Walked through a salvage yard in Phoenix and half the trucks had the same rear panel damage
I was killing time at a pick and pull off 27th Ave in Phoenix last Saturday and noticed something weird. Out of maybe 40 trucks in the Ford section, at least 25 had the exact same dent right behind the rear wheel on the driver side. Same spot, same crease, same rust starting at the bottom edge. I asked one of the guys working there and he said it's from people backing into stuff with the tailgate down or just clipping poles in parking lots. What got me was how many of them had bondo slapped over it already, like someone tried a quick fix and it came right back. Makes me wonder if I should be quoting more of these as panel replacements instead of trying to pull them. Anybody else seeing this pattern on the newer F150s?
Man, my buddy ran a body shop over in Mesa for years and he swore up and down that the driver side rear corner on those trucks was cursed. He had a guy bring in a 2019 that had been hit there twice in one year, once backing out of a driveway and once in a grocery store lot, and both times the insurance wanted him to just pull it. He refused after the second go round because the metal was already stretched thin from the first repair. He told me the inner bed panel behind that spot is like paper after one pull so the dent comes back the second anything touches it. He started quoting full panel swaps on anything with a prior repair there and never had a comeback. Sounds like what you saw in that yard is the same thing, trucks that got the cheap fix and got sold before the damage showed up again.