My wife saw a device in a garden catalogue called the Load Handler which is supposed to turn your pickup truck into a dump truck. Essentially, it is a tough sheet of fabric which you put down in your truck bed and dump your load of mulch, gravel, whatever on top of it. To unload, you drop the tailgate and turn a crank which rolls the sheet to the back of the truck, pulling the load along with it.
For $150, it seems too good to really work as advertised. I wondered if anyone has tried one of these and how you liked it. Details can be found at
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I just posted their website for general information; I'm not affiliated with the Load Handler people, just thinking of buying one if they really work.
I was surprised to see that epinions.com and nextag.com didn't have a single review for the Loadhandler. I've seen it advertised for long enough! Here's some reviews on Cabela's web site. I figure if Cabela's carries it it has to be pretty good. The reviews seem to agree.
I got 10 of these at a warehouse sale for 10 bucks each. I sold 5 of them and kept the others, so I have used them quite a bit. They are pretty good for what they do. Do NOT put a couple of yards of gravel or road base on them and expect to be able to just crank the stuff out of your truck! But if you do put a couple of yards of stuff on there, you can shovel out most of it, then crank out the remaining with ease.
If you are moving, you can fairly easily crank out the boxes so that you don't have to get up in the bed to get the farthest ones or reach over the side. Point loads (chairs, refrigerators) tend to put holes in the fabric and make it hard to move. Distributed loads (boxes, mulch, dirt)are fairly easy to handle. The thing won't move a ton of material for you though. It will easily move 500 pounds.
They have lasted pretty well with very heavy use. The fabric gets torn up after a while and when it gets the right number of preforations and you try to pull too much weight, its done. So, as they age, you have to lessen the load that they are working with. (If you could sew up the holes, it would probably last for a few years. I haven't looked into this because I still have 2 unused ones.)
I wouldn't have bought one new, but with the good deal that I found, I have to say that I like them. They are easy to install and remove, not so easy to store, but not that hard. I wish it were easier to carry around in the truck, for those times that you get an unexpected load, but that is life.
One pointer; If there is a good distance between the tailgate and the load and the load is heavy, when you crank on the handle the tailgate will have a tendency to rise up and try to close. I put a couple of
2x4s cut the correct length at an angle and wedged into place to keep the tailgate flat.
Have one for my Ranger. I've used it for mulch, pea gravel, and sand. As other posters said, it probably won't move a ton, but it moves anything I can safely load in the Ranger. Ditto the comments about the tailgate lifting.
It's easy to put on and take off.
Only one complaint, and it's not the load handler's issue. Since on the Ranger part of the wheel wells are in the bed, the loadhandler belt is narrower than the wide parts of the bed. It will pull out the center of the load, but not the sides next to the wheel humps. Not a big deal. On a pickup with no wheel humps in the bed it won't be an issue.
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