your configuration, that’s what determines whether we can or can’t do a water tank. If we have room for it, absolutely. Ranging in size from 13 to 20 gallons. We also offer on our topper beds that we call a headboard in between the topper and the truck where we can typically put the water tank up there, or you can install air compressors. Flatbeds have drawers out the rear. Camper and topper beds don’t because, again, we have the floor all the way down and sit on top of the frame. That’s pretty much what we offer.

Does one have to get a garage to add a water tank, or can you put them in the side storage compartments?

Brent Bowen: The answer is both. It really depends on your camper and your truck. For example, full-size camper beds for a Ford or a Ram the bed itself is 86 inches long with 84 inches of usable bed space. If your camper, is say, 78 inches long, that gives us a little void at the very front. So we’ll put the camper flush at the back of the bed and then put that tank at the very front between the camper and the cab of the truck for center of gravity purposes. So if we have room, we can put it in the bed. Otherwise, the garage is the obvious place.

Let’s talk about the bed that you have on the Warthog. What is the truck bed made from?

Brent Bowen: So this particular bed is built using a combination of 1/8-inch and 1/4-inch aluminum and then 1/8-inch and 1/4-inch steel. The steel is only used on the sub frame, and that’s because it uses our torsion-free three-point articulating sub frame. So the deck essentially is steel, and then all the components bolt to that. The bed itself—the garage and all boxes—are made from aluminum. The build really shows what Bowen Customs is capable of producing.

We’ve noticed that you have a separate power system in the Warthog’s garage to power a large refrigerator. Is the battery system only for things mounted in the garage?

Brent Bowen: Yes. This is a separate power system from the camper. Currently it’s just running the fridge. We’re in the process of building a slide-out kitchen for this. We’ll have a 12 volt convection oven, an induction cook top, lighting. So right now, yeah, it’s a little overkill for just a fridge freezer, but it’s designed to power a whole system.

How large is the battery powering Warthog’s garage?

Brent Bowen: It’s a Battle Born 270 amp power lithium battery. The system uses Redarc Manager 30 to control everything using solar and DC-DC charger inputs to keep the battery charged.

This Warthog truck bed is amazing. Where do you store your tools?

Brent Bowen: Tools are in the upper box on the driver side. We keep passenger side open for the kitchen. This is typically when we’re not at a show, this is full of all the food and stuff like that. The other side is for chairs and tools and all that.

Your compartments are hermetically sealed to keep out moisture, dust, and dirt. What kind of seals do you use?

Brent Bowen: We’ve spent a lot of time on the sealing mechanism for these, but we’ve got them really tight at this point. So tight that the boxes will actually condensate if you have anything wet in there because it’s super, super tight. I know you’ve seen this before, Mike, but when you close it, you can actually hear the air escaping when the boxes are fully closed. So it seals all the way around all the boxes, radius corners to prevent any pinch points on the seals, so you can’t get any dripping. They are fully-adjustable compression seals as well. So that over time, seals soften up over time. So as the seals soften, you can actually tighten your latches to keep that seal.

Have you measured how much square footage your beds have?

We did on one bed. It was a long time ago. We have so many different skews. I mean, we have probably 20 more skews than our closest competitor that I’d be measuring for days. But it’s quite a bit. Our upper boxes, range from about 11 inches deep to 15 inches deep. And in length, a Tacoma box, upper box by itself is about 70 inches long. But then we have some of our chassis caps, they’re 8 feet, 8 inches long. There’s a large variety in size in our storage boxes.

One thing we really like about your system is the rear access doors for storing longer items like fishing poles and skis.

Brent Bowen: Yeah, the rear access is real popular with skiers and fishermen. It’s just a handy way to get the longer objects in.

So explain the purpose of the inner access doors inside the rear of your truck beds?

Brent Bowen: So we call these our Bowen Customs inner access doors. They go on the inside of the upper box, and we don’t put them on every bed. A lot of trucks, we have a block off plate there. It’s really designed for the campers that have internal tie-downs so you can access them. So Four Wheel Campers and Scouts all use internal tie-downs, which we love, that’s what we prefer. And so this is just an easy way to get to those.

The workmanship of your doors and hatches are amazing. The quality really is what we call “mil-spec” grade.

Brent Bowen: Thanks, Mike. We really appreciate that. We’ve put a lot of time and effort into our designs. We don’t want these things going out in the field and breaking or giving people a hard time. We want it to be a functional piece that they can add to their rig and not mess with it.

Are you truck beds engineered handle a large camper like a Host triple-slide?

Brent Bowen: Obviously, it depends on which truck and which bed we’re talking about. You wouldn’t want to put in a Host on a Tacoma, but all of our chassis cab beds are built with those campers in mind. The Host combo in particular on the chassis cabs is the most common thing that we see through the door. We do as far as chassis cabs go, the Host is definitely the most popular. The bed is 100 percent designed to handle that weight. Like I mentioned, steel sub frame, heavy duty pivots and amounts. So yeah, no worries there.

So you aren’t actually increasing the payload capacity or the GVWR of the truck, but basically matching it. Correct?

Brent Bowen: Yeah. Again, it It comes down to the truck and the camper. But for example, we do a lot of Elevation Off Grid F-550s. By the time you put our bed on there in a fully-loaded host, those trucks still have capacity in their 19,000 pound GVWR. We’re definitely trying to stay under that.

Is it true that you now have dealerships who can order and install your truck beds?

Brent Bowen: Yes. That’s true. We have dealers located in Oregon, California, Utah, and Ohio with additional dealers in the works. Look for an official announcement soon.

How much does a Bowen Customs truck bed cost?

Brent Bowen: It all depends on options, but typically Bowen Customs prices start in the low $14,000s, and they could spend all the way up to $60,000 if they wanted to get every single option, including a color match on the powder coat.

What about something like this on the Warthog with the mega garage?

Brent Bowen: The bed on this one with the articulating sub frame is right around $50,000. That’s tax and the install out the door. We have beds as cheap as $14,000 to $15,000, but you could spend $55,000 to $60,000 if you really wanted to. It all depends on what your requirements are for your camper, of course.

Nice. Is there anything else that you’d like to tell us about Bowen Customs truck beds?

Brent Bowen: At Bowen Customs we’re really proud of the fact that it’s 100 percent made in USA. There are a lot of companies out there these days that are touting phrases like “engineered in the USA.” Well, that’s just really code for made in China. We’re made right here in Colorado, just outside of Denver in Arvada. We’ve got a team of hardworking guys that have families in the neighborhood, and we pay them well, which is part of the reason our prices are what they are. We work hard and build a really quality product that people can use for years to come. We also stand behind our product. If you have problems with it, we’re here local. You don’t have to import apart from overseas. It’s an American-made product that’s providing American jobs. We’re really proud of that.