Our Toyota Tundra “Bed Bounce” owner’s survey opened on Sept. 22nd. Since that time we’ve received about 100 validated responses. Here’s the statistics we’ve compiled:

1. Nearly 79% of survey respondents have NOT filed a complaint with Toyota.

Amazingly, this problem seems to be under-reported by a factor of five. We’re not sure why people haven’t chosen to send an email or make a phone call, but we’re concerned that this lack of effort might ultimately lead to Toyota officially ignoring the issue.

2. The TRD package doesn’t seem to effect bed bounce frequency or severity.

About 51% of survey respondents reported owning a truck with the TRD package, and that percentage held for people reporting “severe” bed bounce and for those reporting “weekly” or “daily” occurrence. There’s no link we can find between the TRD package and the bed bounce problem.

3. Less than 10% of respondents described their bed bounce as “mild”.

91% of respondents stated that their bed bounce problem was “moderate” or “severe”, however, we think this is to be expected. Anyone with “mild” bed bounce might not know they even have the problem, so we’re not sure how valuable these statistics are.

4. 90% of respondents state they will modify or replace their Tundra if this problem isn’t solved.

If we assume that only people with severe problems decided to participate, this statistic makes sense. However, what doesn’t make sense (at least to us) is that while 90% of the owners will spend money to modify their suspension, replace their trucks early, or even sue Toyota, 80% of the respondents have yet to file a formal complaint…

5. 85% report experiencing bed bounce at highway speeds only.

Evidently, the anecdotes about highway bed bounce ring true — 85% of owners reported experiencing bed bounce on the highway only. Also, 69% of owners who participated reported that concrete highways were the only problem surface.

6. Basic data from the survey.

93% of respondents own the 5.7L V8.
61% of respondents drive double cabs, 36% drive the crew, and 3% drive the regular cab.
49% of respondents have owned their trucks 1 to 3 months, with the rest being evenly split between less than one month and more than 3 months.
53% of respondents rate their bed bounce as “severe”, 39% as “moderate”, and the rest as “mild”. There are no appreciable relationships between severity and truck type, nor between severity and frequency.
About 15% of survey responses were invalidated because of bogus VIN numbers or email addresses — it seems a few of our friends in the Ford, Chevy, and Dodge communities tried to participate in our survey.

Bottom Line: In our minds, our survey has been a bit of a failure. First of all, the number of responses has been very low (102 as of this posting). Also, it seems kind of foolish for TundraHeadquarters.com to lobby Toyota for action on this issue when only 20% of our survey respondents have bothered to officially report the problem. Furthermore, the data hardly seems to indicate that this issue is common. Our website receives more than 10k visitors per month, yet we have only accumulated 102 responses in 3 weeks. Granted, we don’t know for sure if all of our visitors are 2007 Tundra owners, but it seems that at least 5-10% of them would be (at a minimum). While we’ll keep our survey open through the end of October (if not longer based on response volume), at this point in time it seems the overwhelming majority of the community doesn’t find bed bounce to be too much of a problem.

To anyone who would say that they haven’t completed the survey because of privacy concerns, you’re welcome to complete the survey with a fake name. We’ve also upgraded the survey to a secure, encrypted connection. Finally, we only require a valid VIN# and a valid email address to validate a response. We’re not sure what other concerns people have, but we feel like we’ve done as much as we can to address them without ruining the validity of the survey. If you have any suggestions, or if you’d like to know more about our survey results, please contact us.

Again, if you or anyone you know hasn’t contacted Toyota’s customer service department, please consider doing so. You can send Toyota an email or call them at 800-331-4331 to make an official complaint. Making an official complaint increases the likelihood that Toyota will formally address this problem.

Popularity: 9%