Has anyone on the LT staff thought about a spray-in bedliner? It's not too late, and it would give you a chance to test how they last under your (ab)normal use.
A do it yourself bedliner job isn't that much or just find a Line-X dealer to do the work.
Of course there is always the drop in plastic bed liner.
As for the weight I would be more worried about the tires not being inflated enough to handle the weight. That said it was a short trip so no harm done but it is something to keep in mind in the future.
When the F 150 was redesigned for 1997 the early models were known to pop rear springs when they were overloaded. A GM engineer, of the record of course, said that GM designs their trucks to be overloaded. He said that they know that nobody weighs the trucks when loading just throw things in the bed until it's full. Trucks are routinely overloaded. Their weight limits pertain to the capabilities of the brakes, suspension and steering for handling. The truck will not be damaged from a few hundred pounds overloaded.
Well, if he wanted to take it a bit easier on the truck, he could have had his 200-lb. BIL stay behind and did the unloading at the dump by himself - there's no one thing in the bed that one guy could not handle. But then if he wanted to take it easier on the truck, it would have had a bedliner in it.
bedliner smedliner, it is a truck and trucks are tools just like shovels. It is also a truck they won't have for that long so if the bed gets scraped up it isn't a big deal. I had the spray in one done in my truck but that was 200,000 miles ago so it was nice not having to worry about long term rust. If I was getting rid of it in a year I wouldn't have bothered.
I guess I just feel differently about it - I try to leave whatever tool I use in a condition that I would want it to have been left to me. I see enough of the "that's his problem" attitude in my life already. Aside from that, if I were getting rid of the truck in a year, I probably would not want to skip a $450 spray-on bedliner and then eat $2 grand in lost resale value because the bed's all scraped up. I have plenty of uses for the $1,550.
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Put a scoop or two of stone in a pickup & you'll understand how 10-wheelers gross upwards of 70,000 lbs.
Of course there is always the drop in plastic bed liner.
As for the weight I would be more worried about the tires not being inflated enough to handle the weight. That said it was a short trip so no harm done but it is something to keep in mind in the future.