I just got a new pick up truck and I wanted to move a lot things around with it. Most stuff I have are things in cardboard boxes, luggage bags, shoe boxes, small chairs, fishing gears, bikes, some toys without boxes, in a word, it’s a mess, I tried to load them up in an ordered fashion but it was proved that my effort was futile. When the trunk is full I just stared at the mess I created, said to myself, I just did that? OK, I actually did that. Then it occurred to me that I couldn’t get on my way like this, if I did there would be possible consequences like these: either the stockpile fell apart on the road, may or may not hit someone else or cause accidents, or I got stopped by police officer before anything could happen and got ticket and points. Either way I would screw up, that wasn’t something I wanted, I believe no one would want that.
Now I have at lease two choices, I can start over and try to tidy them up or find something to hold them together, OK, even I start over I still will have to find something to secure the load, these choices actually bound to one thing, I need some cargo control stuff for my pick up. Of course in this case we don’t need big tie downs like 10,000lb ratchet straps or grade 70 binder chains, I just need something a few hundred pounds strength to hold some luggage and boxes together, nothing qualifies for serious cargo tie downs. Since I already stack everything up, no cargo bars needed, those cargo bars for pickup are just for boxes or bags support or something similar, not for holding things together.Finally, I decided to do some research, mostly online.
I dived into the tie down world for something can be used with my pick up and the tie downs may not to overkill for my situation, first I came across 1” ratchet straps, 6 or 9 feet, but with 2000 or 3000lb strength they were overkill in a sense, even they were not too expensive, cam buckle straps were in the same shoes, what I found was too heavy duty yet not good enough for my purpose, what a piece of 1” ratchet strap could do with the huge pile such as the stuff on my truck? Besides, 1” ratchet straps won’t be able to hold a lot small pieces together at all. Then I ran into this gem: cargo net for pick ups, the size is 48”x60” which is ideal for my truck, just put the cargo net on top the pile then tie it down, you’re all set. With cargo nets come bungee cords, the bungee cords are just perfect for tying down cargo net, in fact the cargo net is made of interconnected bungee cords! In a nutshell, the small cargo nets and bungee cords are light duty tie downs made just for the purpose of holding together and tying down small but irregular loads such as the pickup truck mess in my case. And you can put these light duty tie downs to some creative use as you see fit, they are just perfect for passenger cars and small trucks.
