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Custom Fabrication DepartmentThis is the section to discuss any and all custom work that you've done or had made that may not be available on the retail market.
Looking to get some ideas. I have a 2018 F-150 XLT Short Bed. Needed more room on the interior so I gave up the space in the bed. Paying the price now! That being said, I'm a real estate investor so I mostly contract my stuff out. But sometimes i need to roll up my sleeves and get down and dirty. Been trying to find ways of maximizing my bed space to carry extra stuff. 1st issue I'm trying to tackle is fitting a standard mower with 2 weed wackers in the back. The weed wackers are a tad longer than the bed with the door shut so I would have to put them in diagonally. Was thinking of building a platform so the weed wackers fit on the bottom which would then give me space to place the mower and other items on the top platform.
I came across this YouTube video which looks pretty cool. I like the fact that it can be taken apart easily and stored when not in use while not taking up much space. With something like this (pic below) I can rack the weed wackers to the sides.
Something like this is your solution. You can haul more weight and volume than you could put in a 3/4 ton truck and pull it with a 4 cylinder Tacoma if that is all you had. They are easier to load/unload and you don't beat up the bed with rough stuff. I hauled 2500 lbs of horse manure in the trailer today to use as fertilizer. I've hauled gravel, firewood and many other things. With really large logs or rocks I've used hand trucks to simply roll them up the ramp rather than try to lift them 3+' to get them in the bed.
I find it extremely rare that I can't fit something in the 5.5' bed and if I can't the 6.5' bed isn't enough bigger to help. With the tailgate down I'm about 2" shy of 8'. I can easily carry 10-12' lumber or kayaks in the truck without the trailer.
You didn't say how much $ you wanted to spend. My advise would be a small enclosed trailer. Can leave on location, keeps things dry, out of view from prying eyes, and easy enough to sell if you decide you don't want it anymore.
I don't mind paying for a product, but I'm a DIYr at heart so I would like to build something. Yes, the enclosed cargo trailer or trailer is a great option, but unfortunately my HOA will not allow it in my driveway and I don't have room in my garage.
Working on that build from the Youtube video and will post pics when complete.
Rack build complete. Tight fit and its going to be a pain if have to remove it and put it back it frequently. You can't beat the price. Just 2x4s. Now comes the challenge on how to configure it. 1st on the agenda are the string trimmer attachments. After numerous internet searches, I settled on these. All I need is to mount 2 f them, some these should be fine. Just need to jerry rig it to add them to the rack. The goal is to make everything removable so I can use this for camping, work, etc..
Haven't figured out a mount or found a mount at a reasonable price for a backpack blower. I saw this one by Green Touch, but its hard to swallow that price.
Project complete. In retrospect, there were a few things I would have done differently, but will take care of that on Truck Rack 2.0 in the future. For a cheap sturdy solution, this didn't come out too bad. The great thing is since I don't use it often, it stores easily on the side of my garage. What I like about this system is that its easily repaired from basic hardware found at all the big box stores.
Bear in mind I'm not the best carpenter. 1st problem I encountered was the rack swaying front and back due to using just 1 Hex bolt at the connections. That issue was solved when I added the screwed in vertical pieces on the sides.
I still need to figure out some sort of shelf to support some of the weight from the backpack blower. The other thing I'm not sure is an issue is I added the string trimmer holders with the engine part at the rear and the head towards the front. Looking around the neighborhood, I see landscapers having it reversed. I can only imagine its due to wind drag when traveling at high speeds. I can reverse it if needed without too much of a headache. Need to do more research to see if it really does matter which way the string trimmers are mounted. Thoughts anyone??
I didn't want to drill anything into my truck, so the whole thing is secured with ratchet straps. The bottom part of the string trimmer holders are not secured to the side walls of the truck. I didn't want to drill anything into the truck, so the cheap lazy solution now is to wrap the ratchet strap around them when tying the whole thing down to hte bed of the truck.
Biggest issue with this, is for a 1 person job, it does take some time to put it all together and take it all down. I painted the entire thing black so when I do leave it on for extended periods of time, it doesn't look horrible and blends in
If you build this, I would love to see your pics and any modifications you made!
That's pretty clever. It's hard to get used to seeing a treehouse-worth of lumber being used to haul stuff, rather than being hauled, in the back of a truck, but ingenuity like this is always interesting, nonetheless. For problems just like yours, that's why I built my bed rack, and precisely why I had to incorporate some Unistrut. I built it for the e-track, but wanted to add the strut for a platform to build off of later. If you are unfamiliar with Unistrut, it's basically an erector set for big boys. You can see the little blue cone nuts in the second picture. These slide up and down the entire length of the rail (typically in 1/4, 3/8, or 1/2-inch sizes) and can be used to mount angle brackets and more pieces of strut until you have your desired design. OR...you can pretty much drill a few holes into anything and mount it directly to the strut itself. This whole rack system uses only the boxlink mounting holes, and most people don't even notice it's there.
Just food for thought since you like to DIY things. This was a satisfying build for me. Even if you don't have a welder, a handy guy like you could figure out plenty of ways to get some track rails mounted back there.
That's pretty clever. It's hard to get used to seeing a treehouse-worth of lumber being used to haul stuff, rather than being hauled, in the back of a truck, but ingenuity like this is always interesting, nonetheless. For problems just like yours, that's why I built my bed rack, and precisely why I had to incorporate some Unistrut. I built it for the e-track, but wanted to add the strut for a platform to build off of later. If you are unfamiliar with Unistrut, it's basically an erector set for big boys. You can see the little blue cone nuts in the second picture. These slide up and down the entire length of the rail (typically in 1/4, 3/8, or 1/2-inch sizes) and can be used to mount angle brackets and more pieces of strut until you have your desired design. OR...you can pretty much drill a few holes into anything and mount it directly to the strut itself. This whole rack system uses only the boxlink mounting holes, and most people don't even notice it's there.
Just food for thought since you like to DIY things. This was a satisfying build for me. Even if you don't have a welder, a handy guy like you could figure out plenty of ways to get some track rails mounted back there.
that looks awesome. Trying to get an idea what your finished product will look like. Can you post some pictures of what you’re trying to do with this?
Thanks! I'm really happy with the way it came out. Basically, I built it to be the foundation of many different cargo management ideas all rolled up into one. I plan on building "attachments" (if you will), or different brackets and plates to facilitate different needs. E.g. a bracket to mount my bike securely, a few cages that can be installed to hold Plano boxes when I go camping, bulkheads, a means of attaching an overlanding rack and gear for off-highway adventures, a mounting surface for my LED light pods radio antennas, and basically anything else that you can drill holes to can be bolted up to this stuff. I have only installed my toolbox yet, and have no concrete plans past putting a few work lights and CB/dual band amateur radio antennas. But the whole idea here was to be able to have it easily adapt to literally whatever I wanted it to be able to do.
Here are a couple pictures of my toolbox mounted to the unistrut on the front of the bed, and a few other pictures I found online of some of the other things guys are doing with unistrut. You can almost do anything you can think of. They make little angle brackets with holes pre-drilled that allow you to build a "frame" from strut, cut to size, and fitted to whatever project lays before you. At a glance, it may seem like overkill when I already have the e-track, but strut can do a million other things.
The toolbox is the only thing I intend on running in the bed full-time. All of my other plans involve being able to easily remove whatever "thing" is in there until it's needed again.
If you search unistrut components, you'll see all the peripheral parts available (and if you look around you, you'll literally see strut used everywhere from warehouse sprinkler systems and wiring to highway electrical boxes and in server rooms for data comm).
F-150 Short Bed Storage Solution
