Overland Vehicle Storage Solutions

so whether you're taking a day-long trip or a week-long overland adventure or a multi-week expedition there's gear that you're going to want to take with you and for me finding the right thing to store it in having a home for it that's permanent that i know that i can always go find it at is always an evolution trying to find the right way to store things and so what i thought i would do in this video is share with you some vehicle overland storage solutions that i've been using and some new things that i'm going to test out and maybe in this video there's something here you can take away and apply to your application got some cool stuff to talk about i think this is going to be a super helpful conversation stay tuned welcome to trail recon i'm brad and it's no surprise i'm a little bit of a gear junkie but i just like having the right piece of equipment when i'm out on my adventures today in this video what i want to do is talk a little bit about storage options it doesn't really matter if it's a day trip or a multi-day trip having the right storage solution can really make your life easy i mean i cannot stand it when i get out to the trailhead and i gotta air down my tires and i'm like man did i bring my tire deflaters where did i put them it's nice to know that they're always in the same place they've got a storage spot that i can take away easily and put back easily my tools food all of it is important to have its own home and so there's a lot of different options out there what i want to do is just share with you some of the things that have worked for me in the past some of the things that i'm actually going to try here in the future we'll talk about some exterior mounting solutions some hard mounted interior solutions and then we'll talk about hard cases versus bags versus soft boxes versus molly there's all kinds of solutions here that might be helpful for you when you're trying to figure out where to put your stuff all right let's start talking about roof racks first one of the great storage solutions is having a roof rack on your vehicle because that allows you to take a lot of gear from the inside of your vehicle and put it on the outside freeing up space for maybe a family or more passengers or if you're just going to be on a long trip and you need that extra storage a roof rack is a great solution but there are pros and cons to roof racks so just some things to consider and one is the price the price of a roof rack can get a little steep and so you want to make sure you pay attention to what am i really going to be using it for do i need to buy a full high-end roof rack or can i go with something that is maybe a little more lower and middle road budget that's still going to meet the needs to just carry you know some camping gear some sleeping gear food fuel whatever up there another thing to consider is what's called static and dynamic weight and so static weight is how much weight that roof rack can hold as it's sitting here and then dynamic weight when i have all my gear on there and i'm off-roading and the vehicle is floating around how much weight is that going to support if i throw a rooftop tent up there that's going to add a lot of weight i want to make sure it can handle all that weight now the other thing to consider is how tall is your roof rack because a lot of people are concerned about getting in and out of the garage especially if you're putting larger tires and you're lifting your vehicle sometimes that space that height can get become a commodity really quick for an example right now i cannot pull the jeep out without taking this box off so this box has to come off in order for me to get in and out of the garage the other thing to think about is everything that's up there is open to the elements so whatever you're mounting up there needs to be weatherproof the last thing you want to do is have your stuff get dusty or wet or whatever on your adventures we'll talk about some of those solutions here towards the end of the video and the other thing that's very important is making sure that whatever you put up there is secure because look that is not a great place to have weight we're adding weight to the top of the vehicle that's not the best place to have the weight so we really want to put lightweight stuff up there but no matter what you put up there you need to make sure it's secure the last thing you want to do is be out on your adventures and have something going flying off or really worst case scenarios you're on the freeway and something breaks loose that can become a hazard so if you're going to use a roof rack it's definitely something you want to make sure you're checking the roof rack itself and anything that's mounted to it all along your adventures it's always something you want to make sure that you're giving some attention to okay that's roof racks let's hop in the back of the jeep and we'll talk about some permanent mounting solutions now in the back of your vehicle depending on what kind of vehicle you have get the option to be really as creative as you want about putting storage back here now the most practical thing to do is to get some soft boxes and some bags and figuring out how to organize it to make things easily accessible but i love seeing how people get creative with designing uh different types of drawer systems whether they buy them or they build them so for me i have built a storage system in the back of my old jeep and that was a lot of work and it was a little more expense than i actually expected but it was this good satisfaction in doing that but boy it was a lot of work this one here is from goose gear and i've been very happy with this solution the cool thing about the goose gear is there's a lot of different modular options here so you know you can get you know just one side you get one drawer you can mix and match however you want but having a drawer system or a you know cabinet system that you've built makes it very nice to be able to just have easy access to stuff that you're going to get in a hurry all the time this is all my cleaning gear you know i've got some toiletries back there in this drawer i've got chairs and lights and wires and straps and all that kind of stuff and then down here is the important stuff the cooking the coffee that drawer