thrashingcows

Little back story...

My truck box on old RAE is in nice rust free shape..just the inside is beat. The floor is as wavy as the ocean, and I have tow big holes cut in the floor from the stacks that were in there. As well as some cracks and damage to the inside sides of the box. Outside the pass. side has the typical crunch...from what I can't say but it's been mudded over and looks OK but still bothers me.

Anyway I have been keeping my eyes open for a new'er box, even looked at a couple locally. One was no better then what was on my truck and the guy wanted $400, He also had a nice mint one for $800....little too much for me.

Well one night a couple months ago I was cruising the west coast craigslists and came across a listing for a 80-93 nice clean, straight rust free box. It was in Portland OR though. Luckily I have a couple friends who live just outside Portland. A phone call, some texting with the def seller, some paypal-ing and my friends had the box at their house.

thrashingcows

Well last week I decided that Saturday I would get up early and drive down to Portland OR to pick up my "new to me" long box. Crossed the Canada/US border at 5:45am and was in Portland by 12pm. Visited for a few hours, then loaded up the box and got on my way. Left Oregon at 3:30pm and crossed the border into Canada at 10pm.

I had thought through the whole loading the box in the back of my truck and eventually came up with this...

Cut up some 2x2's to fit in the bed stake pockets....then we would flip the box upside down and onto the stakes.



Then a couple of clamps on the inside.



And then 2 ratchet straps over the front, and back.





Truck performed well. Drove 750+ miles and burned about 27 Gallons of fuel...that's about 28 mpg!!

thrashingcows

And a couple more pics that I like...

Big Bird

Looks like an odd shaped camper shell... That was some good thinking using the 2 x 4's.

Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

DodgeFreak

We've done that too works really well, it really helped keep the rain off the engines that we were hauling also. looks good.

Crossy's son

That's the best way to haul a truck bed, once i tried to use a trailer, the trailer looks wide enough to fit the bed, but it never is and the bed always ends up damaged because theres only a few inches on each side, i ended up hanging the bed off the side of the trailer and strapping it down.

Only thing is, what are you gonna do about your trim molding on the bottom? they are held on with those little metal pins, and i see the little metal pins aren't on the new bed.

Those little metal pins are a body man's worst nightmare when it comes to removing them

MARF75

I was gona do the same thing but instead, I built a curb out ot 2x12 and fastened it to the trailer and lag bolted the bed to the curb.
I knew if I had to roll it upside down it would end up damaged it just my luck!

Twitchy

how?!

gyman98

He's canadian our gallons are bigger

thrashingcows

As for how...nothing special done...keep the speed at about 62-65mph on the hwy and just cruise. Maybe it's the 2wd rake that helps as well...front end lower then the back...helps the air flow up and over the long brick.


I use the US gallon (3.78L) in all my figuring.

thrashingcows

We were jokingly calling it the ultimate redneck canopy. Think of all the stuff you could load on top of that bad boy...lumber, luggage, boats.

gyman98

My mistake! Very impressive numbers in that case

thrashingcows

Archived....

https://web.archive.org/web/20180105...ew-box-302072/