About a year and a half ago, I bought my 2000 F-250 crew cab short bed 7.3 from an owner in Arizona where it had spent the past 19 years, flew into Phoenix and drove it back to Ohio. It was a little tired, so since then I've been chipping away at a list of upgrades, fixes, and maintenance:
- Upgraded front and rear springs
- KC 300x turbo, FFD 180/30 injectors, 5" exhaust, custom 4" 6637 intake, PHP Tuner
- Basically everything that can be considered a wear part or maintenance has been replaced at this point
Until recently, I was running an ARE DCU cap and the normal bed, both of which had seen some serious use, but worked well for a while. This is in Colorado, its first hunting trip:
I planned to go with a flatbed and add a truck camper. As I was researching my options, I found and fell in love with this truck: https://expeditionportal.com/forum/...-camper-alumline-flat-bed.209035/post-2679778
So, I figured, Alumline for the win! I reached out to them and ordered a version of that exact bed, but made for my truck and I skipped the topside boxes. They're located in Cresco, IA and I'm over in Ohio, but I decided to drive over there to have them install it too and hopefully eliminate the possibility of anything going awry.
This past Monday I made the journey over to Cresco, they installed it on Tuesday and about 10 minutes before they closed, I was paying the balance due and heading out. My old bed was still solid which is hard to find in Ohio, so I asked them to load it upside down on the new bed for the trip home. Unfortunately the upside down part was lost in translation, but rather than make a fuss, I just strapped it down and figured I'd take my chances, no big deal.
Here it is on the way home:
Unfortunately, that's where this story turns south.
I stopped to fill my truck up, and it wouldn't take any fuel. At first, I thought there was something wrong with the pump because it kept kicking off, but I took a closer look at the truck. Now, I want to preface this by saying that I drove 12 hours straight to Cresco, slept in a crappy motel bed with an awful pillow, woke up at 6 AM to drop my truck off, and spent most of Tuesday in a daze. When I finally picked my truck up, they were almost ready to close, I was ready to get out of town, and I didn't think that I needed to crawl around on the ground and inspect everything, because they're experts, right?
Here's the reason that I couldn't get any fuel in the truck (kinked filler hose):
That event prompted me to start looking a little closer at everything else that they did, and start actually paying attention to what they did during the install. Keep in mind, up until this very moment, I was under the impression that I was dealing with a highly reputable and reliable company. Let's go deeper. Apparently, what they do when they install these on a frame that has a hump over the axle is just hog out the main bed supports, glue some rubber on the flats of the frame, sit the main bed support down on that rubber and then clamp it down with giant u-bolts. At least, that appears to be the idea, which is both a bad idea IMO, and also not at all what they actually accomplished:
As you can see, it looks like they let a drifter practice on it with an angle grinder AND it also doesn't clear the hump in the frame. So, however bad of an idea it was to start with (to cut out the supports like that), they didn't even accomplish what they set out to. This basically just put the bed on a pivot point, where the front and rear edges of the cut are contacting the frame on the hump, and then the bed just rocked toward whichever u-bolt was tightened first. In this case, the bed pivoted toward the front on the passenger side. Here's the whole back half of the bed not even really touching the rubber that they apparently tried to glue to the top of the frame:
It pivoted in the opposite direction on the driver side and clearly isn't touching the frame at all in the front half:
It's very easy to see how wonky this thing is in this picture:
So, I write an email to Gary Gooder, Alum-line president, and try to be as non-confrontational as possible. I started with: "As I discovered on the way back to Ohio, there are serious issues with my installation. As a business owner, I know that sometimes "things happen", so I'm going to just present the facts and I'm including a link to a bunch of pictures."
And, I went on to document all of this even more comprehensively and with even more pictures than I have here. Our back and forth, went something like this:
- Me: Here are the facts and the serious issues.
- Gary: "I’ll get the installer to call you. Note that full power fuel usually can’t work with any trucks so you do need to back the speed down on that."
