We’ve all seen mud flaps on the trucks around us, whether on a pickup truck, SUV, or even a semi-truck. Sometimes they are just a piece of rubber hanging down behind the rear tires. Other times, they are more molded and integrated into the outer and lower edges of the rear of a fender. This got me wondering, what is the big deal with mud flaps and I did a little research to find out.
Why install mud flaps on a truck? Installing mud flaps will protect your truck or SUV from rocks, dirt, sand, mud, and other debris kicked up from rotating tires. Mud flaps also protect surrounding vehicles, especially against window chips from a kicked up rock.
There is so much more to this protection that mud flaps offer. Let jump in for a closer look.
Protects Your Truck
First and foremost, mud flaps protect your truck or SUV. This is the main reason you would install them. Your truck was expensive and you want to keep its value up.
Most of us take our trucks and SUVs off road or at least on dirt roads, even if occasionally, where you will always encounter gravel and sometimes mud. The large tires on our trucks pick up the small gravel rocks and debris, throwing them up to hit the sides of your truck. This can cause for scratches or even chips in your paint or even tiny dents or dings in your sheet metal.
Installing mud flaps provides a barrier to stop most of these rocks from making it out of the fender wells or past the flaps, protecting you truck or SUV from damage. The small amount of debris that does get past is usually pushed out far enough to the side of the mud flap to not collide with your truck. Installing mud flaps helps keep you truck in top condition for more years to come.
Protects Other Vehicles
When you are travelling the roadways with other vehicles, mud flaps on your truck or SUV will help to protect others’ vehicles and their drivers as well.
Think about that rock chip that marred your perfect windshield in the blink of an eye. Even though mud flaps won’t eliminate all the bouncing rocks that target your windshield, they certainly reduce the number of pebbles kicked up that could chip your windshield.
Installing mud flaps on your truck or SUV will also prevent these same rocks and pebbles that could chip windshields, from scratching or chipping the paint of the vehicles around you. Additionally, when it is wet outside from rain or snow, mud flaps will help reduce the mist kicked up from your truck tires so that the drivers around you can keep their windshields more clear to see better and stay safe.
When you install mud flaps, it protects, not only your truck or SUV, but also the other vehicles and PEOPLE around you.
Keeps Your Truck Cleaner
When you run into muddy roads, or even just wet dirt roads, having mud flaps installed on your truck will help keep your truck cleaner. It won’t keep all the dirt and grime off, but it will certainly cut down on the layers of heavy mud that can get caked onto the lower sides of the your body panels that, when dried out, can become a royal pain to clean off.
If you run a lot of muddy dirt roads, installing a set of mud flaps can make your life a lot easier when cleaning time rolls around.
Protects What You Tow
Your truck was made to work and that often includes towing. It may be to tow your boat or camper trailer for the weekend or it may be to tow your nice enclosed trailer full of tools, atvs, snowmobiles or whatever. Regardless of what you are towing, you want to keep your trailer in good condition and mud flaps help with that.
Mud flaps will protect the trailers & open cargo that you tow from damage by blocking most of the rocks and debris kicked up by your tires. This means the mud flaps help protect your trailers and cargo from chips, scratches, and dings.
Added Protection with Beefier Tires
Mud flaps can be especially helpful if you decide to install larger, beefier tires on your truck or SUV.
We all love to customize our trucks which often includes installing custom wheels and tires that stick out (Check out my article here about How to Make Truck Tires Stick Out).
Big tires that stick out definitely look aggressive and cool but, unlike stock sized tires, these larger tires often stick out past your fenders. This means they can and will throw up more gravel & debris that could damage your vehicle than stock wheels and tires will. Mud flaps stick out and down to help stop more of the rocks thrown up by these beefier tires.
Adds Customizable Style
There are three main basic mud flap styles, which can be customized many different ways. Mud flaps can add a nice touch to the style of your truck. These three basic styles are as follows:
- The flat straight style that usually comes in rubber like the ones here and sometimes metal or diamond plate like these here. This style just hangs straight down from the rear side of the fender.
- The integrated molded style that is formed to fit the rear of the fender of your specific make and model of truck. This style wraps around fender a truck body curves so it kind of just flows with shape of your truck.
- Hitch mounted mud flaps that connect to your receiver hitch like the one found here to protect your trailers.
Flat Style
The flat style are very universal and can be mounted onto most any truck. On a lot of the rubber version of these you can get custom emblems that display the brand of your truck or a picture that complements your personality. You can also get these flaps with custom metal plate accents.
There are also ones that you can mount to your vehicle with a quick release bracket so they can be removed when you want to like the ones found here.
You can also find flat mud flaps that are mesh like instead of solid to let air pass through but not the rocks debris.
Integrated Molded Style
Integrated mud flaps are custom molded to fit each specific truck or SUV based on its individual shape similar to the ones found here. These are often considered to be the best looking style of mud flap since they tie in so well to the original shapes of your vehicle.
Hitch Mounted Style
Hitch mounted mud flaps really aren’t all that stylish but they are designed so that they can be removed when you aren’t using them to protect the trailer you are towing. This type of mud flap can be adjusted to cover a wider or narrower area of space behind your back tires to fit your protective needs when towing.
Related Questions
What size mudflaps do I need? You need mud flaps big enough to cover the outer width of your tire and you generally want it to at least cover the upper half of the back of your tire. Look at what you need it to protect and get one big enough to block rocks and debris from being thrown towards that area by the rotating tire.
Do mud flaps affect gas mileage? Mud flaps don’t really affect gas mileage as they sit behind the tires which are already pushing right into air in front of the mud flaps.
Why don’t cars have mud flaps anymore? Most cars don’t have mud flaps anymore because they sit lower to the ground with fenders that seem to fit more snug around the tires in an effort to be more aerodynamic. This naturally puts more protection around the tires, reducing water spray and debris that is kicked up to hurt or interfere with the car or those cars around it. Trucks and many SUVs still sit higher with larger, more open fender wells so the rocks and debris can escape more easily, making mud flaps more protective and helpful.