even smells like coffee but that stuff is there all the time and i know where it's at so it's nice to have some kind of organized system now the cool thing about this is the other day i just wanted to see how quickly i could remove this i was able to take this entire thing out in about 15 minutes so if i needed to drop some weight because maybe i was going to go hit it hard in the jeep or i just need to clear up space because i get to go to the store and get a big item i can move these out pretty easily and reinstall them before my next trip so i would recommend that if you are going to build a system or you're going to buy a system make sure it's one that's not completely permanent because you never know when you may need to be using the back of your vehicle okay there's some cool stuff in the rear i've removed part of my seats and back there i have stuff that has very specific places let me show you that and then we'll get to talking about all those boxes and bags all right now in the back of the jeep is where i've got some things that i'm pretty happy with how they're laid out i've got some things in some very specific spots but before we get to that talk a little bit about this platform system so i opted to remove sixty percent of the seat back here so i just got this little jump seat it was a decision i agonized over quite a bit because i didn't know if i wanted to lose that passenger space but my kids are older they have their own vehicles and so taking a family around isn't really a concern for me anymore but i still wanted to make sure that if i needed to have a third person i still could do that good news is i can pull this out and put the other seat back in just a little bit of work involved but i love having this platform system because this gives me a ton of space to put my camera gear clothing food whatever i need to i mean i can stack all the way to the ceiling if i need to but plus there's some cubbies here which i'll talk about those cubbies in a second but everything in here has its home so let's just start off with over here i've got the fire extinguisher this is mounted using a bartack mount but i have a new type of fire extinguisher that i'm going to be installing to the molle panel and i'll show you that in a little bit and then back here is first aid kit always have my first aid kit readily accessible and then underneath the seat here is all my air tools because this is something that i need to get to all the time so i can air up air down while we're out on our adventures and so that just lives back there now in these two cubbies this one over here is just straight recovery gear so this is just a big bag of all my recovery gear the good news is well hopefully the good news is is that we're not recovering all the time so i don't need to get to this super easy usually you know this is only a situational thing so if there's gear up on top of here it's not a big deal i usually don't need that in an emergency at least i hope not and then also under here is my tool bag and there's also a battery charger in here and so this tool bag is something that i put together a long time ago it's been working great for me this is a blue ridge overland bag i have a full video about what's in my tool bag this is great but also it's not something i need to get to all the time so it's okay that it's buried kind of underneath this platform system just like that so that works pretty well i'm very happy with the layout back here only challenge now is i have the ram power wagon so where am i going to put all this stuff in the ram power wagon that i still have to figure out but in the jeep this works well all right now let's talk about some soft bag and soft box and hard box options there's pros and cons to each of these and i'll kind of explain to you how i use these we'll start off with bags and i think bags are the best option for the inside of the vehicle it's just a little safer because they have these hard items banging all over the place sometimes hard items like this can tear up your seats they can mess up your plastic whereas bags aren't going to do that plus bags are just easier to store you can kind of cram them multiple ways together whereas a box like this has kind of a thick bulky wall so it's tough to do that i think boxes are good exterior option where bags are a good interior option now this bag here is just some nike tote bag that i've had i bet i've had this for about 10 years but i can put a week's worth of clothing and toiletries in this i've done it before and this suits me just fine what i like about this bag specifically is it's got the little shoe cubby here which is perfect for throwing your dirty socks and your dirty t-shirts throughout the trip that way your dirty clothes and your clean clothes are separate you can get a separate bag but this is just pretty convenient so i like having that now this soft bag here is from a company called rightline gear and this was given to me on the ultimate adventure in 2019 and this bag is completely weatherproof so this can be mounted on top of the vehicle or in the truck bed if you want but i think what's really practical for a lot of people for jeep owners is if you are taking the top off the jeep and you want to keep your gear back there clean and secure you know you don't want to get the dusty or muddy or wet having a bag like this is a pretty good option it's a little pricey but i think these are well made and well well designed so a good option there now soft walled boxes i like these and this is specifically from patriot campers what i like about this bag is two of these fit perfectly on my gear platform and typically what i will do is i will put dry food in both of these and then just kind of strap them down on the top up there it works great and the awesome thing about soft boxes is when you're done with them they collapse down completely flat so you're freeing up space so if you had multiple of these inside the vehicle as you use the items that were in there if it was something that was perishable you could flatten these out of the way tuck them away somewhere and now you freed up space in your vehicle so you're not taking up all that space during your entire trip so i'm a big fan of the soft boxes now let's talk about hard boxes and there are a lot of options out there i've just