Share Pics of People Hauling or Towing Something Wrong

[civilian]

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And only the bottom truck is strapped down to the semi trailer. Jon

 

[Grumpycat]

Got off the highway to find this jackass in front of me on the off-ramp today.

25 boards without a single strap. Well, he had a few bits of strap dangling from his ladder rack made out of random pieces of pipe.

We turned the same way up a very bumpy piece of road, the boards were sliding around but I can't say I saw any fall. How f^&*ng hard is it to put one $2 ratchet strap on your load of lumber?

Please draw a free body diagram of forces demonstrating how little a strap over the top of the boards would accomplish. What is needed is something over the ends to keep the board from sliding back, not something around the boards.

 

[Grumpycat]

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Looks good to me! A friend used to load his ATV in the back of his Kubota RTV and the RTV on his trailer. Worked fine.

 

[Grumpycat]

I carry a heavy-duty net (made out of seat belt type webbing). With that type of load, I would have laid the net partially under the board ends and wrapped it over the top. Then secure the "4 corners" of the net back to tie downs. And I'd add a ratchet strap to hug them together prior to the net.

Ditto, what is needed is something behind the boards to keep them from coming out. Much more important than a strap over the boards to keep them from coming up.

 

[rangerfredbob]

For boards like that I would simply put a cheap ratchet strap from the bumper, over the tailgate back to the bumper on the other side, I hauled a stack of rough cut live edge wood that was around 8' long in the back of my '97 Ford Ranger 900 miles down I5 to Bakersfield CA with two straps holding it down, it had a single 2x4 over the boards at the gap where the tailgate meets the bed and a ratchet strap on each end of the 2x4 to the bed, and I have a drop in liner, drove great and didn't move any... I have a pic somewhere but can't find it right now...

 

[dstig1]

I'm with the others here. A strap around the bundle gives you a little security, but not much. The only boards that will be held are those directly touched by the straps or squeezed by contact with those boards. All the stuff in the middle of the stack is free to slide around.

One trick that helps is to prop the boards up. You can do it on the tailgate for smaller loads, but 25 green treated boards is a lot of weight. You can add a 4x4 at the back of the bed just in front of the tailgate first, then pile boards on top of it like he did. They will be tipped forward this way and it helps a lot with stopping them sliding out the back. A strap around a bundle like this is a bit better and another level of keeping stuff from bouncing out. Now the 4x4 needs to be the right size so it locks into the bed and can't slide out either...

I have seen boards slide out of the middle of banded stacks from the lumber yards. Dimensioned lumber is slick and if a board is 1/32" thinner than the next one, it is free to move. Dimensional lumber is nowhere near that precise so it is a given that some will be free to slide out.

 

[rontaki]

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He could have a four-car crash all by himself!

 

[rangerfredbob]

I found the picture of my method, if it wasn't live edge I would have just used one strap going over the whole thing and skipped the 2x4 or whatever board I used, I think it's a 1x2 thing that is used for strapping metal siding together... but yes the other methods listed above work good too...

 

[deezler]

Please draw a free body diagram of forces demonstrating how little a strap over the top of the boards would accomplish. What is needed is something over the ends to keep the board from sliding back, not something around the boards.

One doesn’t need a free body diagram if you understand the basic concept of static friction. The coefficient of friction is based upon the surface texture interaction. The force needed to overcome static friction and induce relative motion is proportional to the normal force applied.

A strap holding the boards in a bundle together, and a strap clamping the boards/bundle downwards to the truck bed, greatly increases the normal force present between boards, and most importantly, between the bottom boards and the truck bed.

A strap that holds things down also helps keep them from sliding around. I can’t believe you made me type this out lol.

 

[deezler]

Of course part of the issue is that wet green lumber is very slippery (surface texture yields low coefficient of static friction plus they are basically self-lubricated). But this guy had used, dry lumber. If definitely would have stuck together if strapped in a bundle.
What i often do, is taper the top of the pile, not quite a full pyramid/triangular pile shape - but if you have one row less wood on the outer stacks, then your ratchet straps can get a bite on each stack, and thus pull downwards on all of them.
I have also used dstig’s method of a sacrificial cross board (4x4 or 2x6 on edge) to prop the whole pile up at an angle. And if course, for loads under a few hundred pounds, just use the tailgate itself.