Ford aluminum truck beds are strong how?

[Steppenwolfe]

In my opinion of course a rubber mat would fix the "deficiency" And many have said, who in heck would dump blocks in their bed like that.. Only a moron. BUT how about dropping an empty toolbox accidently in the bed and gouging a great big old tear in the bed... That cannot be good. No one was more disappointed than I to see this happen. Look, I have owned several Ford pickup trucks, and most were good, except for the 87 with the soft paint and the oil burning, and yes I own a Chevy now, but that is mainly because the wife insisted we have OnStar in our vehicles. I finally talked her out of that and canceled the OnStar subscription just last month.

But all that said, anyone that thinks aluminum for a truck bed probably thinks aluminum siding on a house is a good idea too. I will tell you it is not. This just sucks, the pressure from the federal government to make light vehicles.. now down to the point that freaking trucks cannot do the jobs they were designed and expected to do, namely stand up to toolboxes being dropped into beds from bed rail height. Ford would have been a heck of a lot smarter to find a polymer to make beds out of instead of that stupid aluminum. Aluminum hoods are one thing, you don't expect to drop too many things on a hood, but who ever designed the aluminum bed was an idiot..

That is my story and I am sticking to it.

Valid point.

 

[Loadstar]

Aluminum beds just are not cut out for real world working trucks

 

[k0ua]

Aluminum beds just are not cut out for real world working trucks

What is the floor of the bed made out of and how thick?

 

[MossRoad]

Would not have expected that result honestly.

Me neither, especially the empty toolbox putting a hole in the bed. Yikes! How many of us have ever put a cordless screwdriver, ax, chainsaw, etc... on the edge of our bed and then accidentally knocked it in? Plenty of us. Wonder what those would do?

I have never owned a rigid plastic bed liner. How would one of those liners held up with that sort of abuse?

Steve

I've got an 85 Chevy 1/2 ton with a plastic bed liner in it. We drove it from about 1993 until about 2010, so about 17 years (it's still sitting in the back yard collecting scrap steel). When I bought my tractor in 2001 I removed the plastic liner to see how the bed was doing. Other than paint rubs, it was fine. Surprisingly dent free. So I put it back in. That truck was abused by me. Rock, wood, etc... just tossed in. The plastic did a great job in my opinion. A con of a plastic liner is things slide very easily. Its a must to tie stuff down. A pro of a plastic liner is you can back up fast in reverse, slam on the brakes and the load unloads itself! :laughing: But seriously, its very easy to sweep or hose out.

 

[TractorGuy]

I have never owned a rigid plastic bed liner. How would one of those liners held up with that sort of abuse?

Steve

I believe it would do well . Only problems with the bed liner is it rubs the paint off and then it rusts the bed out.

WAIT! My aluminum bed will rust too? :confused2:

 

[aircommuter]

With aluminum they call it corrosion, steel they call it rust, either way it is oxidation. Aluminum has more problems than just the bed bottom, it fatigues much faster than steel, it is more costly and difficult to repair, which as time goes on will result in higher insurance rates once their bean counters see what happens. There will be more cracking around bolts or rivets. Coastal areas will see more corrosion than most. Bottom line it's just not a good metal for trucks.

 

[Loadstar]

What is the floor of the bed made out of and how thick?

Manufacturers have been doing aluminum beds for decades.

 

[Steppenwolfe]

With aluminum they call it corrosion, steel they call it rust, either way it is oxidation. Aluminum has more problems than just the bed bottom, it fatigues much faster than steel, it is more costly and difficult to repair, which as time goes on will result in higher insurance rates once their bean counters see what happens. There will be more cracking around bolts or rivets. Coastal areas will see more corrosion than most. Bottom line it's just not a good metal for trucks.

Huh... I wonder why the Ford engineers never bothered consulting you??? You could've saved Ford a lot of trouble.

 

[om21braz]

Many have said you should not treat a new truck, or any truck like that. I agree, but it happens. I still remember the son of the owner of the company I would soon work for. He was sent to get a load of cast iron parts in a brand spanking new 1976 Ford F-150. He was just a couple years older than his cousins and I. He was on his way back with castings and drove by to see us. He couldn't stand it and just had to show us how to "back it down" and turn out of the end of our road sideways. Casting marks were all over the bed. At better than 100 lbs. each, it made the inner bed look old real quick. My dad would have whipped me good for a stunt like that.

I'm sure he wasn't the first or last to do something like that with a pickup.

 

[Sysop]

I have one of the new aluminum trucks. I use the bed for tools. I have a bed mat and properly secure my load from shifting and sliding.

Personally, I bought the half-ton with the highest tow capacity because I have trailers made to see the kind of abuse they dished into those truck beds in the video. If I'm willing to risk breaking my blocks by dropping them from that high, they're not something I would want to unload by hand. I would use my dump trailer.