Finds: Loadhandler Cargo Unloader
By Sean O'Hara
You’re a titan of a man, and you drive a colossal truck – the kind of truck that can haul a ton or more in the back without breaking a sweat. The fun comes when you arrive at your destination with a metric crapload of rock in the bed and realize you have to unload it somehow.
Yeah, you could try driving really, really fast in reverse and slamming on the breaks. Or you could just “He-Man” it by grabbing a shovel going at it. Smart money, however, is perhaps best laid on a Loadhandler Cargo Unloader.
The Loadhandler is a manual conveyer belt that fits in your pickup bed. In engineering terms, it applies a combination of high mechanical advantage and low friction to get the job done. Its operation is pretty simple: Lay the drag sheet down in the bed put a crapton of gravel or whatever on top of it. Once in the delivery zone, lower the gate, fit the crank into a slot, and wind the handle to pull the dragsheet (and the load) off onto the ground behind the truck.
You can use it to unload firewood, black dirt, gravel, patio rock, lumber, building materials and just about whatever else you feel comfortable dropping out the back of your truck.
Hey, it’s not as good as a dump truck and a front end loader – and honestly, what is? – but a Loadhandler might get you through a big 2000 - 3000 lb. dirt hauling project without tearing up your back. Of course, there is the question of how to load the truck up with that big a load in the first place.
Loadhandler Cargo Unloader [Loadhandler]
Street Pricing [Froogle]
August 30th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
Two things –
If you want to unload it quickly, you’ll have to drive fast forward, not in reverse — unless your back window is open and you want to dump the load in the cab.
I think the system I used was slightly different and didn’t sit flat on the bed. Small-item loads (gravel, mulch) tended to get caught under the conveyor and not all come out. But it’s still better than shoveling the whole load.
August 30th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
Jeff: Good eye, but I think you might have missed the “…then hit the brakes” part. Trust us, it works… sort of. At least it worked for a friend of mine who was trying to offload a really badly overbuilt camper shell from the truck his father gave him for college. I think his father intended the ’shell as alternate birth control.
If he’d bothered to clear out the wood splinters from the bed, he’d probably have gotten away with it. Except for the scratches.
April 22nd, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Has anyone here actually used it. It looks great in the advertisement but so do a lot a of products. If it works a hundred times without breaking I’ll get one. It looks too simple to actually work well. It’s not to expensive, if it works as advertised. Do you have to leave it on all the time or does it come off easily when you don’t want it? Anyone?