fire and steel

I'm looking at a used steel flatbed for my truck that was in a garage that burned down. Some of the 1/8 diamondplate deck has sagged a bit. Does the heat in general severely weaken the whole thing? I figure that some steel is red hot as it is manufactured so maybe this is a dumb question. Is this a bed that should be avoided at all costs due to lost strength? thanks for any help

I had a weird one years ago. Dead phones out at a power plant in the coal handling area. A pile of coal that butted up against a machine motor control shed over time burned and melted the several 3" rigid conduits on the outside of the shed. One of them had a 100 pair phone feeder cable in it, and the sparkies replaced them before I was called. No one told me about the fire though and all that I knew was I had service to the feeder heading at the shed, nothing inside of the shed. I got to looking and tracing and noticed new conduits, so I opened the LB's on the corners and found my cable chopped off on one corner, and then the other with nothing in between. That would explain no service. Hmm, I spliced in new cable and fixed it and asked the customer how that happened when I was done. They told me about the fire. Now here's the weird part. The heat was so hot that it melted the several rigid 3" conduits, but only discolored the paint on the much thinner metal siding an inch away from the conduits. How does that happen? Tan is now brown, not even black. Some excellent siding on that shed.

That said if you think it was a hot fire, and steel certainly conducts heat it don't take much for very long, I'd make sure I could get a good look at it to see it up close and inspect closely, looking at welds and framing members.

I'd think if it were real hot, it may just be scrap, there should be obvious signs, the diamond plate decking at 1/8" is not very thick to start and if it was not like that before the fire, it had to have been hot in there. It also depends on how it was constructed and if all the connections (mostly welds) and framing members still have their strengths and are not deformed or otherwise warped, rotated etc.

One of those things that might be better off cut up, scrap $$ towards a new one or materials to build one, it's not that hard if you can weld.

Say you use it and it's weak, someone else ends up with it years later, has no idea what it's been through, puts something heavy on there, (is this for a pick-up or a larger single axle) and it comes apart on the road, not good, might be better scrapped out.