ANAHEIM, Calif. — If you're going to spray the bed of your shiny new pickup truck with a thick coat of protective plastic, why stop there?

The spray-in bedliner industry is starting to find a new business opportunity among pickup owners who are having the whole truck covered in the vinyl-like substance, not just the cargo box.

For years, aftermarket bedliner services occupied a nice little corner of the automotive business, offering pure practicality — a coating that protects pickup beds from dings and scratches. Now it finds itself on the cutting edge of car fashion among owners who want to take the macho appearance to the extreme.

"I like the overall look, the ruggedness," says Jesus Aguiniga of Whittier, Calif., as he watches his 2010 Toyota Tundra getting sprayed nose to tailgate in bedliner material at a Line-X Protective Coatings franchisee here, one of many shops around the country that specialize in spraying on bedliners.

The trend is still fairly young. Line-X spokeswoman Cristin Liveoak says its franchisees around the country report that they're getting sporadic requests for a total body spray job. The "craze" hasn't been as much of a surprise as it as been "a natural progression" of the bedliner business.

Not just pickups are getting the treatment. Some customers have brought in golf carts, tractors, ATVs or other off-road vehicles for the all-over job, she says. Some don't just go for a mundane dark gray but rather choose a desert tan to give the vehicle a military look. It helps that customizers have taken to flat, or matte, paint tones in the past few years to give their vehicles a more sinister appearance than traditional glistening paint jobs.

A Toyota Tundra painted with LINE-X, a spray-on protective coating, maneuvers during a photo shoot in the desert.
A Toyota Tundra painted with LINE-X, a spray-on protective coating, maneuvers during a photo shoot in the desert. Line-X
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  • A Toyota Tundra painted with LINE-X, a spray-on protective coating, maneuvers during a photo shoot in the desert.
  • Roland Mendoza, a Line-X technician, sprays a Toyota Tundra pickup truck on June 18 at the Line-X Orange County shop in Anaheim, Calif.
  • Justin Lovejoy, one of the owners of the Line-X shop, poses with a Camaro that has been sprayed with the protective coating.
  • Justin Lovejoy shows the engine compartment of a Camaro that has been sprayed with Line-X.
  • A 2013 Chevy Camaro 1SS is covered with Line-X Body Armor.
  • A Hummer is covered with the spray-on body armor.
  • A golf cart was sprayed with Line-X.
  • A Ford hot rod is treated with Line-X Body Armor

The process doesn't come cheap, however. The total body spray's cost at Line-X varies, ranging generally from $3,000 to $5,000. That compares with $450 to $550 for a standard bedliner spray, Liveoak says.

Still, it should last the lifetime of the vehicle, she adds. Owners will never have to wax their pickups again. And off-roaders, in particular, will appreciate that they won't have to worry about scratches on their paint from tree branches or other hazards. The coating is about a sixteenth of an inch, thicker a standard paint job.

"You don't have to wash it," says franchisee Justin Lovejoy, who co-owns the Anaheim shop. But the idea of coating an entire vehicle is catching on fairly slowly. He says he gets only a handful of requests, compared with 60 to 80 trucks brought in for bedliner treatments every month.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/07/28/line-x-rhino-coatings-bedliner/2588539/