The $17,000 Repair of a New Aluminum F-150

So what's the problem, the cost of the repairs or the damage to the truck?

Who knows if steel would have held up any better. The owner severely added to the damage by choosing to floor the truck through the carwash tunnel.

This article has an "Urban Legend" feel to it. Would have been nice to have some actual photos of the damage instead of a Photoshopped mock up.

TomHaycraft wrote:
I'm curious, how this (in general) is affecting insurance premiums for this line of vehicles.

One issue is that there is no comparison to what a steel bodied truck would cost to repair.

If the 2014 F-150 with identical damage would cost 500 dollars to repair, obviously that is a massive difference. If the 2014 would cost 16,000 to repair, the difference would be inconsequential for insurance rates.

It's just a guess, but with that big of a repair bill, I bet this involved significant interior repairs as well. new headliner, glass, seat headrests, electronics, who knows.

Insurance companies will be able to measure their spend on 2015 vs 2014 trucks over a set period, and determine if the 2015's warrant higher premiums. A tail light used to be 20 bucks when it got smashed, now they are in the hundreds because they are LED or have traffic sensors embedded in them.

I'm curious, how this (in general) is affecting insurance premiums for this line of vehicles.

proxim2020 wrote:
This is a very interesting article about a repair of a 2015 aluminum F-150 that ended up costing $17,000 and took a month to complete. A guy goes through an automatic car wash when a piece of equipment falls on the roof. As with all rational human beings, this guy decides the best thing to do is floor it out of the tunnel. This ends up causing some pretty severe damage to the roof and upper sections of the cab.

The dealership was definitely capable of the repair. They've invested over $100K in retooling and training and the body shop manager has over 40 years of experience. Seems more like growing pains more than anything. I'd imagine the next truck that came through with the same damage would go more smoothly and probably cost much less.

How A Ford F-150 Aluminum Repair Cost $17,000

The body shop stated that once they had everything they needed, the repair only took 8 hours. And 4 weeks at the body shop is pretty good. I've had vehicles in the shop for 3 months.