What To Do If Your Truck’s Bed Holds Rainwater

Seeing your pickup’s bed turn into a pond after a rainier day is probably not the thing every owner wants to see – surely having some there and getting rid of it as soon as you can isn’t really much of a problem, but man, isn’t it annoying?

I mean, it can become a very big waste of time if you live in those rainy states, or even flat out dangerous if the bed has no protection at all and is left so for a longer time.

The drain holes are plugged

Most pickup trucks already come with some sort of holes made for water drainage, or gaps for that matter, typically closer to the cab side. Those holes aren’t really that large, so it’s not unusual for them to get clogged with random stuff, hence not being able to get rid of water properly.

The solution here is likely a pretty obvious one – you just have to get them cleaned.

To prevent this from happening in the future, all you have to do is make sure to check those spots out from time to time, especially when you know the rainy days are coming.

The bed is lined

If your vehicle’s bed has some sort of coating or a layer of plastic on top of it, in other words either a drop-in or spray-in bedliner, the stock drain holes may be blocked by the material.

This isn’t always true, as for example, if the job was done in a shop – having said that, if it was applied by you or the past owner, you might have just forgotten about leaving the holes open.

It’s a little easier to resolve this on beds that have only a spray-in coating, as all you have to do is find the stock holes and open them back up, with something like a utility knife.

In regards to the drop-in kind, you should be more careful about this process. Once you find the actual drain slots and have them uncovered, i suggest plugging in grommets and sealing them.

If that is not done, the water can end up being trapped between the plastic liner and the actual metal bed, which after after a while could lead to corrosion.

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To be honest, if the bed has a bedliner, any sort of rainwater could definitely stay there even for a longer time, considering that there is no contact with the actual raw bed.

Make additional holes

Want to help the bed get rid of the stagnant water even quicker, or you have a pickup truck that doesn’t even have any drain holes to start with? Try cutting out a hole or two!

The holes don’t need to be anything larger than 1/4 inch, though at the same time drilling bigger ones can only get the job done quicker, and not get blocked as easily.

The key here is to not forget about painting the new drain spots afterwards. You certainly do not want them to be the cause of rust, right?

For example, if the bed had been sprayed with the bedliner, the new spots can also be coated with just a spray or two of the same product, to match the overall look best. You can also do the same with a can of black paint.

Tips on getting rid of the actual rainwater

Park the vehicle correctly

The best way to prevent any useless water from pooling inside the back of a pickup truck is by making sure it is left in the right position.

In case your truck actually has a bedliner on it, and you do not want to uncover any of the existing drain holes, you have to park it on an incline so the water could run off through the bottom of the tailgate. If that’s not really effective, leave the tailgate open.

Nosedive type of parking is more applicable to those pickups that in fact have drain slots closer to the front, and that friends makes them more versatile.

If there’s no area in your place for leaving the vehicle by any of these methods as it’s just flat ground, you can always get a pair of plastic ramps that should do the trick just fine.

Leave the water there

As i already said, beds which have a liner are a lot more resistant against any sort of water damage, so why not leave it there until you have to drive the truck?

What i mean by that is that the rainwater will just pool out of the bed as soon as you hit the gas, or breaks here and there to really speed up the process. On top of that, this can also help to clean it up there if it was any dirty!

In summary

In reality, rainwater is not really anything to worry about, if you get rid of it whenever possible, that is. At the end of the day, if you really hate seeing water in there, why not just considering putting something over, like the classic tonneau cover?