personally been using the roam adventure company boxes for a while uh before i talk about those though let's talk about the ammo can this is just a standard plastic ammo can this one i have some brake fluid and oil and power steering fluid some brake cleaner in here some rags i think these are good for those kind of items plus a couple of these can tuck in the foot well you know and you can use those and put a bottle jack in one of these whatever you need ammo cans are very convenient very nice and they're small and compact this box here i think this is a 54 liter don't quote me on that i've had for about two years and this has spent time in the back of the jk back of the gladiator it has been used and abused and is holding up really really well completely sealed weatherproof everything in here is always nice and clean it's a great box but i'm changing it up now get this out of the way i'm changing it up now with the wrangler with two of these 83 liter boxes from rome adventure company mount two of these on the top and the cool thing is is that if i decide to take the power wagon i can pull these off and put them in the bed of the power wagon and it'll work perfectly and what i really like is the guys over rome just came out with this new organizer this lid organizer which has got all these different pockets so my son and i can have our own box put our clothes sleeping gear personal gear toiletries whatever we want right in here and it doesn't matter if we're taking the wrangler or we're taking the power wagon we got our own box this is pretty cool i like this i'm pretty stoked about this i like the low profile of them all right now i'm super excited to take a look at this molly system i want to go put this together and we'll take a look at that all right now something new that i'm going to be doing is something i'm pretty excited about because i have got a bunch of junk in my center console in my glove box and stuff i'm always digging around trying to find you know whether it's a radio or a flashlight or whatever having a organizer that's going to go on the back of the seat i think is going to be really cool now this is a molle system if you're not familiar with mali it's a modular lightweight load carrying equipment and we use this in the military when i was you know out in the field we would you know put bags on bags and strap stuff to all these little webbings here it makes it very convenient to kind of personalize it the way you want is exactly what we're going to be doing here the cool thing about molly is one it's lightweight and it doesn't make a lot of noise and it's really easy to use what you do is you just take one of these straps and you weave it into whatever it is you're attaching it to then you weave it onto itself you weave it back into what you're attaching it to and it's this process and then it just buckles right up and so it works really well and it keeps things nice and secure now you do have to play around a little bit with you know getting everything dialed in perfectly but i kind of have an idea on how i want to do this just put those two little bags down there maybe this one here and then i've got this really cool fire extinguisher i mentioned that earlier this is the elements fire extinguisher and this is pretty cool i've had a lot of recommendations about switching to these because it is a i think a better option than having a co2 bottle in your vehicle small compact and it lasts longer than a co2 bottle will so i'm going to strap one of they these to the molle system using these little velcro straps right here and then i should be able to attach my radio there when i'm not using a flashlight i'll have a tourniquet up here i don't know i'm gonna play around with this but i'm pretty stoked to be able to have this modularity to this now i bought all this stuff on amazon and i have most of this stuff listed on my amazon store so if you're interested you take a look at that there's lots of companies that sell similar items out there so shop around now one thing i did find cool on amazon were these little velcro tags you can customize the color and what they say on there super cheap i found that very nice so i got a bunch of these little ones made it was only a couple bucks that is pretty cool all right i'm going to put this together go mount this in the power wagon and just make sure that fits now i may switch this to and from the jeep the jeep has a molle panel built into the seat but it's kind of behind that rigid plastic and it doesn't allow you the flexibility to do this kind of stuff plus it's kind of hard to weave into that plastic very easy to weave into this type of stuff right here so let me build this get it done get it mounted let's see what that looks like i think this is going to be pretty cool all right i got everything mocked up on the molle panel i got it installed in the back seat of the truck and i'm really happy with how it turned out that's going to be a great solution now i have pulled it back off here because i just want to tweak things a little bit just move things around and just kind of make it fit just nice but i think this is a great option for some of you out there build the way that makes sense for you you know maybe you want to add one bag and some other gear or whatever i think this is a great storage option for a lot of your little gear that you need to get to quickly all right i hope you've enjoyed hanging out with me in the garage today and maybe you've gotten some new ideas on how to add some storage solutions to your vehicle i'm going to leave a link down below guys for amazon and if you're not an e3 overland association member i would love to have you as part of the community so i will leave a link down below there's some great members benefits if you join i hope you've enjoyed this video we'll see you in the next one

Channel: TrailRecon

Views: 245,496

Keywords: Jeep Wrangler roof rack, goose gear, rhino rack, roam adventure company, blue ridge overland, overland storage, vehicle storage, overland build, overland vehicle, jeep wrangler, ram power wagon, rear seat molle system, molle storage, drawer system, vehicle drawer system, storage box, soft shell box, weather proof bag, trailrecon

Id: Z7wD_WjgPvs

Length: 17min 13sec (1033 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2021