The 10 Best Truck Camping Accessories
These ten truck camping accessories have been absolute game changers for our truck camping setup, and we wanted to share them with you in the hopes that some of this gear might benefit your own truck camping experience as well!
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The Best Truck Camping Folding Bow Saw
Throughout our years of truck camping we’ve tried about every method of cutting firewood imaginable - from axes (too exhausting) to wire saws (too inefficient) to chain saws (too bulky) - none of which we felt were really that great at getting the job done.
Enter the Agawa Canyon Boreal 21 Folding Bow Saw!
It’s an absolutely rock solid camp saw. Built with an anodized aluminum frame and using swedish steel blades that are hand sharpened and well designed, there’s no doubt it will last a LONG time.
It’s extremely compact - at 21.5”L x 2”H x 1”W when collapsed it easily stores away and only takes seconds to setup when needed.
It’s incredibly efficient. It’ll cut through an 8” diameter log in under a minute, and has literally halved the amount of time Patrick spends processing our firewood while truck camping.
For an in depth look at this awesome truck camping accessory check out our complete folding camping saw overview.
The Best Truck Camping Accessory for Bathing
While it’s a bit of an investment, the Road Shower’s ability to make warm, pressurized water always available no matter where you’re camping is worth it! We liked it so much we have a whole post you can check out that’s dedicated to showing what makes this one of our favorite truck camping accessories.
You can use the Yakima Road Shower for bathing (obviously), cooking, doing dishes, washing clothes, storing drinking water, rinsing mud off your hiking boots - the list just goes on!
Plus the aluminum tank is more durable than other truck camping shower options on the market and it’s mounted outside the vehicle, which frees up interior space for other gear and accessories!
Best Truck Camping Bathroom Accessory
The Pstyle is an awesome truck camping accessory for any female. It makes the ordeal of using the bathroom while camping a much more convenient, efficient, and far less revealing process by enabling you to pee standing up without having to completely drop their drawers every time nature calls.
Plus it works great for kids as well!
Bonus: For more info and gear related to using the bathroom while truck camping, check out our guide here!
The Best 12V Truck Camping Fridge
While we landed on the ARB Elements Camping Fridge for our truck camping setup (here’s our post explaining why), there are countless camping fridge models and manufactures out there to choose from.
We have been astounded at the ARB Element’s rugged durability and efficiency, but we have an entire guide to help you choose the right camping fridge for your budget and needs.
However, the overall takeaway is that once you have chosen and implemented a 12v camping fridge into your truck camping setup, you’ll never want to go back to the constantly-refilling-ice or why’s-my-food-soggy-again cooler situation you’ve been used to.
The Best Truck Camping Kitchen Accessory
Our Lodge 3-Quart Caste Iron Combo Cooker is the best truck camping kitchen item we’ve added to our kit, and it’s a great value for what you get. It consists of a cast iron skillet and 3-quart pot that fit together to operate as both a lid for one another as well as a dutch oven!
Cast iron is great for truck camping because it requires less water for cleanup and (we feel) instills more flavor into the food you cook in it.
Plus you can cook over propane, white gas, or a good old fashioned campfire without being overly concerned about damaging it like you would with other aluminum camping pots and skillets.
Our guide, The Best Cast Iron Set for Camping [And How to Use It Like a Pro], has tons of tips for using and caring for cast iron while truck camping
Check out this post - How to Set Up a Portable Camping Kitchen Box Today to see what else we’ve got in our camp kitchen. And if you need easy meal ideas while camping, go here!
The Best Truck Camping Clothes Washing Accessory
The Scrubba Wash Bag as a portable camping washing machine revolutionized the way we pack and travel while truck bed camping, and we have an entire post showing how it works and why you’ll love it.
It’ll save you money while travelling by stretching your laundromat intervals, it allows you to pack less, extend your camping adventures, and it’s super easy to use!
Plus it requires minimal water - always a bonus when truck camping in remote places!
Head over here for other tips on conserving water when truck bed camping.
The Best Water Filter for Truck Camping
While the MSR Guardian Water Filter is one of the most expensive water purifiers on the market, it is also the best. And this is an area you do not want to be thrifty on.
After several bad experiences over the years with cheaper options, we decided to invest in the MSR Guardian as our solution for getting potable water while traveling and camping in areas where a public water source just isn’t available.
The MSR Guardian was designed for and is used by the military, and can withstand being frozen as well as drops up to 6ft. It physically removes bacteria, protozoa, and particulates (dirt), AND viruses at an output rate of 2.5 liters/minute. It also automatically uses 10% of the purified water it puts out as you pump to flush contaminates from its filter back into the source, so there’s no need for you to backflush it yourself and have to worry if you did it correctly.
The Best Truck camping AccessorIES FOR MAKING COFFEE
We LOVE our camping coffee, so much so that we have an entire guide dedicated to 7 different ways to make it!
But our go-to piece of gear and method for making camping coffee while truck camping is the Aeropress. The brew is highly customizable and it always yields a great cup of coffee while camping or traveling. If you’re curious about how it works we’ve got a step-by-step guide here.
Bonus: The Porlex Mini Coffee Grinder* nests perfectly inside the Aeropress making it a complete compact camping coffee kit!
The Best Truck Camping First-Aid kit
Although this isn’t a “game-changing” truck camping accessory, a quality first aid kit is vital to have with you as far as safety and security goes when camping, especially off grid. And this Adventure Medical First Aid Kit was a HUGE upgrade from what we had previously carried.
Plus it includes an excellent wilderness and travel medicine book that offers a huge amount of guidance for using the kit correctly in the backcountry. We do recommend adding a quality tourniquet* to your truck camping first aid kit as well.
The Best Truck Camping Accessories for Camping Power
While not in everyone’s budget, having a solar generator as part of your truck camping accessories is a game changer for anyone wanting to have a reliable power source while adventuring off-grid.
It’s also a great alternative to the traditional dual battery setup that most truck campers use to meet their power needs, because it requires less technical knowledge to implement and installation is simply plug-and-play. A solar generator is more versatile as well because most can be charged by solar, your car’s 12v DC power, and from 110V power outlets at home (or where available while camping or traveling).
We chose the Inergy Kodiak Solar Generator (which Inergy has replaced with the newer Flex model) because it offered the most power storage and fastest DC charge rate, at the lowest price point at the time we were in the market. It was also exactly the right size and shape for our truck camping sleeping platform design.
But there are dozens of options out there with a wide variety features and price points, so be sure to check out our camping power supply guide for more info and guidance before selecting which model may be best for your truck camping setup.
So there you have it, the top 10 truck camping accessories and gear that is sure to be excellent upgrades to your overall truck camping setup. Each item on this list has made a huge improvement to our personal truck camping kit, and we hope that by implementing some of these truck camping accessories into your setup you’ll see a similar result.
We’d love to know your favorite truck camping gear items and why - let us know in the comments section below! And remember to hit SUBSCRIBE for more truck camping info and blog updates!
As always, thanks for reading!
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20+ Kids' Camping Gear and Outdoor Gift Ideas [That You'll Love Too]
Pin me to your truck camping board so you’ll have this go-to list!
Know other truck campers? We’d love a share!