Pickup bed liners do two things.
They protect the bed of your truck from rust, dings and corrosion.
Secondly, liners make a truck look finished and sharp.
Drop in truck bed liners really excel in the protection function.
A plastic liner may be the very best choice for your truck if you do serious hauling.
By serious hauling, I mean hauling any kind of cargo that's rough or abrasive.
That should also include sharp objects or heavy items that can cause dents.
Now if you just haul groceries or light packages, any liner will do.
But for gravel, concrete blocks, or even firewood, a plastic liner has real advantages.
A heavy plastic liner insert is almost impossible to dent.
Throw firewood up into a spray on liner and you may still get dents in the bed.
But a plastic liner cushions impact and absorbs the hit that may dent a lesser liner.
Dings and dents to a bed are almost worse than scratches and scrapes.
Scratches can be repaired with paint, but dents are very hard to repair.
A dented up truck bed is a mess that's hard to fix.
Then what about gravel and concrete blocks and loads like that? With no bed liner, rough cargo will remove paint.
Even with an expensive spray on liner, concrete blocks are going to damage the liner itself.
Now the damage may not be noticeable at first, but over time the damage is going to break all the way through the liner to the bed beneath.
But with a drop in bed liner, the heavy plastic will resist the roughest treatment.
If the liner eventually gets really beat up, it's simple to replace.
A spray on liner must be repaired since you can't replace it.
When you must replace drop in truck bed liners, it won't be a huge burden.
You see a plastic bed liner is cheap.
A liner custom fit for your truck is half the price of a spray on liner or maybe even less.
If you really use your truck like a truck and you want to protect the bed, consider a plastic bed liner.
It stands abuse better than a spray on liner and it's cheaper and easy to replace.