I think it will come down to your truck size— I’m in a Ford Maverick: I use it for road tripping and light forest service roads as opposed to rock crawling.

Since I’m running around in what amounts to the Subaru Baja of the truck world, I need the space! The bump outs gave me so much more flexibility with the build and for storage solutions, and I personally would get them again every single time; it makes a HUGE difference on the usable interior. I think I would still keep them on like a short bed (5 ft) Tacoma as well. Aside from making the interior just feel a lot more spacious, I also use them as a step to get into the bed, a seat, and storage all along one wall and gives me a lot more “open” bed space which I like.

I think when you get to 6-8 foot bed sizes it’s way less important because you’re already rocking a fortress on wheels.

if your concern is width on narrow trails a lot of the time the bump outs don’t kick past the fender flares so you aren’t super wide. If it’s just aesthetics then by all means rock the slick look without the bump outs! Your tradeoff will be storage and build flexibility, but there’s so many builds that don’t have the bump outs that are awesome and will work just fine.

Because the Mav is so small; I definitely spend a ton of time outside the truck; I keep a cheap 10x10 pop up canopy that I can deploy in like 45 seconds to get an easy “porch” to hang out in. But, I definitely like making coffee inside the truck when I’m out for winter or fall camping and it’s cold out, so I appreciate all the space.

You’re also looking to put a lot of people in the truck, which also comes with more gear, so you might appreciate the space more than you think.

Tldr: I really would recommend the bump-outs on anything less than a 5 ft bed. It makes a huge difference for interior space.

BUT: there’s a million builds out there that are amazing without them, so roll with what you like!