Truck Bumpers With Coolers In Them Were Once A Thing, But They’re Now Forgotten

One of the issues I’ve noticed with having a pickup truck is that while having a big-ass open bed is fantastic, there’s still a pretty common and recurring need for some manner of closed, weatherproof storage. Some trucks, like the old VW Type 2 pickups, had a lockable storage area under the bed, which was very useful if you, say, were picking up someone from the airport in the rain and they didn’t want their luggage soaked, or if you have valuable tools or whatever you want to keep in your truck without it getting stolen, or any number of other reasons.

There have been so many solutions to this problem, from OEMs and the aftermarket, ranging from in-bed toolboxes to built-in cubbies in the bedsides, and then there’s this one I happened to see recently in an old vintage ad, where an aftermarket bumper becomes a storage locker. Or a cooler.

There’s basically like three pictures of this thing online, mounted to a Ford F-100 or F-150 from the mid-to-late 1970s. This is the image that you see most often:

Let’s see if we can figure out what we’re looking at here: it’s an aftermarket bumper, of course, a large step bumper, somewhat oversized, and looks to be made of – and I’m assuming some things here – sheet metal, stamped with those grooves on the face, forming a large hollow volume, with a simple hinged lid that I presume is lockable, and the opening having a nice thick trim of rubber weatherstripping.

This image has been shared on a number of forums – with a genuinely disappointing number of commenters saying some inane shit like “what bumper!?” because there’s a human being in the picture with partially visible mammary glands, and honestly while the objectification is embarrassing, the lack of being able to come up with a new joke is shameful – and all of these forums seem to be trying to figure out what company made these in the first place, so far to no avail.

I’ll be honest – I haven’t been able to find the source of this bumper-cooler picture, either. Some forum posters have a couple of pictures of a surviving example on another truck:

…and it does appear to be the same thing, down to those fluted sides. But no word on what company made these.

The amount of volume available inside this bumper is pretty impressive, really, and I bet you could get like three duffel bags and four laptop bags in there, at least when you weren’t filling it with ice and shrimp and booze, or cramming it full of ground beef or clam chowder or whatever your preferred tailgating treat is.

Could something like this have a place today? I think so? Modern bumpers are usually well-hidden behind body-colored bumper skins, and there’s often a pretty good volume of space inside those, even accounting for the heavy bumper beams that do the real work.

The Ford Maverick, for example, could desperately use some lockable storage space; that rear bumper could be a bit larger, right? And it could have a nice, weatherstripped lid and a big volume of space inside? Why the hell not?

I suppose in a wreck things could get dicey, depending what’s in there, like if you had it filled with ball bearings and barbed wire and angry wasps or something, but for the most part, it seems like a pretty reasonable calculated risk.

I feel like these should still be a thing. I know I would love something like this on my old F-150! I’ve wanted some non-bed storage in that thing for a while. I suppose I could make one of my own, like I’ve seen others do, only you know, lousier. You’d think would reinforce the idea that this is something people might actually want, right?

The idea of using perceived dead space is sort of a fetish of mine, I suppose. That’s why I’m so adamant that EVs have frunks; if your car has any volume of usable space, I believe it is a fundamental right that you should be able to use that space. And this old unknown bumper, this bold experiment in sticking things inside other things, it’s a testament to this idea.

I salute you, unknown storage bumper! And I’m asking you, the greatest automotive hive mind on the internet, the Greater Autopian Community, to maybe lend me a brain lobe here – does anyone have any idea who may have made these? I’d love to know!