why not just price a whole used bed?

 

Where I am, GOOD beds are over 4,000, and then I have to paint to match. There are some that are 1200, but they look like they came off trucks that were in rollover accidents. They look like crap. LOL. Everyone is proud of their $hit and I don't have a choice but to accept it. LOL. I would be ok spending a few hundred to get it straight and then slapping a headache rack with diamond plate bed rails over it, personally.

 

Buy a decent bed somewhere out of your area, have it shipped. It'd still be less costly. Just saying, or find someone that is in another area and just drive there to fix it, if you can get it scheduled for a specific time/day. Sadly, the days of cheap repairs are long gone now unless you learn on your own how to do it.

 

The tools to do it are what I'm lacking. I do everything in terms of repairs, but paint and body aren't on my list.

 

x2 on replace the bed. You might not be happy with the repair. How did this occur? Beds don't do this on their own. I'm more curious of the backstory.

 

It's a truck bed, this happens when removing stuff from the bed with a loader and it catches on the sides. Usually it's the bottom of pallets.

 

Why on Earth would you pay someone to fix this for you

Remove plastic covers, get some pliers and bend metal back to proper orientation, run a wire wheel over rusted parts followed by some 220 grit sandpaper, wipe parts with microfiber cloth then spray with self etching primer 2-3 coats then spray paint colour of choice. While plastic covers are off you can spray with brake clean and then paint with black trim spray paint. 4-5 hours worth of work and $60 tops for supplies.

 

To be honest, several body shops didn't want to touch it and I figured if they can't do it, then how am I going to. However, your comment gives me hope. I damaged a body pin on a tailgate a few years ago and had to get a new tailgate on my own truck. The body shops wants to cut, grind, weld, wiggle and jiggle to get it back straight and it wasn't cheap. I ended up using some bar stock and a clamp/wedge to straighten it back out to near 'pre damage' status and it took me less than 45 minutes to do it. I just lose my confidence sometimes.

 

As long as the sides are not buckled, that should not be that hard to straighten. Work from the sides to the center. Last to bend; first to straighten, a little at a time.

 

Another option would be to find a Votech, either High School or Community college and let them fix it for the learning experience. Only cost would be for materials. They're always looking for projects to teach students on. All the work is supervised by instructors. You could also try to find an out of work body man that needs to make some extra money. There are several options you could use to get it fixed. Unless the bed is twisted or the exterior body panels buckled, Why not fix it yourself? If you don't have the tools you can always rent them from Equipment Rental places. It doesn't look like it would be that difficult to fix.

 

To answer y’all’s question? I don’t know how it occurred. The guy that owned it died and I’m thinking of buying it. 90k mile 7.3 so it seemed worth it to consider. From the looks of this, it seems they used the bed rail with a ratchet strap and tore it up. On the other, looks like something heavy was placed in it. The sides are not buckled.

I’d like to buy and restore.

 

Buy it then

 

I would say buy it and then decide what to do with it. How can you lose?

 

Basically, you have a long dent. There are plenty of videos on YT about how to hammer one out. Some of the paintless dent repair videos can help, too. It will just take a lot of time.