What is a Crew Cab?

A crew cab is a type of pickup truck body style that allows for more than two passengers to sit comfortably in the cab of the truck. A truck's crew cab is often fairly long and usually features four doors — two front doors and two back doors. The truck bed may be a full sized bed attached to the crew cab, or it may be a short bed to prevent the overall length of the truck from becoming too long. Some larger trucks also feature crew cabs; utility trucks such as city maintenance vehicles sometimes feature the larger cab style to allow for more workers to sit inside during transport.

Sometimes a crew cab is mistaken for an extended cab, which is similar to a crew cab in that it allows for extra room within the cab behind the two front seats. An extended cab, however, is usually much smaller and does not always feature back doors. Instead, the passengers sitting in the back seats must get in and out of the truck through the front doors after the front seats have been pulled forward. The seats in an extended cab are much smaller as well, and many pickup trucks with an extended cab feature jump seats, or seats that fold out for use and fold up into the walls of the cab when not in use.

The back seats in a crew cab are usually full-sized seats on which adult passengers can sit comfortably without having to sit sideways or having to jam their knees into the back of the front seats. The passenger will sit forward-facing, as opposed to extended cabs in which the passenger will sometimes sit with his or her legs toward the inside of the truck. The back doors of the crew cab may open like traditional doors, or they may swing backward instead of forward, in the exact opposite direction as the front doors.

While crew cabs have been around for quite a while on larger work trucks, they only hit the market on mid-size and full-size consumer pickups several decades later. They became common on larger pickups, but then mid-size pickups began featuring the design as well. Many mid-size pickup models will feature a short bed to make up for the extra space the crew cab will take up; this allows the same chassis to be used for both pickups with crew cabs and pickups with extended cabs and full-size beds.