Home Forums Gear Hunting Trucks and Four-Wheel Drives Thinking about going with an aluminum flatbed on my Tundra...

I have always thought that a flat bed would be about the most usefull bed on a truck I could come up with. That being said I think the only way I would get myself to buy one would be to ding up the factory bed bad enough that I could justify it. Id do it if I was in your place with a bed thats already dinged up.

I would only go with the flatbed if you have a use for it. If you haul round bales of hay, equipment that hangs over the side and has to be strapped down, a water tank for getting water to animals then they make sense. They look great but its pretty hard to beat a pickup box for all around usefulness. JMO of course.

I'm with ya.

Flat beds are pretty cool but everything has to strapped down. Regular beds are far more useful for most occasions.

I have an F-150 with a flat bed that is my daily driver and really like it but for vacation type trips I use my other truck that has a hard bed cover to protect our gear.

You should check with your insurance agent to see if the flat bed would raise your premium...a couple of years ago the ins. co. that we had been with for many years decided that all flat beds had to be insured as commercial and the rate for that one truck was going to cost about 21/2 times more than it did for the previous 6 months,no wrecks,no tickets,and no claims just raised it for no reason.Got no where talking with the agent(who I had done business with for many years)or corporate.Told them that they were going to lose my business and I don't think that they believed that I would go elsewhere so I shopped around and found a co. that I went with,5 vehicles and my house for less money and a better package. The original company still sends mail trying to get me to come back.

Terry:

Any chance we could see photos of your bows and fitted canvas top for the Ute? Would be interesting to see. I was gonna get a Ute bed for my Tacoma years ago, but sold it. My thought was to try and build a fiberglass shell for it, but the canvas top sounds intriguing.

Thanks,


Jordan

Sorry, not a Toyota. Years ago i had a set made for a steel flat bed on an F350.

It looked sort like a Soft top.
Softopper

Scroll down to see.

Some strategically placed aluminum diamond plate on the wheel wells/fender to match the bed and or some spray on bed liner could be made fix that. Could still put a low top on it and have a lockable and weather proof storage spot. Matching wheels on a drop axle, maybe reinforce it underneath for dirtier jobs. Bet it would look good.