92497pmu

My brother got sick of concrete blocks, sand bags tearing, and other BS problems.

He bought a piece of steel road plate 1.5" x 4' x 8' for his Dodge 2500 mega cab from a scrap/ salvage yard for about $100 if I remember correctly. (The steel plates that city road crews use temporarily to cover ditches, construction, etc)

He cut the plate in half to 4x4 plate, welded back together to fit in the 6.5' bed, cut a hole to allow his gooseneck ball hitch to stick up through and keep plate from moving.
Welded some D-rings to corners so we can lift out with a tractor and/or as extra tie-downs in truck.
Covers it with a rubber bed mat.
It squats the Dodge down a bit and I think he said it weighs 1,200 or 1,500 lbs- this truck does amazing in the snow.

Pros-
Takes up negligible bed space.
Awesome weight right over the rear weels (and we run 4 studs on all trucks)
Doesn't slip or move.

Cons-
Probably too much weight for a F150, but it's a starting point for other ideas, you could use 1/2 a plate instead or perhaps a thinner steel plate
You'll need a tractor, fork truck or other hoist to put in/ out in fall and spring.

Gradeless

Back in High School in Central Wisconsin if you had a pickup when it snowed really hard (those where the days when almost every truck was 2-wheel drive) you just shoveled snow into the bed until you got as much weight as you wanted to shovel. You then had rear weight. The heavier the snow the faster you could get your weight in. If you wanted to dump it you just opened the tail gate and pushed the snow out. You did not want it to freeze into a said bock of ice, Just as long as you needed it and then you removed it Tonneau Covers and Bed Caps weren't common but snow in the bed solved the problem of traction. My that was 50 years ago. I now leave the F-150 Super Crew ecoboost in the garage on a trickle charge and take the Pacifica to Florida in Ocotber and everything is fine in April when I return from Florida.

tomb1269

If you want to make a weight box take some plywood and 2x4 or 2x6 and build a box using the 2x6 as the sides of the box as well as cutting to fi from side to side in bed liner etc to stop box from sliding left and right. Then fill ox with concrete. Strngly suggest installing hardware into ox so that box can be placed in truck bed and then stabilizing 2x4 or 2x6 can be bolted/screwed to it.
Finally, take a look at some of the testing done on the Cooper Discoverer ATW +4. It is an all season with a lower temp rubber, better sipping. It has been tested to exceed Canadian Mtn/Snow requirements. It stops nearly 100% better than standard AT and takes only a few more meters than a full snow. In some tests it out performs the snow tire in winter driving tests.

gbynum

when I was a youngster, a friend of my dad's bet me that a bucket of wet sand weighed less than a bucket of dry sand; I said "no way" (or no weigh?).

If you take a gallon bucket and fill it with sand from an outdoors pile that has seen rain, it will weigh less than the same size of dry sand.

If you add water to the dry sand, you are heaviest, and if you dump it, you cannot put it back in.

Dry packs much tighter.

It was interesting that he later said this didn't apply at the beach ... the corners are off the individual pieces from tumbling, and wet packs almost as tight as dry; wet did weigh more.

2011Eco

50lb bags of water softener salt

I have a water softener system at home and every year I need some bags so I just buy a couple hundred pounds, leave them in bed all winter for weight and then use them after the winter is over in the spring/summer/fall.

95stepside

Sounds like a good way to rust out a bed

nfldfordman

..

tenny80

I am pretty sure he's leaving it in the bag lol.

Seriously though is it really necessary with a 4x4? I just got my truck this year but the 2 times i've had to drive in snow i put it in 4 high and had no troubles at all.

95stepside

Bags get holes, salt gets wet, sal****er gets all over bed. I've seen it, my cousin bought a 2wd ranger that basically didn't have a bed floor or rear frame due to the po using salt as his winter weight.
Of course if we're talking about a truck with a weather proof cap/cover, this is less relevant. Just throwing the info out there

WestsydeGuy

I am often carrying around 160 gallons of Jet A1, parts and tools, pails of lube etc. So never had the problem of no weight.
Almost always somewhere between 500 and 2000 pounds in the bed.