Pickup Truck Bed Mats -- Better Protection

Pickup truck bed mats work well even if you already have a more expensive liner.  That's because cheap mats do some things better than any other kind of bed liners.  here's an example...

Protecting truck beds from damage is one of the main reasons for a truck bed liner.  One way that trucks are damaged often is by cargo hits on the bed.  That makes dents.

Dents, especially big ones, are far harder to deal with than just scratches.  Just a little time and some touch-up paint will make scratches go away.  Not so with big old dents.  They're there to stay without some serious work.

That's why dent protection is so important.  It's usually permanent damage.

Plastic bed liners excel at dent protection as does the rubber mat.  In both cases the liner material absorbs the shock of hits, but there's more.  The liner spreads the force out over a larger area making it almost impossible to dent the bed except with serious, heavy hits.

Contrast that with a spray on bed liner.  These coatings have some shock-absorbing ability, but not nearly as much as the plastic liner or the mats.  Here's the other problem...

Spray on bed liners are easily damaged by rough use.  Now, the damage can be repaired.  But, it's still damage.  Think about the hassle of returning over and over to have a liner repaired, which is really a repaint.  That's no fun.

Really a plastic liner is almost as good as a rubber mat as absorbing impacts.  The difference is the impacts can readily scratch the plastic material.  The rubber material is much more likely to be completely unmarked.

Add to the toughness of rubber mats the low cost and you see the appeal.

Rubber truck bed mats cost only a fraction of the cost of more expensive liner options like spray on liners and plastic bed liners.  The degree of protection offered by the mats is equal to are greater in several ways to the more pricey options.