GMC's Carbonpro

Truck Beds Go High Tech

- Nick Kurczewski

A pickup truck bed is the last place many people expect to find cool engineering and high-tech hardware. Hey, it’s rectangular and you toss all sorts of tools and gear inside it, case closed. Except GMC is throwing a wrench in the works and attempting to change truck buyers’ perceptions when it comes to truck beds. The brand’s CarbonPro pickup bed, available on the 2019 (and soon 2020) Sierra AT4 and Denali, is significantly stronger and lighter than an equivalent steel cargo bed.

According to GMC’s calculations, a CarbonPro truck bed weighs approximately 62 pounds less than a steel version. Add in the typical weight of a spray-on bedliner, and the weight savings creep closer to 100 pounds (a CarbonPro box doesn’t need any sort of bed protection since it’s tougher and resistant to corrosion).

If you’re a dedicated truck fan, you’ve probably seen GMC’s video where cinder blocks, a huge hammer, and a large metal barrel are cruelly dropped into the CarbonPro bed. Somehow, none of them make a single scratch. That wasn’t Hollywood trickery; those cinder blocks were the real deal and dropped from approximately 3 feet above the truck. The metal barrel wasn’t some fancy prop, either. Dropped from a height of several inches above bed, the 450-pound barrel didn’t damage the GMC truck—though if you look closely, it did dent itself upon impact with the CarbonPro bed. So, if you’re feeling lazy about how you load cinder blocks or heavy barrels into your truck, consider yourself in luck!

“[CarbonPro] takes the pickup box to a whole new level,” said Mark Voss, engineering group manager for GMC and longtime specialist for General Motors when it comes to carbon-fiber technology. “This box is so durable; it’ll be cockroaches and carbon boxes when the world comes to an end.”