Once we had the sleeping platform and bedding figured out, we wanted to design some additional storage around it, to take advantage of the space in the rear section of the Jeep.

Rear Luggage Shelf

The first step was to add some storage in the back, above where our feet would be when we’re sleeping, to hold our suitcases and our video recording kit. There are a lot of options for a shelf in that area on aftermarket Jeep accessory sites, but they’re all weirdly expensive. I couldn’t bring myself to pay $200+ for a shelf, so I decided to make my own for a fraction of that price.

Rather than building it into the sleeping platform frame, I decided to hang it, to avoid taking up any precious space at the foot of the bed. As an anchor point, I used the brackets that bolt in to the Jeep’s sport bars to support the soft top. I happened to have the brackets, since I have a soft top as well, but if you don’t have a soft top, you can buy just the brackets– left and right. They bolt solidly to the sport bar and provide two holes on each side for attaching soft tops or custom shelves.

For the actual shelf, I bought an 18″ x 42″ steel shelf— 42″ is the perfect width to fit between the Jeep’s sport bars, but anywhere between 18-24″ deep would probably work. It’s fairly light, but strong, and doesn’t let things slide around. To attach it to the soft top brackets, I used 8 steel quick links and 4 steel turnbuckles, adjusting the turnbuckles until the shelf was level. Then, to keep it from swinging around, I used 2 elastic bungee cords, attaching the ends to the hard-top bolts and routing it through the shelf.

After having the suitcases slide off of the shelf and crash to the floor one time when I had to hit the brakes hard, I added a couple more bungee cords to the top of the shelf, to strap in the cargo. Since adding those, nothing moves around at all.

Cooler

I considered trying to set up a small refrigerator in the Jeep, but ultimately decided that we could get by with a small cooler instead. We found that we didn’t tend to keep refrigerated food more than a day; generally, when we cooked on the road, we’d pick up food and cook it that night and/or the next morning. And carrying a cooler is a lot easier, cheaper, and less complicated than rigging up a refrigerator.

We already had the previous generation of this Yeti Hopper cooler, which we really liked, but it was a little bigger than we could conveniently fit in the back of the Jeep with the rest of our setup. So we ordered the smallest cooler Yeti makes, the Hopper Flip 8, and it works perfectly. It fits snugly in the space between the rear shelf and the passenger side rear window, and holds just enough meat and/or vegetables for a meal or two (or about 8-9 beers).

Rear corners

We added a few plastic containers to utilize the wasted space just inside the side hardtop windows in the rear corners of the car:

• Bin on the driver’s side of the rear shelf, attached with zip-ties, to hold our stove fuel canisters.
• File box in the passenger side rear corner to hold documents and paper.
• Bin strapped to the rear-left sport bar to hold bug-repellent and cleaning supplies.