When you’re loading a truck, do you sometimes get to the end of the truck and find you’re out of truck space? I hate that. But when you have exceeded the limits–how about INCREASING THE LIMITS? Sometimes you can do that.
In the first picture below there is a bulky trundle bed frame tied
- on the outside of the closed door.
You need to have some sort of small platform at the end of the truck in order to do this. Some trucks do not have it, but the majority of trucks do, as does this one as you can see in the picture. There is about a 12 inch platform where you can stand and close the door, or in this case, tie excess inventory on the back!
“Wasn’t That Supposed To Be Inside The Truck?”
Needless to say, you want to have the item tied on tight. You don’t want it falling off on the highway. But if you use at least two ropes or cables, and tie them tight, you can feel pretty secure the item will stay there. In this case with the trundle bed frame, we first thought of standing it up straight, but the bars on each side of the truck where we could tie the ropes, were too low to accommodate that. The bed frame was much more secure by resting it horizontally across the platform.
But what do you do when the 12″ platform is not enough accommodate the multiple excess pieces you need on load? In the next picture below, the movers PULLED OUT THE RAMP a couple feet so there were about three feet of “platform” beyond the normal 24′ of truck cargo space.
“I Hope It Doesn’t Rain”
However this technique really must be included in the “Don’t try this at home” category, because of the following risks:
1) You certainly cannot drive very far like this. The items in this case are mattresses and box-springs which are very vulnerable to rain!
2) It would be pushing the patience of a police officer who might drive by.
But it can save having to make a second trip. I have to say I would have been more comfortable with another couple straps tied across horizontally. But the items got there safely . . . This is definitely Extreme Truck Packing!
McGregor Moving's Insider's Guide on Moving 