Thinking about putting an aluminum flat bed on my 01,F-350 short bed single wheel with a reese hitch.84"wide(I think)but the length is were I'am having problems with.Dont want it to look like crap and dont want to add to the frame.
Thanks

 

They make flats for short bed pickups, 7' long typically.

 

Im having this debate with a friend of mine right now actually. He has an 03 V10 cc sb, and wants to have a flatbed. We actually measured it out and thought real hard about it; And leaving the factory reese hitch in the back and making the flatbed go to the end of it, you will have a nearly 7.5' bed on the back very nicely. Im pretty sure that was measured from the front of the normal bed (leaving the same gap between the cab) and then all the way to the tip of the reese hitch. I dont really thing you will need to add any frame even with an 8' bed that overhangs the reese a little bit. Go measure it yourself and get back to us. If I go to my friends then ill look it over and ask him for sure about his plans, and when he does it Ill post pics up here for you and the others.

 

The thing I love about the aluminum 8' flatbed on my 2000 F350 DRW Crew Cab - I can have the goose connected and still load a tote box ( fancy machine shop term for big-azz steel tub for whatever) in front of the goose hitch from the side and tie it down with rathet straps. Forklift access is great all around, great for light machinery and light to medium wieght tooling and materials ( 3000 lbs or less).

What I don't like - no bed sides, anything you normally "threw in the back and closed the tailgate" ya gotta tie down. It attracts a lot more DOT attention, seems to scream "industrial". It turns out if truck and trailer GVW's combine over 26k ya should have a class A CDL to drive it in Iowa. I'd love to have one with fold down sides. A guy I know has one he must have built, has fold down 12 inch sides all around. A better all around deal for what I do with it. Also, I would consider going steel. The aluminum one I have is easy to bend the rub rails with straps and some straps can't get through the stake pockets.

 

Ya,I came up with the same measurement 7'5" but then a friend brought up the question about the rear bumper.Here in Mich you have to have some type of bumper,one thing after another.What width did you come up with.

 

had this big thing typed out then hit the backspace to get rid of the huge pic and then it went back to the forum for some reason

anyway, maine has less of a law on bumpers. they even allow a 2x8 for a "bumper" but still for safety i know what you mean.
my friend and i are going to angle the bed down to the reese hitch so that the frame is not exposed and it looks similar to this sweet paintshop pic i drew. Pretty bad seeing as though i have a darn autocad degree...

yellow being flashing lights and red being tail lights

 

Sorry, I was so frusterated with the whole erasing of my post I forgot to reanswer.
We are going to make the body the width of the truck, but then with stake pockets down the sides, so that we can put extentions on to make it 8' that way we can put two wheelers or sleds on the back.

 

Im not sure about the US but up here after the deck is a certian width and lenghth it also needs marker / clearence lights.
5 small lights across the back plus front and rear corner lights.

 

Nice picture lol,had the same thing in mind.Making some calls today to see what the deal is on e-bay#280398825080.Talked to them a couple times but never asked about the rear bumper.I do know they build it to your spec.I"ll let you know what they say.

 

Pretty sure it;s 3 markers across the back,corners are the same,but the plate has to be LIT for sure.