I know back in the early-80s a lot of Ford truck guys were extremely disappointed with Ford when the supports under their beds collapsed when the loaded them they way they had always done. Mostly masons, they couldn't load a cube of bricks without squashing the bed to the frame. I was a diehard GM guy by then, when the myth around here was Fords are tough and Chevys are pretty. Of course, I was running a '70 and '71 K/20s while others were making payments on their trucks with issues
. One reason, other than love, why I stayed with running the old iron into the '90s when I only stopped due to stinkin' salty winter roads and my desire for my trucks to last forever.
I don't care for gimmick advertising tactics designed to lure non-truck types. My first thought is, what idiot would dump a bucket of block into an expensive pickup? They make dump bodies for that. Then it's, let's see how this test does after many years when the steel is rusted and the aluminum is good as new? Which is about when it "might" start making sense to start using them for such things. If I was so foolish as to "dump" any such thing into a pickup, I would lay a sheet of plywood down...after cutting 2' off so it would fit the little bed. That's what they do in big dumps that haul stone to keep from pounding out the sides, both in aluminum and steel bodies (or they use a beat old truck). BTW, most all around here are aluminum. And what will GM say in their advertising when they start using aluminum for their beds? Remember Howie and the Ford "Man Step" ads? Now GM puts their man step in the bumper. When you try to shift the truck market from being bought for work to selling to guys with no calluses after a tougher image, you have to add silly features to lure them in. We already know Chevy is a better truck than Ford because they come with wi-fi, right?