- Me: "I'm completely willing to talk to whoever actually did the work, but if they let it leave the shop like this, I'm not really sure what it's going to accomplish. If you were able to access the pictures, I trust that you can see the very obvious problems with the work. And, fast or slow, the filler hose is basically folded over the frame, but it's really the least of my concerns at this point."
- Gary: "We install several beds a week without any issues so i am concerned that you have issues. I know they told me your truck was in a little rough shape so we'll have to see what we find out."
- Me: "I don't know what they thought was in "rough shape". Yes, it's a 21 year old truck, but it spent the first 20 years of its life in Arizona. It's only just started to show some rust on the frame from the past year and half that it's been in Ohio. There is absolutely nothing on that truck that isn't rock solid."
As an aside: Keep in mind that in the pictures, you're seeing the last bit of undercoating flaking off, and the Ohio surface rust just starting to set in over the past year. In person, it's pretty obvious that this is in VERY good shape for a 20 year old truck.
- Gary: No response
- Me: "I just sent you some more pictures. Look at the alignment between the top of the front wall of the bed and the back window of the truck. It's very clearly high on the driver side and low on the passenger side in the front, and it's exactly the opposite in the back of the bed. The whole thing is just being twisted."
Now, on a phone call:
- Gary: You can't just measure it like that. We don't ask these guys to measure things with a laser.
- Me: Did you look at the pictures, does it look right to you?
- Gary: I'm not going to talk about it because I didn't do the install.
- Me: You're the president of the company and I paid you to do the install. It's not even touching the rubber on the frame. What was the rubber for, Gary?
- Gary: I'm not going to talk about the technical part. I'll send you the installers response.
Via email:
Installer's response: The bed is square to the cab. The notch outs are not structural. The u-bolt placement doesn't matter.
-----------------------------------
All said, I approached this company in good faith, and treated this guy with respect even after this fiasco, just looking for some reasonable outcome, and now apparently they've just chosen to pretend that everything is fine in the face of all evidence to the contrary. I'll have to completely redo the installation so I'm out the cost of the trip to Iowa, out the $1,000 that I paid them to install it, and as a cherry on top, I'm now installing a $5,245 bed with completely messed up main supports.
I guess the moral of the story is: buyer beware.
- Upgraded front and rear springs
- KC 300x turbo, FFD 180/30 injectors, 5" exhaust, custom 4" 6637 intake, PHP Tuner
- Basically everything that can be considered a wear part or maintenance has been replaced at this point
Until recently, I was running an ARE DCU cap and the normal bed, both of which had seen some serious use, but worked well for a while. This is in Colorado, its first hunting trip:
I planned to go with a flatbed and add a truck camper. As I was researching my options, I found and fell in love with this truck: https://expeditionportal.com/forum/...-camper-alumline-flat-bed.209035/post-2679778
So, I figured, Alumline for the win! I reached out to them and ordered a version of that exact bed, but made for my truck and I skipped the topside boxes. They're located in Cresco, IA and I'm over in Ohio, but I decided to drive over there to have them install it too and hopefully eliminate the possibility of anything going awry.
This past Monday I made the journey over to Cresco, they installed it on Tuesday and about 10 minutes before they closed, I was paying the balance due and heading out. My old bed was still solid which is hard to find in Ohio, so I asked them to load it upside down on the new bed for the trip home. Unfortunately the upside down part was lost in translation, but rather than make a fuss, I just strapped it down and figured I'd take my chances, no big deal.
Here it is on the way home:
Unfortunately, that's where this story turns south.
I stopped to fill my truck up, and it wouldn't take any fuel. At first, I thought there was something wrong with the pump because it kept kicking off, but I took a closer look at the truck. Now, I want to preface this by saying that I drove 12 hours straight to Cresco, slept in a crappy motel bed with an awful pillow, woke up at 6 AM to drop my truck off, and spent most of Tuesday in a daze. When I finally picked my truck up, they were almost ready to close, I was ready to get out of town, and I didn't think that I needed to crawl around on the ground and inspect everything, because they're experts, right?
