Help with Short Box

This is kind of a long story but I ran into a problem with my short bed this weekend that I'm hoping some of you others can help with a solution. I'm in the process of finishing my basement and I needed to pickup 20 sheets of drywall this weekend. Since the bed is not 4 ft wide between the wheel wells, I cut some 2"x6" boards to fit into the pockets on the side of the bed, so I could lay the drywall on top of the wheel wells. Then I laid 3 2"x4" on top of the 2"x6" running the length of the bed so tail end of the drywall hanging out the back of the truck would be supported.

Here is where the catch comes in..... the support pockets near the rear of the bed are only about 4' 6" back from the front of the bed, so when you load the truck up with 8’ sheets of drywall it basically becomes a giant teeter totter. To get the stuff home I tied down the front the best I could and bought a couple of tubes of traction sand that I stacked on the front of the drywall as well…. Not exactly a sano solution.

What do you guys do? I would love a trailer but I just don’t have a place to store it… Thanks!

 

Although I was never in your predicament, there is a possible solution borrowed from the GM engineers. I hope I can explain with little confusion. On the canyons and colorados there are two attachment points on the tailgate cable. When using the shorter of the attachment points the top of the tailgate is even with the top of the wheel wells creating an additional support further from the front of the bed. Now where to get shorter tailgate cables? but I will leave that up to you.

 

this may help you out more than once...................at harbor freight....they have a "hitch extender hauler" that goes in the hitch, and comes up level with the bed, and it spreads out at the top so you can carry boards and such a little easier.

 

^ x2 on the above. If you are creative, you can rig that thing up to haul alot of items besides building materials.

 

That's brillant! After your post I did a little looking and found these as well... http://www.extendatruck.com/ and http://www.lundinternational.com/lund_int_truck_product_detail_objectname_Hitch_Hand___truck.aspx

 

X3, if you know a welder and can do some fab work may be cheaper....

 

those should work good as well. the one from lund looks like it would be good and stout.