Sledgehammer Repair Costs to Aluminum F-150 are 2 Times Higher
Yesterday, we shared a video with you of a 2015 F-150 getting smacked by a sledgehammer. The folks at Edmunds.com did this to their long-term test truck because they wanted to get an answer to the question of how expensive it is to repair aluminum.
At the end of the day, it cost roughly twice as much as what it would have cost to repair the truck if it were steel.
According to the body shop they took the truck to, it would take nearly a week to complete the repair job, compared to about four days for steel. That body shop quoted them $120 per hour for aluminum repair, and $60 per hour for steel repair.
It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out that even if it took the same amount of time to repair, the aluminum would be more expensive.
They then contacted an independent body shop and they had similar pricing. They were charging $50 per hour for steel work and $105 per hour for aluminum work.
What surprised me is that the first body shop that did the work was willing to do the aluminum labor for $60 per hour since they were paying out-of-pocket with cash. If anything, that’ll be the reason for higher insurance rates.
The repairs ended up being over $4,000, and some of that was because of a cracked rear tail light that needed replaced.
When looking at just the cost and time for aluminum repair, it appears it will be more expensive than the steel-bodied F-150.
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