It’s been seven months since we purchased a 2021 Ford F-150 Limited SuperCrew, winner of our Best of 2021 award, and we waited this long to install a bedliner. We don’t recommend delaying this step, but we had a pretty good reason. We didn’t like the usual options: a drop-in or a spray-in bedliner, and our first choice was taking a while for its manufacturer to develop due to the complexities of our truck’s new Pro Power Onboard outlets, lights and other features — along with pandemic-related obstacles.
Related: Owning the 2021 Ford F-150
To rewind a bit, a bedliner’s job is to protect the bed from being scratched and dented by its payload, which is especially important because paint scratches usually lead to rust. (I say usually because the F-150’s body has been constructed of aluminum alloy since the 2015 model year — a fact that came into play in our saga.) A bedliner can make the bed surface less slippery, and as someone who nearly wiped out a couple of times walking on it when it was wet, I assure you ours was like an ice rink.