Storage Tray Slideout

 A convenience item well known to those in the motorhome community, slide out trays provide a way of easily accessing kit that is stored well inside the walls of an eight foot wide vehicle.

We had three of these devices in our Newmar motorhome, and they were indispensable. So when we were designing the layout for our truck, we worked very hard to ensure that the area under the bed would be an unobstructed tunnel from one side to the other.

What makes these trays so good is that they’re designed to slide out both sides of the truck by just over 50% of their length, even if loaded with their full 800 pound capacity. So access to kit stored in the tray is easy from either side. The trays also come in a number of different lengths and widths, so we managed to get one that fit perfectly inside our storage bay.

We bought the tray via Amazon, from a company in Florida. It was by far the best price, and we got the slide in two days, delivered to Bellingham, Washington.

Installation was normally a simple thing, as they were made to just bolt to the flat floor in the storage bay under a motorhome. But our bay had a three inch high curb on each end. So we had to make four plinths to raise the tray up enough to slide out the door. The side benefit of raising the slide off the floor was that it created another storage area under the slide for thin lesser used items like a telescoping ladder, and the cradle that is used when lowering our spare tires down to the ground.

Extra Security

Since our truck would be travelling on much rougher roads than what a convention motorhome could navigate, and the most severe motion would be side to side, we didn’t feel confident that the factory catches on the slide would be up to the task of preventing the slide from moving. A catch failure could turn into a disaster if the slide started bashing back and forth against the inside of the storage bay doors.

To give us the peace of mind we wanted, we decided to manufacture a very positive catch that would prevent any movement whatsoever.

Extra convenience

In order to make the slide even better, we built a few organizational accessories to hold things in place, like the step stool, and a plywood enclosure to hold the chairs and organize the electrical cables and hoses.

There are several brands of slide out storage trays, but the one we purchased was made by Morryde. Unlike other brands, this one came fully assembled and ready to install. http://www.morryde.com