It’s difficult for most
It’s difficult for most people to compare bedliner products because most people don’t know how to compare them. In other words, you want answers, but you don’t know what questions to ask. As an analogy, you walk into a tire store to buy tires. You know a little bit about tires: All tires have rubber as a base component, but there are various rubber compounds. Some are soft for performance, some are hard for off-road. You know to ask about how many miles the tires are warrantied for; is it warrantied for 25,000 miles or 65,000 miles. All bedliner products have similar base components, but like tires, there are various blends that do affect performance. One method to compare bedliners is ask the bedliner dealer for the product’s Technical Data Sheet (TDS). All bedliner dealers should have access to these. The TDS will provide useful information such as the tear strength (higher number is better), tensile strength (higher number is better), taber abrasion (lower number is better), etc. And, the TDS will also indicate which standardized test method was used to obtain the test results. This is important so that you can compare the test results “apples to apples”. I’ve seen many bedliner TDS and you will be surprised how much better some are over others. Another important issue is bedliner thickness. Ask the dealer how thick the bedliner will be. Bedliners should be about 1/8” (or 125 mils) thick on the bed’s floor. Keep in mind that the very best bedliner product applied at only 30 mils is not worth the money you paid for it. The bedliner dealer should have an electronic instrument that measures the bedliner’s thickness. Have the dealer show you the thickness of your bedliner with the instrument. Good luck!