A good docking day usually feels uneventful. The boat comes in smoothly, lines are secured, and nothing scrapes, bangs, or leaves a mark behind.
The first signs of docking wear usually appear in the same places: the slip entrance, the dock edge, the corner, and the posts.
A lot of replacement mistakes happen for one simple reason: people measure only one part of boat fenders, then reorder the wrong size.
A fender can have enough width and still let the hull scrape the dock if the body is too short for the actual contact area.