Best Truck Bed Tonneau Covers

You’ve just bought a shiny new pickup, which you got because you wanted a truck bed that’s open on the top for easy loading. And now, you want the ability to cover the truck bed! Sounds counterintuitive? Read on to learn why a tonneau cover might make sense, and how to choose one.

What is a Truck Bed Tonneau Cover?

Pickup trucks are one of the most useful vehicle categories on the market, and a big reason for that is the truck’s big bed. Need a load of gravel? Any other vehicle would require you to buy it in bags and stack them in the trunk. But with a pickup you can buy it in bulk, and have it poured into the bed.

But that utility comes at a price. If you’re hauling regular merchandise, storing it in the bed leaves it vulnerable to theft and inclement weather. The solution? A truck bed cover, also called a tonneau cover. It’s simply a removable or retractable cover that you can open for bulk loading, and close for protecting more vulnerable cargo.

How do Truck Bed Tonneau Covers Work?

Truck bed covers all have one thing in common; they… Cover the truck bed. But how they go about doing so differs based on the design. Some are secured to the bed with snaps. Others are locked in place and have various methods for opening them when you need to access the bed, such as folding, rolling or hinges. Whichever style you choose, you’ll want to be sure to get one that’s sized to fit your particular truck bed.

Truck Bed Tonneau Cover Types

Tonneau styles run the gamut between simple and relatively cheap, to expensive and very fancy. In general, you’ll probably be happiest choosing one that’s somewhere in the middle. Let’s take a quick overview of truck bed cover options.

Snap-In Tonneau Covers

A snap-in cover is essentially a tarp with snaps around the border. Made of a flexible material such as vinyl, it snaps into eyelets mounted on an aluminum frame which is clamped to the edges of the truck bed. Snap-in tonneau covers are very simple to use, but also require a lot more time than other styles as you have to go around the entire bed closing sometimes dozens of snaps. The advantage lies in the snap-in truck bed cover’s simplicity. Snaps are fairly hard to break, and because they use so many contact points, you can open just a small part of the cover if you need to access your cargo.

Roll-Up Truck Bed Covers

A roll-up cover is the next step up in complexity. Like the snap-in cover, it’s made of a flexible material because it’s designed to be rolled up like a rug for opening the bed. Many roll-up covers have Velcro mounted along the sides so you aren’t restricted to your truck bed cover being either all the way open, or all the way closed. The advantage to a roll-up tonneau cover is that it’s much easier and faster to open and close than the snap-in style. But the disadvantage, at least to some, is that hook-and-loop fasteners like Velcro lose their ability to fasten over time, especially if they’re exposed to dirt and other things often carried in a truck bed. Some roll-up covers get around that problem by stretching the cover over aluminum bars which lock into place as the cover is rolled out. But those styles are considerably more expensive than regular roll-up covers.

Folding Truck Bed Covers

A folding tonneau cover takes the advantages of a roll-up cover, and removes one of the disadvantages. It’s composed of several panels that can be folded on top of each other, which means you no longer have to worry about Velcro losing its fastening ability. A tri-fold tonneau cover is one of the more common covers you’ll see installed on pickup trucks. Folding covers sometimes include locks, which make it harder for thieves to get at the valuables in the bed.

Folding tonneau covers also give you the option of moving away from flexible materials like vinyl; some folding covers are made of harder materials like plastic. While a vinyl cover is often easy to cut with a knife, a hard cover is a bit more challenging to would-be thieves.

Hinged Tonneau Covers

Moving up the complexity ladder is the hinged truck bed cover. This type of cover is a large, flat panel made of either a hard material, or a soft one stretched over a frame. This tonneau entirely covers the bed. A hinge at the front of the bed allows the cover to open and close, while struts mounted on either side of the cover prop it up when it’s open. This style of truck bed cover has a significant advantage, but also a big disadvantage. While opening the hinged-style cover is extremely easy - no harder than opening a trunk - it also can’t be opened in a way that exposes the entire bed from the top, and it’s harder to remove than other types of truck bed covers.

That means if you’re planning to carry tall cargo, or bulk materials like gravel or mulch, the hinged tonneau cover is probably not the best option, as you would have to detach the entire cover from the bed and leave it behind.

But there’s an advantage too! As they’re all one-piece, a hard hinged cover can be painted to match the truck’s body, for a more stylish and factory-original look. And, like the folding covers, hinged tonneau covers can lock to prevent unauthorized access to your truck bed.

Retractable Truck Bed Covers

Now we’re getting fancy! Like a roll-up cover, the retractable tonneau cover exposes the bed by rolling up into the front. Unlike a roll-up cover, the retractable cover works more like a garage door. Instead of rolling like a rug, it retracts into a cylinder at the front of the bed. The advantage here is that the cover can be completely flat, even when partially retracted. Another advantage, if you’re willing to spend some extra bucks, is that some retractable covers are motorized, meaning you can extend and retract them at the touch of a button.

Of course, fancy mechanisms like retractable tonneau covers also carry a disadvantage, which is that they’re made up of precision parts to enable them to slide smoothly as they’re rolling in and out. Introduce dirt and grit into that mechanism, and that smooth slide gets a lot more rough, and sometimes jams entirely. Because of that, we don’t feel retractable covers are a great option for people who regularly haul messy loads.

How Aftermarket Truck Bed Covers Compare to OEM Truck Bed Covers

Tonneau covers are so popular that carmakers want in on the action. Many new pickups can be specced with a cover right from the factory. While there aren’t too many significant differences between an OEM cover and an aftermarket one of the same type, there are a couple of advantages to OEM. First, you know without a doubt that it will perfectly fit your pickup truck bed. Second and perhaps of more interest to many, a painted OEM cover will use the same paint that’s on the rest of your truck, so it will be a perfect visual match.

But aftermarket covers offer more choice. While an OEM tonneau cover may only let you choose between two or three styles, the aftermarket has a great many more options. If you can’t find exactly what you’re looking for through the dealership, it’s a good idea to explore what the aftermarket has to offer.

What are the Best Truck Bed Tonneau Covers?

In many ways the best style of truck bed cover depends on your mission and your budget. If you’re not looking to break the bank, and aren’t terribly worried about anyone stealing your stuff, a snap-in cover is often the most affordable way to get a tonneau.

If you just want to keep the rain and thieves out of the bed, and don’t plan to ever haul bulk material or awkwardly-tall items, then a hinged or tri-fold hard cover might be best for you.

But if you need the flexibility of being able to haul anything you want, while keeping thieves out, a hard folding or retractable cover might be your best option, although as we noted those retractable covers can jam.

We feel the best balance between utility, security and cost is often a folding soft-material cover. While not as secure as some other styles, we feel that’s of somewhat less importance on modern trucks, which usually have at least folding back seats, if not a full SUV’s-worth of room in the cabin. Securing the bed isn’t quite as pressing when you can lock most valuable cargo away in the cab. And while not as inexpensive as a roll-up or as fancy as a retractable cover, the folding cover gives you a good balance between bed exposure and cost without risking the jamming problems expensive retractables can experience. As they’re easier to remove entirely than hinged or retractable covers, you also have an easier option to expose the entire bed if you need to get that load of mulch for the gardens.

Read more on the topic of Aftermarket Parts here.