Michael says, “Looks like it came with the truck. Super easy to put on.” Logan says, “they’re a pain in the @$$ to install, but once they’re on they’re fantastic.”
Neither of them are wrong. Some part numbers are more complex, and some people’s expectations are different. We just want to let you know what you’re getting into before you tackle your covers. It’ll make it go smoothly later.
🎥 Watch the install video. Debra says, “to save your sanity, watch the video to install this cover.” You got it, Debra. Most of our part numbers have an install video – if there is one, watch it. It will give you helpful techniques so your cover will fit the best.
💪 Our velcro is super, super strong. Julie says, “One thing to consider is DO NOT let the velcro on the cover touch the under the fabric of the seat EVER. The two bond as if you welded them together and it is quite tedious to detach them.” Our super-strong hook & loop gives you the best possible fit once everything is put together, but can be a bit of a pain during the installation. Pro tip – fold the velcro back on itself so that doesn’t catch on anything going between the seat back and bottom.
📎 Seat Flap: The flap on the back of the front seat will need to be released for installation. It’s held on by one or two elastic straps. Speaking of…
🔩 Stubborn Plastic Connector. If you’ve got a Ford front seat, listen up – There are one or two plastic connectors under the seat. They clip tightly into the plastic of the seat bottom and one of the elastic loops holding the carpet flap is around it. You’re going to need to pull it down kind of like you’re prying off a bottle cap. It might feel like you’re going to break something, but it does come down.
💯Getting it perfect on the top of the seat. Turning the seat back cover 2/3rds of the way inside-out is important. It allows you to get the cover snug against the top of the seat before working it down the seat back. Remember to take care of those headrest holes by tucking them under the plastic trim. It looks so good when they’re properly tucked in.
🧶Strings: The strings go between the seat frame and the seat cushion. Not around the outside, not between the back and bottom… Between the frame and cushion.
🧩Under-seat flap: Front seats with electric motors and wiring can be intimidating. Run the under-seat flap as close to the seat bottom as possible, going above all of the wiring.
⚓Carseat Anchors: Any car seat anchors will not be restricted with the covers. Some designs have a cut-out to allow carseat anchor access. Some designs have no cutout and are instead designed to go beneath the anchor to allow the anchor to sit on top.
⌛ Take your time. Roger S. Craig II says “They fit great. Took 2.5 hours to get the driver’s side installed.” Whoa, Roger – I think we could have helped speed that up. But if you’ve never put on a set of our covers before, estimate 45+ minutes for a front bucket set.
Let’s go ahead and yell at the elephant in the room. A lot of seat covers suck. Some people even tell us that right to our face (ouch).
But seriously, seat covers have gotten a pretty bad reputation over the years and we’re the first to admit that a lot of them really do suck! So here are nine reasons that run-of-the-mill seat covers aren’t worth buying and how we’ve eliminated the suckage. (it’s a real word)
Seat Covers Suck to Install
First off, any seat cover that fits well is going to take a little bit to install. If it just plopped on, it would plop right off the first time you slid across it. You wouldn’t be happy.
We’ve worked our tails off to make sure that TigerTough seat covers don’t suck to install. It won’t be a breeze but it’ll be as easy as possible.
Everything is held on the seat with Hook & Loop fasteners with the exception of a string that runs under the seat. That’s held together with our patented StringLock. More on that later.
When we design a new seat cover, we also shoot a detailed install video and write up an install guide for that specific seat. We don’t do generic instructions because vehicles aren’t generic. For the folks that throw them away and say “it’s just a seat cover, I don’t need instructions”, you can download them later from each product page on the website. We won’t tell your girlfriend.
TigerTough seat covers aren’t 1-piece covers. The back, bottom, and headrest of your seat are all covered with separate covers so you can work on one section at a time and end up with something that fits properly.
There’s a very fine line between seat covers that fit well and feeling like you’re putting five pounds of potatoes in a four-pound sack. We tip-toe right down that line. Johnny Cash would be proud.
Seat Covers Never Stay In Place
We hear this a lot.
In fact, this is why a lot of people switch to TigerTough; they’ve just gotten sick of adjusting whatever they were using before.
Most seat covers don’t stay where you put them, here’s how ours do.
Everything is held on with Hook & Loop, string, and the StringLock. None of these have any “give”. That means that once you’ve snugged everything up, pulled it tight, and slammed it into place, your cover is secure. We don’t secure anything with elastic or adjustable clips because elastic stretches as soon as you put pressure on it and adjustable clips tend to self-adjust over time.
This is another reason for the three-piece cover. When you can completely wrap the seat back, bottom, and headrest separately, the seat cover conforms to the shape of the seat and doesn’t have any room to move.
