Rooftop Tent or Truck Bed Tent? What’s Best For Your Pickup

By Stephan Edwards - March 27, 2021

Recently, here at the AmericanTrucks Resource Center we’ve been featuring some articles about the many ways you can get a nature fix with your four wheel drive. Where you lay your head is a big part of the equation whether you’re headed out camping for two weeks or just a couple of nights. And, when we talk camping, we’re talking tents.

Over the last few years, the new rage in tent camping in the US has been the rooftop tent (RTT). While nothing new to our friends in Europe, South Africa, and Australia (the basic design has been around since the 1930s), we North Americans have been a little slow to the RTT game.

But, we’re catching up with a vengeance. The market is flooded now with new brands and designs, and some retailers can barely keep up with demand. Garrett wrote in depth about how to navigate the sometimes bewildering world of rooftop tents, you can read it here.

On the other hand, I wrote not too long ago about the features and benefits of the truck bed tent – a much more common sleeping solution for pickup owners here state-side before the reign of the roof tent. The truck bed tent still has its benefits, but will it get left in the dust by the fancy upstart?

Let’s take some time to compare the two options.

Price and Commitment

Roof top tents first.

The two major factors in deciding on a roof top tent are how willing you are to add significantly more equipment to both your truck and your camping setup, and how much you are willing to spend.

Rooftop Tents for PickupsPrice and CommitmentThe two major factors in deciding on a roof top tent are how willing you are to add significantly more equipment to both your truck and your camping setup, and how much you are willing to spend.

Rooftop Tents for PickupsPrice and CommitmentThe two major factors in deciding on a roof top tent are how willing you are to add significantly more equipment to both your truck and your camping setup, and how much you are willing to spend.

Benefits of Rooftop Tents

On the other hand, RTTs do some things exceptionally well. If you have a dedicated adventure rig, or get out to the hills frequently, the convenience of having your shelter ready to go at the drop of a hat is unparalleled. Just load up the cooler or the fridge, and hit the road. They take minutes to set up and take down, especially hard-sided roof tents. They are built with heavy duty materials and with longevity and strength in mind. They can easily withstand severe weather conditions and years living on the top of your rig.

Soft-sided roof tents provide a more comfortable sleeping space than most truck beds – particularly width-wise. Most can also stow away your bedding inside the tent when you pack it up, saving storage space in your rig. Lastly, there’s a positive psychological benefit. Sleeping up high speaks to a deeply buried part of our evolutionary brain when we used to spend the night in trees to avoid predators on the ground. RTT’s are cozy – there’s no two ways about it.

All that said, I confess to some bias on behalf of the rooftop tent – I’ve owned three different roof tents from three different manufacturers on three different rigs, and traveled with them extensively on two continents. I’ve had some pretty amazing adventures with my RTTs in the past, and that may color my opinion on this. That said, none of my adventure vehicles were pickups. My Jeep, my Mitsubishi, and my Land Rover were all SUVs.

Pickup Bed Tents

Cost and Convenience

I reviewed some of the benefits of truck bed tents in my prior article, but it’s worth revisiting some of those here. First on the list is simply the cost factor – the truck-bed tent is much less expensive than a rooftop tent, and doesn’t require the costly accessories you need to install a RTT on your pickup. Ringing up at only $200 to $300 dollars, they undercut roof tents by a significant margin. Add a custom truck bed air mattress, and you’re ready to run for the hills for a total investment of less than $500.

Compromises with Truck Bed Tents

There are some drawbacks with these old standbys. Truck bed tents are not built with as robust of materials as a roof tent. They are essentially traditional nylon ground tents you place on your pickup bed, rather than on the dirt. If you’re sleeping in your truck bed, you’re losing that storage space for all your camping gear overnight. You will need to find somewhere else to store it while you’re catching your ZZZZZs.

Truck bed tents, like roof top tents also limit your mobility. If you want to establish a base camp, and use your days to go hunting, hiking, or exploring off road trails, you’ll need to fold up and stow your tent every time you leave camp. A basic free-standing ground tent gives you more flexibility for short-term adventures.

A Tenting Detente

I think the final word of advice here is to think really carefully about how you are using your truck. If you’re a casual camper, with maybe only a few weekends a year out in the wild, the truck bed tent may be the way to go. If you find yourself getting more serious about your adventures, or spend a lot of time on the road, the rooftop tent is the perfect solution for your truck-based home on wheels.

In either case, get out there and explore the great outdoors! You’ll have a great night’s sleep either way.

Have any good pickup truck camping hacks? Questions about tents? Let us know down in the comments.

Raised on air-cooled VW’s and all-wheel-drive Subarus, Stephan became a Land Rover masochist later in life. He once bought a Defender sight-unseen from strangers on the Internet in a country he’d never been to, and drove it from Ethiopia to South Africa. He blogs at Overlander.com and his writing has appeared in Overland Journal and Adventure Journal.