Toyota’s tagline “Let’s Go Places” mainly refers to consumers using its products to travel anywhere and traverse the roads unknown. The latter is most likely the case when it comes to the 2020 Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro as this iteration of the brand’s most popular truck looks like it’s purpose-built to crawl over rocks on the weekend or get anyone through a desert race without skipping a beat. But what do you do when you can’t use the Tacoma TRD Pro off road? You use it for moving your stuff.

The Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro is not a cargo van

I had to move from my apartment recently and was excited that I was getting the 2020 Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro because it fell right in line with my move-out date. While I do have a 2019 Subaru Forester to haul a lot of my stuff and I could have easily rented a U-Haul, I thought it would be perfect to have a truck and a small SUV instead, so then I could test out the cargo-hauling capacities of each. The only issue was that I didn’t realize just how short the truck bed on the Tacoma would be.

The Tacoma is available with either a five or six-foot bed length and let’s just say that I got the shorter end of the stick (or bed). As it was parked right outside my apartment, I realized that my full-size mattress likely wouldn’t fit in it, so I had no idea how I was going to move it. Fortunately, the mattress is a memory foam-type mattress that can be easily folded, so I proceeded to cram it into the truck bed and weighed it down with the headboard.

Double cab means “double duty”

While the truck bed did work well for a few of the bigger items, let’s not forget that the Tacoma does come in a double-cab configuration that works well for accommodating up to five occupants. The rear seat has 32 inches of legroom and 38 inches of headroom, and while that’s more than enough to accommodate someone that’s about six-feet-tall, it also worked wonders for cramming in trash bags full of clothes, a couple of nightstands, and few other things that I will probably never use in my life going forward.

Needless to say, the cabin area was actually a little more useful than the truck bed area for my purposes. However, the Tacoma would still work well if you need to move something large in a pinch. Just expect to make multiple trips as you would still be limited when it comes to size (width) of the items you’re planning to haul. And in case you’re wondering, the Subaru Forester works extremely well moving as the longer length of the cargo area (with the second-row seats folded) was able to hold my full-size bed frame. Those long pieces actually wouldn’t fit in the truck.

You might still need a moving van

In case you’re planning to buy a Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro, just make sure you will be using it for off-road driving and towing first, as its hauling capability seems somewhat limited. It does have a 1,155 payload capacity, so hauling large, tall, heavy items is possible. However, don’t count on it to move a large bed, you might want to get a moving van for that.