Everything is fully wrapped. Rather than run straps under the seat where you can’t see them, we run the cover all the way under the seat and connect it together in the back. We’re Minnesotans, so here’s a winter analogy. A cheap seat cover would be like a stocking cap, ours is like a Mad Bomber. Not a great analogy but you get the point. Hopefully.
Stretchy fabric is notorious for moving around. Since TigerTough seat covers are made from tough, tightly woven fabric, there is no stretch at all.
Seat Covers Never Fit Right
If you’ve ever shot down to the local parts store and picked up a set of seat covers, you know all about this. Too long, too short, everything is off by a little bit.
Here’s a hint. “One-size-fits-all” is a lie. It means “one-size-fits-none”. We ain’t about that.
We don’t make anything close to a “universal” seat cover. Every TigerTough seat cover is designed specifically for one seat style or one vehicle.
Here’s how the process works:
We get the vehicle or, in the case of trucks and heavy equipment, the seat to our factory.
Our design team spends 2-3 days (depending on the complexity of the seat) designing a cover that exactly matches the shape of the seat.
We install the cover, taking detailed install photos and video so you can see exactly how it goes on when you’re installing it.
If you’re hesitant to use seat covers based on past experiences with covers that fit like socks on a rooster, you have every right to be!
No seat cover we make is designed off pictures, measurements, or estimates. It’s all done the hard way, by hand, using the actual seats that they’re going to cover.
They’re Unsafe
You’re probably thinking about those “universal-fit” babies with the bungee cords crisscrossed down the sides, aren’t you? Those definitely are unsafe.
Any TigerTough seat cover that’s designed for seats that have airbags built into them is designed to tear open exactly as the factory seat does. Our designs are independently tested by a 3rd party lab to ensure they work just like they’re supposed to.
They’re Ugly
Well, this is pretty subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right?
We design for performance first, not looks. You won’t find bright colors, crazy patterns, or luxury quilting on any of our seat covers.
Since we design for work first, you won’t find any decorative stitching or fancy “extras” on our covers. The fancy decorative stitching makes the covers weaker and more likely to give up on you so we leave it off.
Because we leave off the decorative stuff so the covers are as tough as possible, the covers are going to look a little plainer than the factory seats.
If you’re looking for something that looks like a custom interior, you’re probably going to think our seat covers are ugly. If you’re looking for something that’ll keep your seats in good shape for as long as you own the truck, you’ll think they’re perfect.
They Just Wear Out
Remember the cheap parts store ones that we talked about? Those do just wear out. How many times have you seen a cheap cover that’s got the corner closest to the door gaping open?
I mean if you’re going to spend good money on seat covers to keep your seats looking good, you’re kinda getting gypped if they’re made from cheap, stretchy fabric that wears out in a few months.
You can be confident that your TigerTough covers aren’t going to give up on you. Since they’re designed for work, they’re made from the toughest fabric that it makes sense to use for seat covers. The solid colors are made from the strongest fabric, a 1000 denier Cordura, and the camos are made from almost as tough 900 denier polyester.
They’ve got a two-year unconditional warranty and we really mean unconditional. If anything wears out or breaks for any reason, we’ll fix or replace it.
Here’s how a set looks after 8 years and 235,000+ miles in a heavy equipment service truck.
They’re Sweaty
Let me guess…you had cheap “pleather” seat covers once, didn’t you?
Both of our fabrics are breathable so you won’t have to deal with [email protected]**. These won’t feel any different than your factory seat as far as being breathable or making you sweaty. In fact, they’ll feel cooler than leather or vinyl in the summer.
When you’re spending hard-earned cash on your truck, make sure you get breathable seat covers.
You Never Know What To Get For Your Vehicle
Oh, this is so true. There are so many weird-looking line drawings and two-paragraph explanations that don’t really make a lot of sense.
We’ve designed the lookup on our website to make it easy to find the covers for your vehicle. All you need to know are the following details.
The year (2020)
The Make (Ford)
The Model (F150)
The Trim Package (XLT)
The Cab Type (SuperCrew)
Once you punch in all that info, we’ll show you only the seat covers that will fit your truck! In the case where there could be a couple of different seat configurations in your vehicle, we’ll show you the different options and explain the differences between the two.
We get it a lot; people looking for seat covers for vehicles that we don’t cover, crazy colors, or other really custom stuff that we don’t do.
So here’s who we’re right for and who we’re not.
First off, let’s start off with who we’re not right for. That way, if you’re in that category, you don’t have to waste any time.
We make seat covers for work.
Seat covers for work trucks, law enforcement vehicles, and heavy equipment are what we specialize in. You’ll find we cover a few SUVs but they’re not our strong point.
