Pickup beds have been an interesting part of custom and vintage trucks. From the 1920s through the late 1980s, many Chevy, Dodge, Ford, and GMC pickups had wooden bed floors. Designed specifically for an inexpensive material for work vehicles, wooden truck beds are so much more today.

Rod Authority is pleased to announce that Bed Wood and Parts is a new partner for our digital magazine. This is an exciting partnership on a number of levels. First, truck beds are the largest flat surface on a pickup truck. Bed Wood and Parts has a lot of technical information from selection to installation, maintenance, and care associated with wood beds. There are very few sources of information on this planet that know as much about this topic, and is willing to educate others, as Bed Wood and Parts. Second, the company puts quality first. For us, anyone that helps people build their dream truck, and doesn’t settle for less than the best, is a perfect partner.

 

Prior to WWII, most auto manufacturers used oak as the bed wood of choice. GM and Chevrolet switched to broad leaf yellow pine, a hardwood when coated with sealant became a decent blue-collar platform for work trucks. 

“Although oak is an exceptional wood,” said Jeff Major, founder of Bed Wood and Parts, “it does not fit all builds, and until now, has been practically the only species of bed wood offered in the aftermarket.”

Bed Wood and Parts offers the highest quality wood available, and a wide choice in species to compliment any truck build. What we liked about the company’s webpage is a nifty feature called the “Bed Wood Visualizer.” We’ve all seen material that looked one way in the store or online, but when we got it home and installed, the results were horrid. The visualizer helps prevent that scenario from happening.

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One of the neatest applications we've seen in a long time, the Bed Wood Visualizer, lets customers try on different looks until they find the one they want.

The visualizer program allows the customer to select an exterior color of a truck, one that will roughly approximate the vehicle that new bed wood is going to be installed in. Then different bed wood products can be selected and viewed as the completed product in the visualizer window. This offers a pretty good idea of what the finished project will look like. It’s a pretty neat program that we spent hours playing with while we were daydreaming about artistic and creative box beds.

For more information about Bed Wood and Parts, visit them online at bedwoodandparts.com. To play with the bed wood visualizer, click here.