The Best Dog Crates for Truck Beds

Buy the Lucky Duck Lucky Kennel in Large for the dog most people put in a truck bed: a retriever, a pointer, anything from about 70 to 110 lb. It is the only crate the Center for Pet Safety has certified with a 110 lb test dog. It has tie-down points built in, not a carry handle you are expected to strap through. And its floor is pitched to run water away from the dog into drain channels, which in an open bed is not a nicety. Lucky Duck now sells it on Amazon itself.

Buy the Gunner G1 if your dog fits the sizes CPS certified (Small, Medium or Intermediate) and heat is your main worry. Gunner is the only maker here that sells its kennel as double-walled. Amazon stocks the Small; the two larger certified sizes are sold direct.

And whatever you buy, buy straps with a published rating. Gunner’s strap kit is ranked last only because it is not a crate. In a truck bed, the straps are the part doing the work.

No crash certification covers a truck bed

Everything else on this page follows from this. The Center for Pet Safety is the only independent body that crash-certifies dog crates, and its crate test is run with the crate anchored in a simulated vehicle cargo area. Its 2015 crate study describes the setup as securing the crate “to the connections in the simulated cargo area per manufacturer instructions.” Nothing we read on the CPS site addresses an open truck bed.

So “5-star crash tested” on a truck-bed kennel is narrower than it sounds. It means the shell, the door, the latch and the connection points stayed together and kept the test dog inside through a standardized crash, with the kennel anchored in a cargo area. That is real evidence about how the crate is built, and it is the best evidence available. It is not a certificate for your truck bed, and neither certified maker here claims it is. How the program works in detail is in CPS crash testing explained.

The American Veterinary Medical Association puts it more bluntly. Its literature review on dogs in truck beds says an enclosure there gives “only limited protection in the event of an accident.” Its current policy still names a properly secured enclosure as the only acceptable way to carry a dog in an open bed at all:

“Transport of pets, loose or tethered, in open cargo areas of motor vehicles is not safe and puts the animal’s health and welfare at risk. Properly secured, size-appropriate enclosures designed for use in open cargo areas need to be used when transporting pets in this manner.”

That sentence rules out two things people do every weekend: the loose dog and the dog on a tether. It also names the three things this page ranks on. The enclosure must be secured, size-appropriate and designed for an open bed.

How often it goes wrong, honestly, nobody knows. The same AVMA review cites a 1997 survey in which 141 Massachusetts veterinarians reported treating 592 dogs in a single year for injuries from riding in truck beds. It footnotes the source as an untitled Massachusetts SPCA document obtained by personal communication. That figure is nearly thirty years old and it is the only one we found, so treat it with the same caution we do.

What an open bed does that a cargo area does not

1. The anchors are different. A cargo-area crate is strapped to anchors inside a closed body. A truck-bed crate is strapped to whatever tie-down points your bed happens to have. CPS’s warning about cargo areas applies here with more force: “Cargo area anchors are not always weight-rated for the forces generated in an accident.” Gunner gives its own customers the same advice: “We always recommend checking with your local dealership to confirm that those anchor points are crash rated.” Start with your owner’s manual.
2. Weather gets in. Rain, road spray and dust all reach the crate. The AVMA’s review lists “road dust, debris, and heated metal surfaces” among the hazards of an uncovered bed. In that setting, a kennel that drains and one that does not are different products.
3. Heat has nowhere to go. A kennel parked in an open bed sits in full sun on a metal floor, and none of these makers publish a temperature rating. We come back to this below, because it is the biggest gap in the whole category.
4. Covering the bed creates a new problem. The AVMA review warns that “Enclosures on a truck bed may accumulate toxic carbon monoxide,” citing a JAMA study of carbon monoxide poisoning in children riding in the back of pickup trucks. A crate under a closed cap or a hard tonneau cover is a crate inside a second box with no ventilation.

How we ranked them

Our usual rubric of materials, hardware, construction, failure mode and warranty still applies. In a truck bed, five questions decide it:

• Does it have dedicated tie-down points? Lucky Duck builds powder-coated tie-downs into the kennel. Gunner says its kennel has “stainless-steel pins that are integrated into the rotomold.” Dakota’s G3 has no dedicated anchor points; its Amazon listing for the G3 says the carry handle “doubles as a convenient tie-down point.” That difference matters more in a bed than anywhere else.
• Have the shell and its connections passed an independent test? Only the CPS list counts. Two kennels here are on it and two products are not. Each card says which.
• Does the latch lock? A truck bed is often parked and unattended. Every kennel here has a locking or keyed paddle latch, and the dog box uses stainless T-handles.
• Does it drain and ventilate? Drain channels or a drain hole, and enough vents to move air while the truck is parked.
• What does the warranty exclude? In this category the exclusions tell you more than the length does. See below.

The law: six states, and one word they share

No federal rule applies. In its 2019 summary the Animal Legal & Historical Center at Michigan State University counted six states whose laws expressly address dogs in the back of a pickup. We read each statute itself rather than the summary.

• California, Vehicle Code § 23117: the load space must be enclosed, or have side and tail racks at least 46 inches high. Otherwise the animal must be cross-tethered or protected by a secured container or cage. Ranch and farm dogs traveling in rural areas are exempt.
• Connecticut, § 14-272b: no dog in “the open rearward compartment” of a pickup on a public highway “unless the dog is secured in a cage or other container or otherwise protected or secured” against being thrown, falling or jumping.
• Maine, 29-A § 2087: the dog must be “protected in a manner that prevents the dog from falling or jumping or being thrown from the vehicle.” It exempts a farmer’s working dog, and a hunting dog moved between hunting sites by a licensed hunter.
• Massachusetts, c. 90 § 22H: much the same options as California, including “a secured container or cage,” with a fine “of not less than $50.”
• New Hampshire, RSA 644:8-f: the same options again. It exempts farm dogs during farming and a hunting dog “at hunting sites or between hunting sites” during the legal season.
• Rhode Island, § 31-22-28, covers any open-air motor vehicle. The animal must be in an enclosed area, held by someone other than the driver, or restrained by a harness that is not a neck restraint.

The word that recurs is secured. Every one of these statutes that mentions a crate says a secured one, and we read that in the plain way: strapped down. A crate that can slide to the tailgate is not keeping anything in the truck. Note, too, where the Maine and New Hampshire hunting exemptions actually apply: at hunting sites or between them. Read literally, neither covers the drive from your house to the first site. The summary we started from dates to 2019, and a city or county can add rules of its own, so check where you actually drive. The wider picture for cars as well as trucks is in dog car restraint laws by state.

The clause both certified makers share

This surprised us more than anything else. Both kennels on this page that hold a CPS certification leave crash damage out of their warranties.

• Gunner: the warranty does not apply if the kennel or its components have been “damaged in an accident.”
• Lucky Duck: the lifetime warranty excludes “Dropping or impact damage.”

We do not think either company is hiding anything. A kennel that has taken a crash has done its job, and no maker can warrant a product against the event it was built to survive. But it changes how you should budget. Treat a certified kennel as spent after a collision. You cannot see inside a rotomolded wall to know what it absorbed, and neither maker will replace it for you.

Both also exclude chewing, and so does Dakota, which specifies chewing on “all edges, vent holes and door seams.” Dakota’s FAQ adds an exclusion that could have been written for this page: damage from falls due to “carelessness or lack of tie downs.”