I made a 13" bucket for my homebuilt CADDigger years ago. To curve the 1/4" mild steel plate, I used 2 cable come-alongs and an O-A torch to heat it up a section at a time. As I bent it, I welded it to the side plates. Worked great.
24" is pretty wide. What I would do today is use a thinner carcass plate, 3/16 or even 1/8", and add wear plates to the outside of the curve. For yours, you could bend 2 pieces of plate, and weld them together in the middle. Wear plates can be a couple of inches wide, so they would be easy to bend.