Pro-Tec Beds

[special-K]

How many have, have owned, or have seen the Pro-Tec bed on a pickup? I posted a thread years ago and some acted like they were no big deal. I still have only ever seen one, and that is the same truck I posted about way back then. My friend bought it used, still has it. He didn't even realize he had anything different. I saw the badge and started looking closer to find he has a plastic bed. The tailgates are different, I imagine just a plastic outer skin. It has the same letter style as Avalanches. I wondered if it was an option or a proto-type he just happened to fall upon. Years have passed, so what does anyone else have to contribute to this?

[special-K]

So, people look but no comments. Does that mean no one knows anything about these? I am very curious about what seems to me to be a rare oddity. The type of thing that makes for great conversation among truck guys. So, are these no big deal worth talking about and only I never see them in my area or is it rare?

[Keith Seymore]

Yes - it's what we called the "composite" box, which is a plastic type material. It was a free flow option for certain model years.

It was actually very cool, as it was durable/ding proof and did not require an aftermarket bed liner. But - they were very expensive (like maybe a $1000 option) and so didn't last very long before the program was killed.

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/201...ering-pro-tec/

The composite box was standard on the quad-steer pickups (which didn't help their business case, either).

K

[68panelman]

I have never seen these before either.
When I brought my wife's car to the Dodge dealer, I noticed that the factory finally begin spraying the beds with liner, is the salesman and he said it comes standard now. I can see why they discontinued it as Keith said it was $1,000 option, and looks to be an entirely different bed insert, probably bed sides as well, at least top rails

[Cape Codder]

I have been in the body shop business for over 40 years and had never heard of them or seen one. I know fisherman would eat them up if available. I say poor marketing.

[trixter99]

I have heard of them but never seen one. Tell him to be careful with it if it's the same material as the dully box sides are made from they probably don't make them anymore and they are not that strong. I changed hundreds of them when I was in the body shop.

[special-K]

Keith, I was going t send you a PM on this, thanks for posting the facts. Definitely a rare find these days. I saw the badge, then noticed the tailgate letters are the same as Avalanches which utilize some "Pro-Tec". Didn't know their tailgates weren't steel skinned. Got to looking closer and noticed the bedliner was molded in with bedsides. That's when I went to the wheel opening and felt thick material with no rolled edge. Then I started knocking and thumping on the side and he ran me off!

He didn't realize anything special about it. He bought it when it was a couple years old, still has it. It's been ten or more years and I still have never seen another... and lord knows I look at trucks!

I did tell him watch backing into anything and hope no one smacks into him. I guess he'd be looking at a bed replacement if anything bad happened

[Keith Seymore]

I forgot to mention this but it may actually be germaine: I had design/release responsibility for the full size pickup box, as well as the pickup cab structure and G van bodies, for a short period of time, immediately before I took my current assignment.

The guy that designed the composite box is still around and was sort of my mentor.

K

[special-K]

That's very cool to know, Keith. You deserve to have us know such a cool little tidbit like this. It's not really a brag, just informing us. I'll be the one bragging, "Hey, I know a dude who worked on this design Jimmy!". Not germaine at all, totally American!

[70c10-08]

I found this info on a website called the truth about cars.
Divide $64 million by about 10,000. What do you get? I was a liberal-arts major, but I figure the answer is “About $6400.” That’s a lot more than $850, right? Hop into this here Silverado with me, dear reader, and let’s take a ride through another adventure in GM’s mismanaged past.
By 2001, the use of composites in pickup-truck beds had become almost commonplace. F**d’s Ranger “Splash” and F-150 “FlareSide” had featured plastic outer shells, while GM’s own step-side beds had composites below the trim line. The advantages of composite (which is to say, plastic) construction for truck beds seemed obvious: they were lighter, they couldn’t rust, they were dent-resistant, and when all was said and done they would probably end up being much cheaper. The only question was: Which truck maker would pull the trigger on a totally composite bed first?

That question was answered in 2001 when GM completed a $64M expansion at its Fort Wayne, IN plant to build the “Pro-Tec Composite Truck Bed”, as pictured above. It was available as a short-bed only and cost an additional $850 on half-ton (1500 series) trucks. For that money, the Chevy (or GMC, although in my research I couldn’t find a single example of a GMC Pro-Tec) truck buyer received a genuine industry first: a fully composite bed with a built-in bedliner. No rust, no easy dents, no scratches, and no need to Line-X the thing for additional hick street cred. Plus, it was fifty pounds lighter! It was an an improvement in pretty much every sense, and GM went on to beat the competition senseless with it…

…Well, not really. The General’s projections of 50,000 units per year were off by a factor of ten. In his 2003 article Boxed Out, Brian Corbett tries to find out why:


About 5,000 Silverados featuring Pro-Tec have been sold since the option became available last year. GM expected to sell some 50,000 Silverados annually with the $850 Pro-Tec option. It’s another setback for a program that was delayed at launch by several months due to surface anomalies. But past quality issues aren’t to blame for slow sales. GM says it has to do a better job of marketing Pro-Tec. “The dealers that are stocking (Pro-Tec-equipped Silverados) seem to be selling them at a reasonable rate,” explains John Schwegman, Silverado marketing manager. “We’re just not getting enough dealers to take their first one.”

This is a harsh reminder of what every so-called “industry expert” should remember: the customers for GM, Ford, Toyota, et al aren’t people, they are dealers. If dealers won’t buy something for stock, that “something” won’t sell. Plus, they are mendacious:


Also, commissions for sales personnel might be higher for a Silverado with a $225 bed liner that’s mounted at the dealership rather than a factory-installed Pro-Tec Silverado.

