What not to haul in your DCSB.

I just picked up a load of 2x6x10 and 2x6x8 for a little deck extension project and spent 20 minutes in the parking lot trying to figure out the best way to balance the load. The third time I unloaded it I was thinking about some canoe hauler for the hitch that I saw on here and wondering if the Lowes workers were watching me and laughing their asses off. The fourth time I got the load back in all I could think of was that I was going to hit a bump and snap the tailgate off but I believe that I had a little parking lot audience at that time so I went with it.

Some logical thinking encouraged me to buy three 50 pound bags of sand to weigh down the load in the front of the bed. I drove home with my ass puckered up so tight that if there was a piece of coal in there I would have shit a diamond.

In hindsight I should have just put my newly purchased Skill HD77 on top, that thing must weigh at least 150 lbs.

So where do you get one of those hitch add ons? Harbor Freight? The search commences.

 

No offense but .... Glad I got an AC.

 

I got mine at Dick's sporting - in the aisle next to the canoes and kayaks. I think Walmart around here had them too.

 

This thread IS worthless without pics. I agree. I got home driving 10 mph the whole way; hazards flashing, cursing VIA busses for stopping in front of me, and BMWs following me for miles with empty lanes to the left of me. In fear of some end to my streak of good luck, the second I got home I emptied the bed to check on my tailgate.

Pictures of the unloaded lumber and my new saw on the way.

And if pics are necessary, I could load all that shit back into the truck one more time for good measure, 5th time is the charm, right?

 

looks like its time to buy a trailer.

 

Should have rented a board stretcher while you were at lowes, that way you could have bought 5 foot long 4x12 which would have fit in the truck just fine and then when you got home stretched them into 10 foot 2x6

 

I will have to grab pictures of the load in the morning before I start work, it's too dark out now.

 

Don't forget about the sky hook. Really helps unloading all those unstretched boards.

 

This is what i had in mind when you said what not to haul

 

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... ^^^ ... Been there before ... but with 16 ft. 1"x6" Trex through the back window with wife driving ... ... and me holding the Trex planks from the back seat ...

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thats nothing, I hauled some 2x4x16's home in my DC. I had to thread them through the back window all the way down to the front passenger foot area.

I think a good roof rack would work just fine for hauling long pieces of lumber...you could also just install a lumber rack that goes over the top of the cab.

 

the guys at lowes made you load and figure out how to get the load yourself? i work at home depot in the lumber department and we are required to at least offer to help every customer load. i've had to load some crazy stuff, load into odd vehicles, and have had 16ft lumber on vehicles as small as a single cab ranger. with experience with this every day and being a short bed owner too, i would have suggested you do what you did. if you were my customer i would have just flipped the tailgate down, loaded the lumber and suggested to buy a few bags of concrete to throw towards the front to hold them down and return them later. that's a 5ft bed and probably an extra 2ft with the tailgate. so 7ft would be fine to load 8ft and 10ft lumber. the bags closer to the cab would take some of the pressure off of the tailgate. yeah, so go to home depot next time! all home depots match a competitor's price, and then take an additional 10% off

 

haha, i bet that stuff was scraping on pavement! i hate that stuff, it's kind of flimsy

 

I'm glad they didn't offer, things got really bad on the 2nd try. On behalf of my limited intelligence I thought that I could take the load off of the tailgate by placing a piece of wood lengthwise across the back end of the bed then piling all the lumber back in. In essence I just created a point for the wood to 'teeter' on and made things worse. This was one of the points where I was wishing I had bought some extra tie downs and installed them in the front of the bed so that I could have at least tied everything down to the bed.

I used to have a Froniter Nismo and I know that I've hauled 12 and 16 footers in that thing. It had the Util-track rails on the floor and I just tied it down in the front, middle, and back and didn't even think twice about it.

I'm tempted to buy the rails from Nissan and install them in the floor of my bed and replace the ones on the side and front. They are surprisingly cheap.

Edit: Just remembered that my Nissan was an AC. Makes a little more sense now.

 

Just put D-rings under the bed bolts.

 

You are disgusting.

 

Dont put 1200 pounds of deer corn in the bed of a DC. Stock suspension does not like that very much.

 

Haha I'm just giving you a hard time man. I know the feeling too. Props to you for handling it the way you did.