How a team of military veterans turned hard-won experience on the trail — and in uniform — into the TruckDuffle and a brand built to last.
There is a particular kind of frustration that only overlanders know: arriving at camp after miles of washboard dirt road and discovering that everything in the truck bed — the camp gear, the recovery equipment, the food storage — is soaked, dusty, or muddy. Or shifted. Or some combination thereof. For the team behind WeatherGear, that frustration became the genesis of an idea, and eventually, a company.
WeatherGear was founded on the principle that serious truck owners — whether they’re running forest service roads on a weekend overland trip or hauling gear to a remote job site before dawn — deserve a cargo protection system that is truly up to the task. The flagship product, the TruckDuffle, is the result of countless miles of off-pavement travel, blunt conversations with people who’ve carried heavy loads in hard conditions, and dissatisfaction with the rigid, limiting solutions the market had long offered.
From the Field to the Truck Bed
The overlanding community prizes self-reliance above almost everything else. Whether traversing the American Southwest, running the Rubicon, or staging a remote base camp for a week-long hunt, the overland traveler depends on gear that works — the first time and every time. The experience of watching bed covers fail in a downpour, of watching cargo shift and scatter on rocky two-tracks, of improvising solutions that never quite worked, all informed the TruckDuffle’s design.
Todd Gautier, CEO of WeatherGear, brought both an overlander’s mindset and a decorated military career to the company. A former U.S. Navy F/A-18 Strike Fighter Pilot who served for more than 14 years, Gautier has lived the ethos that WeatherGear embodies: preparation matters, equipment must perform under pressure, and there is no substitute for building something right the first time.
What Sets the TruckDuffle Apart
The TruckDuffle refuses to compromise. Built from heavy-duty 840D PVC with high-frequency welded seams — zero stitch holes, zero leak points — it expands to full cab height when fully loaded and cinches down tight around smaller loads using four SecureLoad™ cinch straps that hold cargo in place through hard off-road driving and emergency maneuvers. It installs in minutes without tools, and when the trail day is done, it rolls up and stores flat in its own carry bag.
The TruckDuffle’s weatherproof zipper with its dual-seal rain guard, combined with metal cam-buckle corner attachments and locking carabiners, means that overland rigs can now carry the full range of trail essentials without sacrificing an inch of capacity or worrying about what a creek crossing or a mountain squall might do to the load. All at a fraction of the cost of traditional bed cover solutions.
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Values Built on Service
WeatherGear’s veteran population is not incidental to what the brand stands for — it is central to it. That commitment to service extends beyond the product line. WeatherGear is dedicated to giving back to the veteran community, and every TruckDuffle purchase contributes to supporting veterans, first responders, and clean-water initiatives. That isn’t a marketing thing — it’s a moral obligation, and one the company takes seriously.
The overlanding community and the veteran community share more DNA than most people realize. Both operate on self-reliance, preparation, and the willingness to go into demanding environments trusting that the gear around them won’t fail. WeatherGear was built at the intersection of those two worlds — by people who know both, for the people who live both.
All three sizes of TruckDuffle are available at WeatherGear.com.