As a former Ford salesman, I can reinforce Corbett’s guess here. Selling an aftermarket bedliner was worth $50 to us. Selling an $850 factory option was usually worth absolutely nothing to the guys on the proverbial front line.

The Pro-Tec option lasted two model years before disappearing from the order sheets. Total volume was about 10,000, meaning that GM lost tens of millions of dollars on the operation. Like the other gee-whiz, industry-exclusive system debuted at about the same time — Delphi’s “Quadrasteer”, which was a $5,995 option on trucks during the same period but eventually ended up being discounted to a third of that before being discontinued shortly after Pro-Tec — it was a great idea that didn’t sell worth a damn. Why not?

It’s always easy to Saturday-afternoon-quarterback GM’s ineptitude, but this one seems particularly open to criticism. Why was Pro-Tec sold in one bed length, that bed length being one that rarely appears on work trucks? Why wasn’t it priced more competitively, or included as standard on the entry-level vehicles the way the slugger-proof Work Truck grill was.

personally here in Nebraska I've seen maybe less than 10 since they were new but no pictures

[68panelman]

Looks like they're trying a new battle of the beds with the stone dumping in Chevy vs Ford's aluminum bed.
Reminds me of a similar commercial from long ago....

[Cape Codder]

Being in the auto body business these new Ford alloy bodys look like nothing but trouble to me. How are you supposed to repair dents without rear access? They may not rust but aluminum does corrode. I have seen Explorers with aluminum fenders come in with half the paint gone and when you start sanding them they just disintegrate. They will probably hold up better than steel in New England but when they need repair they will be expensive to fix. Enough thread drift back to plastic bodies.

[Leonard60]

Not so sure just what is going to happen in gm's corral. I was at dealers the other day he says gm is pretty tight lipped on the aluminum topic he said at dealer meeting in Oshawa they are hinting that steel is going to be here for a while yet and their working on other things maybe composite may have a return yet. Ford never got the mileage gains they were after by going alum so it sounds like gm and ram are being a little hesitant.

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by 70c10-08

I found this info on a website called the truth about cars.

I take it you didn't read the link I provided in post #3?



(I thought your post sounded familiar)

Originally Posted by truth about cars

Why was Pro-Tec sold in one bed length, that bed length being one that rarely appears on work trucks?

As a trial (to limit exposure).

We do this all the time.

That's why the TBI was introduced on the '87 R/V trucks, rather than waiting for the new GMT400 models. Management was apprehensive about introducing a whole new truck exterior, chassis AND powertrain, so the TBI was pulled ahead to minimize and control risk.

K

[AnotherWs6]

Wow - that sounds like classic GM. FumbleBumbleFumble. But they're doing well now, having dragged themselves out of a hole they were digging for decades. And to think that all that it took was the Federal government coming in and saying "stop being stupid, stop selling stupid things, don't do stupid things that anyone can tell are stupid or we wont give you money."

It's classic big corp stuff. I was the head of finance at the largest bread producing plant in the country for a year, ending about a year ago. I ran away from that place like it and I was on fire. A handful of good people can not combat thousands of dumb, misguided ones. Sometimes the only way to fix things is to do a major house cleaning - property, personnel, procedures.

I can guarantee that a lot of finance people at GM showed upper management just how profitable those beds were going to be. No way they dumped 10's of millions of dollars into it without a plan. The problem is is that the "plan" was probably not based on reality or logic. Example from me.... we dumped 30 million into a new production line using unreliable, untested equipment, staffed it with MINIMAL people who were never trained on the new equipment. That thing was going to save us millions a year, was going to more than pay for itself in no time. Six months after firing it up we were ready to rip the entire thing out, it was costing us hundreds of thousands of dollars per week. But somebody made a case, made a plan and showed management that it was going to make money so management went for it. Meanwhile I couldn't get simple, 50 year old broken down pieces of equipment replaced because I couldn't show management - based on their criteria and parameters - how it would save money. Even though it would OBVIOUSLY save money. In the end I would go back and BS a bunch of numbers so the plans showed them what they wanted to see and THEN they would go for it.

Point is, it's really easy for giant corporations to just throw money out of the window unless somebody with enough clout and balls stops them from doing so. And initially it took Uncle Sam to do that for GM.

Interesting stuff though!

[MalibuSSwagon]

Yikes I'd be careful with that bed. I parted out a 2000 Silverado stepside, and man those bedsides were fragile. I had one good side with a couple small cracks and sold it for 300 to a guy who needed one to replace a shattered one on his truck.

[johnzpa]

I picked up a 2003 silverado with a protec bed a year ago and love it. Just a reminder to all that are privileged to own one. The 69 Daytona's and 70 super birds were a limited production car that no-one wanted and sat on the dealerships floor, some where even modified by removing the wings and noses. Today those cars fetch a pretty penny. I'm not saying these trucks will ever come close to the attention these cars do get but there is a genuine value in owning something different. and if cared for properly these beds will outlast the rest of the vehicle.

[special-K]

That's cool, John. Different is where it's at with older vehicles. Yours is the second I've seen. I was thinking this thread was a lot older than this because I took the pictures quite a few years earlier.

[MalibuSSwagon]

Saw one of these trucks this morning in traffic, I only noticed because the guy got hit and it cracked half the bedside off. Not a bad hit just a fender bender. I'm guessing, unless his insurance is paying to ship a used bedside halfway across the country, that the bed will get scrapped for a regular one.

[Amber]

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