Shortly after I bought my truck, I put mud flaps on it because I wanted to protect the paint—especially with all the talk about 4th gen rear quarter panel damage. I went with Rockblokz, and I’ll be straight: they’re good mud flaps. They worked. I noticed they stopped a lot of junk from kicking up, and putting them on before winter helped keep snow, salt, and slush from caking the side of the truck. The reason I’m taking them off isn’t because I hate them—it’s because of a couple real-world downsides I ran into. A deer hit the side of my truck at low speed, and I’m convinced the mud flap actually worsened the damage by pulling on the inner fender area and cracking the paint a bit. On top of that, they do hurt ground clearance, and I’m big on keeping that clearance on a truck (same reason I removed the front air dam). At the end of the day, I’d rather have less hanging down and less stuff to snag or get hit. I’m planning to keep this truck for decades, and I’ll take care of it, but it’s not going to stay perfect—if I get a couple rock chips, I’ll touch them up and keep driving.