if you think a "regular bed" on a 70s/80s/90s full-size pickup is 8', just how long do you think a "long bed" is?

It’s the 9ft bed you could get as an option on full-sized trucks above the base model. So for Ford, the F-150 was stuck with either the regular 8ft bed - which was the default - or could go down to a 6.5ft short bed, but for the F-250, F-350 and higher, you could go for a 9ft long bed.

In some model years, the F-250 & 350 even had its rear axle shifted further towards the rear by a few inches when choosing the long bed in order to get better balance for loads.

This 9ft long bed was even marketed as a “large camper bed” for those oversized slide-in campers that were too long to allow a standard 8ft bed to raise its tailgate. This was a problem with 8ft beds, because a permanently-lowered tailgate could obstruct the license plate, necessitating its removal so the plate was more visible. The long bed didn’t have this problem, and the tailgate could stay on.