Majority of Liners Sprayed-In at Dealer

Over the past week, Chevrolet certainly stirred up a bees nest of controversy with its new series of videos and ad spots that drop a load of paver bricks and a metal toolbox in the separate beds of the Silverado 1500 and Ford F-150. According to the videos, the drops dented the Silverado bed but positively gouged and pierced the F-150 bed. While doing the visual presentation on bare metal beds is perhaps the fairest apples-to-apples comparison of the beds' toughness, we wondered how realistic the presentation was of trucks on the road and the Jobsite.

According to Mark Allen, sales director for Classic Chevrolet in Grapevine, Texas, the nation's largest-volume Chevrolet dealer, the staged video presentations are not representative of most trucks on the road, at least not those sold by the dealership. Allen said 80 percent of the new trucks sold by Classic is equipped with bedliners, and of those, the vast majority are spray in bedliners applied at the dealership. Of the customers that opt for bedliners, only 10 percent select a drop-in liner. The dealership uses the ArmorThane's ArmorLiner bedliner applied on-site.

Hank Strathman, manager for ArmorThane in Springfield, Missouri, which does the majority of spray-on liner applications for nearby dealerships, said he estimates more than 50 percent of the new trucks sold by the dealers get a spray liner at the time of purchase. Of those customers that don't opt for a liner at purchase, as many as 25 percent end up coming back to get one applied. As was the case with the other dealers we contacted, most trucks furnished by the dealership are not equipped with the factory-applied bedliner.

Strathman said he believed the factory-applied liners were an "inferior product" with a much thinner application and cost being the main factor for the OEMs. ArmorThane also does substantial business with the local Ford dealer and says a similar or greater percentage of Ford trucks are purchased with a spray liner applied at the dealer.

George Lezon, vice president of operations at Line-X, said whether you're purchasing new or used, a liner can help increase the truck's durability and utility. "Trucks are built to be workhorses, whether for work or pleasure, but protection is key for maintaining value over the life of the truck. Whether you've got a brand-new truck or a used truck, a liner can help extend the useful life of the vehicle."