Pickup Lines: 5 gift ideas for the truck owners on your list

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Spinning your wheels with what to buy the pickup-owning gearhead in your life? We’ve polled a few four-wheeling fans of our own and created a list of ideas that should finally check that difficult-to-buy-for person off this year’s list.

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All-weather floor mats

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Pickup Lines: 5 gift ideas for the truck owners on your list Back to video

We’ll kick off this list with something that’s as practical as it is predictable: all-weather floor mats. I speak from experience when I say this gift idea is useful after finding pizza boxes lining the floors of an SUV belonging to a family member. In contrast, these swaths of tough rubber mats are indispensable on snowy and slushy days, collecting and trapping the liquid mess you just dragged in from the parking lot to your truck’s floorboards.

Seek out a set of form-fitting mats , like the ones shown here from WeatherTech or similarly hewn units from other companies like Husky. These types of mats are constructed to match the unique contours of floors in different trucks, so a set intended for use in an F-150 won’t fit very well in a Silverado. We would like to qualify this as a Very Good Thing, since loose fitting mats can bunch up and cause all kinds of safety issues. Flattened pizza boxes will do the same, it must be noted.

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Quadratec LED interior-mount 50-inch stealth light bar

The crushing popularity of these light bars which offer the brightness of a supernova can be explained by their ability to illuminate the dark side of the moon relatively cheaply. Gone are the days when off-roaders would generally find their way across darkened trails largely by feel and a good dose of luck. However, comparing old-school headlights to a pair of fireflies in a couple of jam jars is totally unfair — to the fireflies, that is.

Appending one of these brutes to the roof of your rig is easy, though it invites two unintended consequences: wind noise and the chance of theft. This product from Quadratec solves both those problems by neatly tucking the light bar inside the windshield. Two options are available, making accommodation for Jeep’s adaptive cruise control sensors. Made to fit the new Gladiator pickup truck (and its Wrangler cousin), this thing is encased in a robust metal housing that should ward off any nasty reflections, but does seemingly eat into a bit of forward vision area along the windshield’s top strip. If you can live with that — and I’d gladly do so for this unique item — you’ll have 60 LEDs at your command to illuminate the trail ahead, banishing those fireflies for good.

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4 Wheel Parts party starter cooler

If you own a pickup but are not using it to haul beverages to an appropriately socially-distanced-and-within-gathering-rules holiday gathering, then we regret to inform you that you’re not fully realizing the patriotic capability of your truck. Bob and Doug McKenzie would like a word with you, ya hoser.

This cooler from 4 Wheel Parts is just the ticket for keeping everything cold on your drive to the cottage. Its polar-wall insulation keeps ice for up to five days and the heavy-duty rubber clasps keep this thing closed even when you hit that deep pothole you forgot about. Several well-placed and well-designed tie-downs are brutish enough to accept buckles from a stout set of ratchet straps. The maker asserts it is also bear-proof, meaning it’ll keep out wildlife, but no guarantees it’ll keep your hoser chums outta your stash. In keeping with my tradition of recommending items I’ve actually used, one of these coolers takes up residence in my own garage.

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Handheld wrench sets from Olsa Tools

We could stuff this list full of bolt-on truck items like fender flares and running boards — both of which are good ideas, by the way — but those gifts are useless if the recipient doesn’t have a good set of hand tools with which to install the things. This issue can be solved in jig time with a set of spanners from this Canadian company that’s playing effective foil to established industry players like Snap-On and Matco.

The brand offers a wide array of tools, ranging from ratcheting wrench sets to breaker bars and precision torque wrenches. They also sell the product on which the company was founded: tool organizers. The latter is a dandy example of gifts appealing to the OCD gearhead like Yours Truly, who likes the drawers of their tool chest to resemble a knolled Lego Technic set. Storage trays for sockets keep your 10-millimetre bits from evaporating, while wall-mounted organizer racks keep things handy while subtly flexing your collection to visiting buddies.

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Macally cupholder tray

What’s that? You’re simply too busy to stop and eat? You’d rather balance an entire meal on a nine-inch-wide satellite dish instead of taking time to stop and smell the roses? Then you’re in luck! This product from an online retailer purports to quash the indignity of balancing a burger and fries on your lap by introducing a height adjustable surface that’s secured in place with a cupholder-sized insert. Presto! You’ve gone from noshing in a parking lot to dining on the French Riviera.

Well, not totally, but you get the idea. This product is designed to be use while stopped, of course, and most definitely not at speed in rush-hour traffic on the highway. Smarmy jokes aside, this platform may actually come in handy for folks who need to socially distance in their car while on lunch break. It doesn’t fold up terribly small for storage purposes and the English-as-a-fifth language ad copy does give a bit of pause, but this could make for a handy companion and surely beats balancing a Big Mac on your knee.