No drilling is true for full-size trucks. Eight-foot beds and some midsize trucks are a different answer.

Confirm whether your bed actually needs drilling

This is the first thing to settle, because it may change your expectations of the whole job. DECKED states that full-size trucks require no drilling since the system uses the existing tie-downs, that trucks with eight-foot beds do require drilling on the cab side of the bed, and that some midsize trucks and vans may require a small amount depending on make, model and year. A documented midsize install also required relocating a couple of tie-downs first. Check your specific truck against their fitment information before ordering rather than discovering it with the crate open.

The weatherstrip is reversible and one way around is wrong

DECKED prints this in red in their instructions, which tells you how often it happens: facing the weatherstrip the wrong way will funnel water into the drawer. It is the kind of part that fits happily either way and looks correct in both, and the failure is not immediate, it shows up as wet tools after the first heavy rain. Take the extra thirty seconds to check the orientation against the diagram, because this is a sealed weatherproof system and this one part decides whether that is true.

Build it outside, then lift it in with help

The system weighs more than two hundred pounds assembled, and the sensible sequence, which reviewers converge on, is to assemble the frame on the ground beside the truck, team-lift it into the bed, slide it all the way back, and only then fit the drawers. Trying to build it inside the bed means working bent over in a confined space, and trying to lift it alone is how backs and tailgates get damaged. This is the single point in the job where a second person is not optional.

Read the instructions, genuinely

They run to twenty-two pages with the critical sections highlighted in red, and there are install videos to go with them. That is unusually thorough documentation for a bolt-in accessory, and the reason it exists is that the sequence matters: what goes in before what, which fasteners get torqued when, and which parts have an orientation. Reviewers repeatedly single the instructions out as good. The failure mode here is not bad documentation, it is skipping it because the product looks self-explanatory.

Think about drainage and what lives in the ammo boxes

The four recessed wells that the anchors pass through double as storage, and some owners drill drain holes in the bottom of them so water that gets in has somewhere to go. Whether that makes sense depends on whether you run a topper or cover. It is worth deciding deliberately rather than discovering standing water in a well six months later, and it is much easier to do at installation than afterward.

You keep your payload, but check your height and access

Because the deck sits below the bed rails rather than at the top, you keep the ability to haul on top of it, up to two thousand pounds on a full-size truck. What changes is the usable depth of the bed and the height of the load floor. If you regularly carry something tall, or load with a forklift, or use a bed-mounted rack or tonneau, work out how those interact before committing. If you are also considering a sliding tray, note that DECKED’s guidance for that product is that the highest point on your open tailgate must sit less than three quarters of an inch above the bed floor or the tray will bind.

It comes out again, which is part of the value

On a truck where no drilling was needed, the whole system is reversible: unhook the anchors, lift it out, and the bed is as it was. That is worth protecting. Keep the original hardware and the instructions together somewhere, because the people who most need to remove one of these cleanly are usually doing it years later at trade-in or sale, which is exactly when the small bag of fasteners has gone missing.