One of the lowest-risk, highest-margin profit opportunities for body shops to consider is installing bedliners for customers with pickup trucks. By adding a protective layer inside their truck beds, owners can reduce the wear and tear on the finish—and can even help boost the Blue Book, or resale, value of their trucks.
Customers considering bedliners have several options, including do-it-yourself roll-on kits, as well as drop-in and spray-on bedliners, which are typically installed by the shops that sell them. The spray-on bedliners, which sell for between $350 and $500, are the most profitable for body shops to sell—and although they are more expensive than the other two alternatives, shop owners say it’s usually not difficult to persuade truck owners to go that route.
Many customers don’t like the hard work of rolling on their own bedliners, says Chris Aikey, owner of K&A Auto Body of Mifflinburg, Pa. And customers like the way the slightly rubberized finish on spray-on bedliners helps prevent cargo from rolling around while the truck is moving. The same thing can’t be said for slipperier drop-in models, he adds.
Dale Eaton, president of Collision Repair Service in St. Joseph, Mo., operates both a body shop and an adjacent truck accessory store. Drop-in and spray-on bedliners are sold through both outlets, which contribute equally to bedliner sales. Owners buy the drop-in models with installation because there’s no easy way to haul the bedliner home, Eaton explains, adding that his margins on the drop-in models, which take 10 or 15 minutes to install, are only about 20 percent. In contrast, the margin on spray-on bedliners, which require three to four hours installation time, is 50 percent or more. Body shop personnel often can upsell truck owners on spray-on bedliners when a truck is in for repair. “If we’re putting a bed side on a truck that’s in for collision repair, we can apply some of the paint time to the spray-in liner,” says Eaton, enabling the customer to buy the liner at a discount.
A body shop can get started in the spray-on bedliner business for an investment of just a few thousand dollars, which typically covers spray guns, promotional materials and some raw materials. Some vendors may offer exclusive territories without a franchise fee, but with a commitment to purchase a certain amount of material within a certain number of years. For training, some vendors provide a videotape, while others conduct classes, to which shop personnel must travel. At Eaton’s shop, one of the painter helpers handles bedliner jobs, while at K&A, several workers can do that type of work.
Both K&A Auto Body and Collision Repair Specialists have a dedicated spray booth for bedliner jobs. “You get some overspray from it,” explains Eaton. “It gets on the floor and walls if you’re not careful.”
Eaton adds that the bedliner spray booth is also used for tasks such as custom sheet metal fabrication, buffing or polishing.
Both shops also have found some unique uses for their spray-on bedliner equipment. K&A uses it to help protect four-wheel drive vehicles as well as snowmobile and boat trailers. When things get slow in the body shop, Aikey runs a half-page bedliner ad in the local paper to generate some additional business. Collision Repair’s bedliner system is a portable one, which has helped the company get some jobs it couldn’t have handled if the equipment had been restricted to use within the shop—including spraying the insides of the big boxes on a local utility company’s trucks.
Car dealers are a good source of bedliner business for both K&A and Collision Repair, who contact such shops periodically to offer their services. Depending on which supplier they use, some shops also may get referrals from the local branch of a national retailer. Some vendors have deals with the national retailers—and although margins are a bit less on such jobs, they can still be quite high.
K&A also gets a significant amount of business from what Aikey calls a “silent salesman.” When anyone purchases a spray-on bedliner from him, Aikey asks if it would be OK to embed a small sign with K&A’s name on it in the bedliner material as it dries. “I tell them that way I’ll know it’s my bedliner if there’s ever a warranty issue,” says Aikey, adding, “I’ve never had anyone deny us putting one in.” As customers drive their vehicles around town or to road rallies, vehicle owners considering a bedliner see the sign and often contact K&A as a result.
