The Crittenden Automotive Library

Popular Pickup Truck Accessories in 2014

Popular Pickup Truck Accessories in 2014

April 7, 2014

Accessorizing passenger pickup trucks has always been a common practice. In this article, we will explore the most popular pickup truck accessory trends. These are trending in 2014 according to reviews on sites like Amazon, truck forums, blogs, and other information gathered on truck buyer’s habits. This list is meant to cover trucks made for the 2013-2015 model years and is not in order of exact popularity.

Towing Mirrors

American truck owners are getting back to work, and often when you work out of a truck, towing will be involved. This accessory is re-trending because people are buying new trucks with working in mind as the skilled labor industries are back in full swing.

Because most stock mirrors are still not cutting it, towing mirrors remain to be one of the most popular pickup truck add-ons.

Leveling Kits

A leveling kit is not a lift kit, they simply level out the rocker panels with the ground. Most trucks are slightly higher in the front or back, and a leveling kit merely corrects that. This is a newly popular modification as some crowds are moving away from extreme lift kits. Some people use these kits for appearance only, and others need a little bit more ground clearance but don’t want to commit to lifting their truck.

Exhaust Upgrades

There’s a reason you usually hear a truck before you see it. That’s because exhaust modifications remain to be one of the most popular upgrades of all time. Most exhaust upgrades improve horsepower and fuel economy, but most importantly, they make the truck loud. Trucks typically have larger engines, and their owners want that growl to be heard by all those on the road.

Component Bedliners

This is one of the newer trends in the truck community. While bedliners in general have always been popular accessories, the component bedliner is a lot more sophisticated than the “traditional” options. Systems like these are meant to replace the spray-in liner in every way without the prep work, mess, or damage to the paint. Not to be mistaken for drop-in liners, the component liners are form fitting and offer impact and surface protection to the truck bed and tailgate. Simply put, the component bedliners have more features than any other liner can offer, and people want the best for their new trucks.

Dash Cams

Here’s another one of the newer trends for truck owners -- installing dash cams in their vehicles. This practice is especially popular for off-roaders, but many others are using dash cams to capture the interesting things that happen while behind the wheel. This trend is mainly due to sheer amount of dash cam videos that have gone viral from meteors crashing to earth, to incidents of extreme road rage, to outrageous accidents. Outside of entertainment, a dash cam can be a very smart accessory. It can provide evidence of crimes on the road to prove the driver’s innocence in a complicated accident, and so on.

Custom Wheels

This is a timeless modification/change when it comes to pickup trucks. It’s also one of the only purely cosmetic accessories that truck owners routinely flock to. In 2014, people are starting to get back into the habit of buying custom wheels, something they had to think of last during hard times -- basically, buying a set of wheels for your truck during the recession wasn’t going to make life easy. This year, we’re seeing a lot of truck owners willing to “splurge” on aesthetic upgrades, such as wheels.

While some of these trends are ongoing or rebounding from previous days, others are fairly new to the truck scene. As the design of trucks change, so will the accessorizing habits of the owners. A few of these seem timeless, but could easily be obsolete in a few years.