Here's the reason that I couldn't get any fuel in the truck (kinked filler hose):
That event prompted me to start looking a little closer at everything else that they did, and start actually paying attention to what they did during the install. Keep in mind, up until this very moment, I was under the impression that I was dealing with a highly reputable and reliable company. Let's go deeper. Apparently, what they do when they install these on a frame that has a hump over the axle is just hog out the main bed supports, glue some rubber on the flats of the frame, sit the main bed support down on that rubber and then clamp it down with giant u-bolts. At least, that appears to be the idea, which is both a bad idea IMO, and also not at all what they actually accomplished:
As you can see, it looks like they let a drifter practice on it with an angle grinder AND it also doesn't clear the hump in the frame. So, however bad of an idea it was to start with (to cut out the supports like that), they didn't even accomplish what they set out to. This basically just put the bed on a pivot point, where the front and rear edges of the cut are contacting the frame on the hump, and then the bed just rocked toward whichever u-bolt was tightened first. In this case, the bed pivoted toward the front on the passenger side. Here's the whole back half of the bed not even really touching the rubber that they apparently tried to glue to the top of the frame:
It pivoted in the opposite direction on the driver side and clearly isn't touching the frame at all in the front half:
It's very easy to see how wonky this thing is in this picture:
So, I write an email to Gary Gooder, Alum-line president, and try to be as non-confrontational as possible. I started with: "As I discovered on the way back to Ohio, there are serious issues with my installation. As a business owner, I know that sometimes "things happen", so I'm going to just present the facts and I'm including a link to a bunch of pictures."
And, I went on to document all of this even more comprehensively and with even more pictures than I have here. Our back and forth, went something like this:
- Me: Here are the facts and the serious issues.
- Gary: "I’ll get the installer to call you. Note that full power fuel usually can’t work with any trucks so you do need to back the speed down on that."
- Me: "I'm completely willing to talk to whoever actually did the work, but if they let it leave the shop like this, I'm not really sure what it's going to accomplish. If you were able to access the pictures, I trust that you can see the very obvious problems with the work. And, fast or slow, the filler hose is basically folded over the frame, but it's really the least of my concerns at this point."
- Gary: "We install several beds a week without any issues so i am concerned that you have issues. I know they told me your truck was in a little rough shape so we'll have to see what we find out."
- Me: "I don't know what they thought was in "rough shape". Yes, it's a 21 year old truck, but it spent the first 20 years of its life in Arizona. It's only just started to show some rust on the frame from the past year and half that it's been in Ohio. There is absolutely nothing on that truck that isn't rock solid."
As an aside: Keep in mind that in the pictures, you're seeing the last bit of undercoating flaking off, and the Ohio surface rust just starting to set in over the past year. In person, it's pretty obvious that this is in VERY good shape for a 20 year old truck.
- Gary: No response
- Me: "I just sent you some more pictures. Look at the alignment between the top of the front wall of the bed and the back window of the truck. It's very clearly high on the driver side and low on the passenger side in the front, and it's exactly the opposite in the back of the bed. The whole thing is just being twisted."
Now, on a phone call:
- Gary: You can't just measure it like that. We don't ask these guys to measure things with a laser.
- Me: Did you look at the pictures, does it look right to you?
- Gary: I'm not going to talk about it because I didn't do the install.
- Me: You're the president of the company and I paid you to do the install. It's not even touching the rubber on the frame. What was the rubber for, Gary?
- Gary: I'm not going to talk about the technical part. I'll send you the installers response.
Via email:
Installer's response: The bed is square to the cab. The notch outs are not structural. The u-bolt placement doesn't matter.
-----------------------------------
All said, I approached this company in good faith, and treated this guy with respect even after this fiasco, just looking for some reasonable outcome, and now apparently they've just chosen to pretend that everything is fine in the face of all evidence to the contrary. I'll have to completely redo the installation so I'm out the cost of the trip to Iowa, out the $1,000 that I paid them to install it, and as a cherry on top, I'm now installing a $5,245 bed with completely messed up main supports.
I guess the moral of the story is: buyer beware.
