Replacing a tailgate on a 2,008 F-150
 

So, my dad has a truck that he never wanted. He probably would have been much happier purchasing a Ranger, while his friend tried to persuade him to purchase a bigger truck--for the friend. The friend is an employee of my father, but instead of meeting deadlines, he was out driving his truck, for a hundred thousand miles, and after the friend made other poor decisions, my father took it back.

He says that he needs to make payments on it for some time before he can actually sell it, since his friend devaluated it faster than my dad made payments. Dad replaced the windshield and the dealership estimated $1,600 to replace the tailgate. We went to Home Depot to pick up the rest of the materials that we needed for that section of the fence, including thirty cinder blocks, and then we realized that the tailgate did not open. There was a dent right on top of the handle, but it did not look big enough to cause a problem, yet we needed to lift all of the lumber and cinder blocks over the side because we could not drop the tailgate.

Car-part.com shows that a tailgate for a "Flareside box" is $600 and $575-650 for a "Styleside box."

The dealer simply said that they needed to replace it. My mom just told me their mechanic tried to fix it, but was sent the wrong part, but my dad gave up.

I guess that he is pretty frustrated with everything and I really do not know what could be done about it. I told my mom that I could figure out how to remove the tailgate.

What do you call those tubular cage things that people use instead?