Retractable tonneau cover canister size and bed length lost

By the FitsMyTruck team. Every figure in this guide comes from a maker, automaker or standards document named at the end, and the guide is reviewed before it goes up. How we check what fits.

A retractable cover stores its slats in a canister against the bulkhead, so it takes floor length from the bed. Gator Covers lists a 7-1/4 inch deep canister for the MT and an 11 by 11 inch canister for the electric GatorTrax, and Peragon says canisters take up to a foot. On the F-150 5.5 ft bed, 67.1 inches at the floor, those two Gator figures leave about 59.9 and 56.1 inches (calculated).

Canister figures makers publish

Maker, line	What the page states
Gator, MT (2025)	"Ultra-compact, 7-1/4" deep canister"; the canister "protrudes just 7-1/4" from the bulkhead."
Gator, GatorTrax Electric (2025)	"The compact 11x11-inch canister." It does not say which side runs along the bed.
Gator, GatorTrax MX and Recoil (2025)	"Ultra-slim" and "low-profile" canister, with no dimension.
Peragon, Landmark (2026)	"Cover retracts into a space of just seven inches"; the page also says "No one wants a canister taking up to a foot of precious space," and lists "No permanent canister taking space in the bed" under its quick-release panels.
Peragon, comparison page (2026)	Landmark "retracts into bed at the cab end, uses bed space when open"; Tectonic folding covers are marked "Takes no bed space."
SyneticUSA, MB and MR PRO (2026)	Describes a stainless steel canister. The page text gives no canister length.
Retrax, Roll-N-Lock, Rough Country (install sheets)	No canister length in the sheets read.

What that leaves of the bed

This table subtracts the two Gator figures from the floor length. It is arithmetic, not a maker claim, and it assumes the 11 inches runs along the bed. Floor lengths are from Ford's 2026 F-150 and 2025 Maverick specifications and Toyota's 2024 Tacoma e-brochure.

Bed, floor length	Minus 7.25 in	Minus 11 in
F-150 6.5 ft, 78.9 in	71.7 in	67.9 in
F-150 5.5 ft, 67.1 in	59.9 in	56.1 in
Tacoma 5 ft, 60.3 in (2024)	53.1 in	49.3 in
Maverick, 54.4 in	47.2 in	43.4 in

Short beds lose the larger share: 7.25 inches is about 9 percent of the 78.9 inch bed and about 13 percent of the 54.4 inch Maverick bed (calculated).

Cubic feet

No maker we read states cargo volume lost. Ford lists the F-150 5.5 ft box at 52.8 cubic feet with an inside height of 21.4 inches. A canister sits only in the top part of that height, so scaling volume by length would overstate the loss. Not sourced: canister lengths for Retrax, Truxedo, Pace Edwards, Extang and Roll-N-Lock, whose product pages did not load as text.

Other bed costs

Install sheets add smaller losses. Retrax says some drop-in liners may need front corners notched to clear the canister, and its PRO sheet says plastic liners may be cut at the front so the cover can move forward for 1/8 inch of tailgate clearance. Roll-N-Lock's E-Series sheet has the installer cut the plastic liner across the bulkhead and at the tailgate end. See drop-in and spray-in liners.

Use it with

The tonneau covers by truck, how to measure a truck bed for the floor length, tonneau cover types compared and toolbox sizing by bed.