Shipping Broke Our $1,500 Decked!

UTV Driver
UTV Driver
  • last year
Gaaaaah. Shipping broke our brand-new Decked system! Fortunately, a quick call to customer service had replacement panels on the way, but not before we’d installed the broken bits. Check out out easy it is to swap out components, and stick around for our thoughts on the system.

Check out the full feature at: https://www.utvdriver.com/utv-gear-products/decked-truck-bed-storage-system-installation/

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Transcript
00:00 What is up everyone? We are here in the shop. Got the deck system installed with
00:07 some pieces that were damaged and shivering, but before Christmas I had to get everything in so that I could get
00:16 presents up north without having to worry about snow and such. So since DeckDarty
00:25 has a really good installation video we're gonna take a look at what it takes
00:28 to uninstall one of these. So let's start by removing these little guys here, but it also acts as a
00:39 reinforcement so it keeps the two deck panels together. So we're gonna lose that,
00:43 this guy, and then we're gonna lose this guy down here, and we should be able to pop this panel out.
00:52 So these little guys are 1/8th Allens. This system's built in the US, all the fasteners are standard, you know, which is a little bit of a bummer if you have a metric vehicle, like almost all modern vehicles, which means if you do need to work on this thing or tighten anything up while you're out in the sticks, you will need some standard hardware.
01:20 That comes off there, just like that.
01:23 After you get these little guys off, just one by the little three-eighths fasteners, zip those guys out of there. Then we will need to take these bottom rollers off. Those are a 7/32nd Allen, and they just back out, just like that.
01:44 So from there we should just be able to yank the drawer out.
01:57 Okay, from there we need to hop up in here and undo these J-hooks, these little turnbuckles that actually hold the system in place. Just turn, turn, turn, get those suckers out.
02:13 Okay, so now we're going to knock out these guys. I think there are 13 of them total. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, oh there's seven here. And then once we get this whole panel out, we will take care of the ammo boxes outside, and I'll show you why that is here in a second.
02:34 [Sped up talking]
02:41 Alright, we're all detached. We should just be able to lift that up out of there and slide it out.
02:49 Alright, that's what you get. So, why didn't we just take these loose? So you're looking at the cab side here, and that's because these actually have nuts on the bottom, not nutserts like the ones on the back. So we actually have to take this one loose outside of the truck before we can put the new one on.
03:14 And that's what you wind up with. You want, this is the big interior rail, the channel that the rollers actually roll on, and then there is the old, oh, hello, there's the old panel. Why did we pull this panel off?
03:29 Well, this one got damaged in shipping, so I had to do epoxy that sucker back together. You know, probably would have been fine. Which is also a good chance for water to get inside. So, called up DECT, their customer service was awesome. They said absolutely no problem, and they sent us a new one. So let's get that sucker unboxed.
03:52 Actually, before we do that, let's take a look at this. Something you don't really see all that often is what these things look like underneath. You've got these big honking pieces of metal, every, I would say 12 inches, 16 inches or so. And that provides a lot of the rigidity.
04:10 They say that you can park 2,000 pounds on one of these things, as long as it's, you know, evenly spaced out and not just on a single point. And, you know, I believe that would probably be the case. All right, let's get this thing unboxed.
04:34 Ta-da! How about that? Brand new, no breaky breaks. No breaky breaks. We're good to go. All right, so now we just have to mate this piece with that piece, and we'll be back in business.
04:48 So that's it. That's the long and short of it. We replaced that top panel, easy enough, and we'll take a look at exactly what I like and don't like about the system support.
05:16 All right, let's start off with what we like. Organization. This is a massive improvement over what I've worked with before, which was just all this piled under the back seat of the truck. Tools, air compressor, ratchet straps, miscellaneous nonsense.
05:38 The standard deck comes with two of these boxes. You've got a little one and then a big one over there. I originally had my recovery gear in this guy, but it was just too heavy to easily lift out, so we're just, we're just, we're running loose. We're running loose.
05:54 Recovery gear lives here. Kinetic strap, kinetic strap, tree saver, hand winch just in case, map gas, because you never know, bow shackles. Are you just looking at things in the office and saying that you love them?
06:10 Trash bags, all that fun stuff lives there. And you still have this massive cavern back there. A couple of bowl cutters to stuff with whatever else you don't really need on a daily basis. This is huge. Makes everything a lot easier to get a hold of. Makes it easy to see exactly what you do and don't have before you leave on a trip.
06:33 You know, during riding season, we pretty much live out of this thing. And the number of times that we've shown up at the trailhead and realized we forgot the air compressor or we forgot the tools or whatever, I lost count. So this will make a big difference.
06:49 This deck doesn't go so far as to say this is weatherproof, but they do say that it is weather resistant. All along that seam, there's a foam gasket that keeps water out of the drawers. The drawers are tucked way up in there. You get this handy little piece of weather strip that keeps water out. And it does a really good job.
07:10 We did about an 8 hour drive through some pretty heinous snow and ice and the drawers were bone dry at the end. They even had a guitar in there and it was totally fine. You know, would I trust it through a car wash? Not that brave. But I think for most use cases, it's pretty good.
07:31 So what about things that I don't necessarily love? It takes up a lot of space. You know, that's the vast majority of the bed. You know, if you're not somebody who's moving material around a lot or not putting really heavy objects up in your bed a lot, that's not really a big deal. But you know, if you're trying to lift, you know, a thing of saccharite, that sucker's nearly up to my chest. And that just makes it that much harder.
07:59 That's not a fault of the product necessarily. It's just a reality. Likewise, you know, technically we can load a quad up here and we'll probably give that a run. But that's every bit of four and a half feet off the ground. And as you all know, the higher the trailer, the higher the loading surface, the more complicated it can be.
08:25 That said, I don't think it's coming out anytime soon. And if anything, it's given me an idea about building a sort of base camp out of this thing. I think we can throw a camper top on the back and a small foam mattress and we'll have a place that we can crash without having to worry about throwing up a tent.
08:42 So would I recommend the Dex system? Yeah, I think so. You know, they're pricey. They're not cheap, but it's a really well made product. It's made in the United States. The instructions were easy. If you can put together a Lego set, you can put together one of these things.
08:59 So, yeah, if you're looking for truck storage that will stand up to weather, it's hard to go wrong with. You know, a lot of guys will throw together a sort of plywood system and those are great, especially in terms of cost. But they're definitely not weatherproof and they're not going to have the sort of longevity or the toughness that these things do.
09:21 So, yeah, give them a shot. Our write up will be linked in the bio. But otherwise, yeah, thanks for watching.