One of the least talked about but most necessary upgrades for an off road vehicle are floor mats. If you’re reading this post, you obviously know you need them.

So which floor mats are the best for the Toyota 4Runner? It is hard to say one brand is better than the other but in my opinion aftermarket alternatives like Weather Tech and Husky Weather Beaters have a huge advantage over the Toyota All Weather Mats.

All-weather floor mats are one of those things that you get and forget, until you are happy you had them. There are a few different brands out there for the 4Runner. In this post I will go over the different brands including Weathertech, Husky, and the Toyota all weather mats, cost and some downsides to each of them.

Toyota All Weather vs Aftermarket Alternatives

I have never owned the Toyota All Weather mats, but I do know they don’t have as much coverage as the aftermarket alternatives. When you get into the aftermarket like Weather Tech and the Husky Weather Beaters, you get a laser measured floor mat. They take a picture with a laser scanner and get all the intricacies of the footwells just right for a perfect fit. These will have protection for your door sills as well. The aftermarket options will give you greater coverage, and allow the water or mud pool up much more than the Toyota All Weather.

Downsides of Aftermarket Floor Mats

On my Jeep I had AEV (American Expedition Vehicles) floor mats. These were by far the best floor mats I have ever owned. They had great coverage much like the Weathertech or the Husky Weather Beaters, but they were a soft pliable rubber. If you are a Jeep owner go ahead and skip the WeatherTech or Husky liners and go straight for AEV floor mats. You won’t be disappointed.

In the 4Runner world, we aren’t fortunate enough to have something as nice as the AEV floor mats. We have Weather Tech, Husky Weather Beaters and the Toyota All Weather. My biggest complaint with the Weather Tech and Husky floor mats is the fact that they are more of a hard rubber. Over time they will curl up on the side making it hard to get into the truck without catching your foot on the curled up portion. I tried everything from hitting this section with a heat gun to bend it back down, to trying to figure out a way to double side tape the curled up portion down. In the end nothing worked.

Eventually I came up with an idea to keep the curled up edge out of my way while getting in and out as you can see below. This in some ways defeats the purpose of having the floor mats go over the door sills, but having a 3″ lift on the 4Runner I was going crazy every time I caught the edge. Every time I caught my foot on the curled up edge it got worse and worse.

Downsides of Toyota All Weather Mats

I believe the Toyota mats are more of a soft rubber that will conform well and not curl up over time. Let’s be honest Toyota needed to figure out the floor mats after the whole Prius/floor mat/gas pedal debacle. The downside with the Toyota mats is simply the ability to hold liquids. They just don’t come up the sides as much as others. If you opt to go with the factory All Weather Floor Mats, I would do my best to get the dealership to include them in the purchase of the vehicle. If you need to buy them after the fact you will be looking at about $120 for the Toyota ones. With this you will get front and rear mats. Unfortunately the rear has almost half the coverage as an aftermarket option.

Cost

Below I will list off a few of the brands and what you get for the money. The aftermarket options will cost more, but you will generally get a better product with more coverage than the factory options. If you are buying new, you may be able to talk the dealership into giving you the factory ones. If that is the case, I would rock those until they wore out completely.

• WeatherTech-$180 will get you front and second row coverage. If you want the cargo area covered you will need to shell out another $120-160 depending on what cargo area setup you have.

• Husky WeatherBeaters-$180 For the first and second row and another $118 for the cargo area.

• Toyota All Weather Mats-$99-$169 depending on if you want the TRD ones. The rear mats from Toyota are just squares vs one piece that goes all the way across the back from the other companies. If you want the cargo area you will shell out another $100.

Another Option for the Cargo Area

One other option you can go with for with the cargo area is called Canvas Back. This is a product that has velcro on the back of canvas sections. You can get total coverage of the cargo area, and it won’t float around like the mats do. Unfortunately they don’t make on option like this for the floor mats, but I’m sure if they do they wouldn’t do a whole to for you. The cost of these are between $100 and $180. This is an option I will be looking at in the near future. If you have pets I hear these are by far the best thing to have as you can just brush off the pet hair with your hand.

Who Needs All Weather Floor Mats?

If you live in a place like Arizone or California that doesn’t see much adverse weather then you probably don’t need to invest in getting something like this unless you are getting out on the trailer and getting muddy. You can vacuum the sand out of the carpet mats no problem. With all weather mats you would be able to just take them out and dump them over though.

If you are like me and live in a place that gets snow in the winter then you would be a fool not to have something like this. The last thing you want is the carpet under your carpet floor mats to get damp. You likely wouldn’t this even happened until you started smelling the mildew build up.

In my Evo I had this happen. After a few hard rains my carpet mats got soaked. I didn’t think to much about it, then a month or so later my car smelled like dead things lived in it. I ended up having to pull the carpet up and do a thorough drying. It took me days to get it 100% dry. It took me even longer to work the smell out of the car. You can’t just throw one of those trees on your mirror and think your problems will be solved.

If you invest a few hundred dollars to get good floor mats when you first get your vehicle, then you will likely get 3 times that value at the end of ownership. Think about trading in a car or truck that has holes in the carpet for a mildewy smell. You probably aren’t going to get as much in the sale of that vehicle as someone that invested in decent floor mats and has impeccable carpet underneath.