If you’re looking for seat covers for a passenger car or SUV, a side-by-side, or a custom dog bed, there’s a good chance that we’re not your best bet. If it’s the dog bed one, we’re definitely not a good choice.
If you’re looking for seat covers that have the logos of your favorite sports team, vehicle manufacturer, or motorcycle (yeah, that one) on them, we’re not the right people. We do offer embroidery as an option to customize your covers but we don’t do any licensing of copyrighted logos. Honestly, it’s really expensive and we’d rather put the cost into good materials instead of a cool logo.
If you want seat covers that are two-tone, alligator skin, or have crazy colors, we’re not the right seat cover. The same applies if you want extra foam padding, heated covers, or options like that.
If you’re looking for a seat cover that you can quickly pop on to take the dog to the vet or trees to the dump, we’re probably not right. Our seat covers are going to take 30-60 minutes to put on and about half that to take off. So this one is your call.
Finally, the last thing we aren’t is cheap. And that’s for three major reasons.
We won’t send our manufacturing out of the USA. We’ve passed up opportunities to cut our labor costs to a quarter of what they are by sending everything across the border to get made. We’d rather pay American workers a fair wage.
We use the best, toughest materials we can get so our customers get the best seat covers possible.
Every seat cover is designed specifically for a vehicle. That involves bringing trucks to our factory and spending hours designing the best seat cover possible.
If we’re not right for you, no hard feelings. We’d rather you find out now than after you spent your hard-earned dough and ended up disappointed.
Now, who we ARE right for.
We make seat covers for work. And by work, we’re talking blue-collar, hard work. Contractors, pest control, last-mile delivery, service trucks, and law enforcement, just to name a few industries.
The people who use our seat covers are typically doing some of the following:
Multiple entry/exits every day.
Getting dirty
Wearing tools and/or weapons on their belts
And, most often, a combination of all three.
TigerTough Ironweave seat covers are made from 1000 denier Cordura, some of the toughest material that we can find to wrap around your seats. In fact, it has a higher abrasion rating than Kevlar. We use it because while it’s almost impossible to tear, it’s easy to work with, it’s water-resistant, and it’s made in the USA.
Ford Transit with Optional EmbroideryToyota Tundra60/40 Split Rear Bench
You’ll probably notice that our covers have no decorative stitching (aside from the optional embroidery, if you choose that) and very few seams. That’s because seams and stitching are the weakest points in anything that is sewn together. Since our customers use their vehicles as a tool in their toolbox, we’re doing everything we can to eliminate weak points.
Actually, a customer who goes by the name R00ster said it best. He’s a farmer from Virginia and says
“I would not say they are luxury but most definitely built for work.”
R00ster – A VA Farmer
R00ster goes on to say he throws grease guns, screwdrivers, and fencing tools (even his chain saw) on his seats and doesn’t worry about it anymore.
We build seat covers for people like R00ster. The people whose day-to-day jobs are the ones that make the lights come on, the food hit your plate, the gas come out of the pumps, and the packages show up on time.
If you’re looking for a seat cover that isn’t luxury but most definitely is built for work, TigerTough is the best choice.
Sgt. Chris Terrell has been using TigerTough seat covers in his fleet since 2016. See what he thinks of his experience.
Since we’ve been working together, he’s been able to significantly reduce wear to the seats in their police interceptors rather than fixing the wear & holes they were dealing with.
If you’re slapping some purple, fuzzy, Tweetie Bird covers on your Camry, they’re probably an accessory. Even if you’re the kind of person that gets bored with a plain, boring, gray interior like everyone else has and wants to spice things up with an epic camo pattern, they’re still an accessory.
When your seat covers become a part of your work truck, that’s when the story changes. When your truck’s covers are in place to prevent your day-to-day from tearing up the seats in your vehicle, then you can start calling them a necessity.
This Ford truck is ready to go to work with TigerTough seat covers on every seat.
Construction workers, linemen, roustabouts, and roughnecks know what we’re talking about. They’ve got work to do, they don’t have time to worry about keeping their truck sparkly clean. Not when you’ve got some of the dirtiest, toughest jobs out there. Those fleet managers know that quality seat covers are a necessity if they want to get anything for their trucks when they’re done with them.
And Dan from the Hollis, NH Police Department would tell you they’re a necessity: Here Is Why
So often, fleet managers and owners look at work truck seat covers as an accessory. They’re right if they’re just trying to make their trucks look cooler, but if they’re committed to making their fleet as efficient and cost-effective as possible, seat covers for their work trucks are a necessity
Interested in seeing if they’d help you have better equipment, happier drivers, and more money? Grab a sample and let us know what you think.
