carrying steel 20 footers on top of my Explorer

Sweet! - well thought out.

Ken

Maybe. With 1000 pounds of tension or so on the straps, there's quite a lot of frictional force between the tubes. You see piles of tube strapped down every day on big flatbed trucks, for example.

GWE

JR North wrote:

Around here a couple of the steel yards deliver for free a couple times a week, even to a residence. Have you asked?

Ned Simmons

Yup.

On Thu, 05 Oct 2006 18:31:01 -0700, with neither quill nor qualm, JR North quickly quoth:

So will 90% of all other pipe carrying setups, JR. Lots of things get launched in a collision, including people, trailers, equipment in the back of trucks, other vehicles hurtling over car bumpers, etc.

Shit happens. Why worry?

So, Grant. Did you mount a standard receiver up front there? And why aren't they black instead of galv? ;)

-- Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit. --e e cummings

That is a great plan. My friend has a 68 Ford pickup he has rigged with a very stout "lumber" rack that he can extend all the way to supports fixed to the front bumper. ( Made from 10 inch steel pipe.)

I got a free a 45 foot antenna tower that was in three sections and weighed close to 1500 lbs. He hauled it to my house on that rack.

One thing I might suggest is to wire a plug for a red lamp if you ever are going to drive at night or use a red flag during the daylight hours.

The front & rear receivers are standard. My town has a great hitch place, Mann's Eastside Welding, and they put them both on.

The receivers are black. But since I had a customer's order going to the galvanizing shop, I threw the outrigger parts in and got 'em hot dip galvanized for free (the customer's order was way under the minimum weight so even with my parts it was still the minimum cost).

As a matter of fact, pretty soon I'm going to have to go to the steelyard, the cheap picky one quite a ways from my house, and get both 20 footers and 2 4x8 sheets. To this point I've either pulled a trailer (I have access to a 5x9' utility trailer) or used my outriggers. Now I'm going to need to do both. So I'm working on making a tongue on the back that's 4" longer, which will be beveled at 45 degrees and drilled 3/4" for a light duty trailer ball. And I have another job going to the galvanizing shop, so I'll get that new part galvanized too, so it will match.

GWE

You're probably right, Justin. It's easy to sit in front of a keyboard and think of why something won't work. Well, I've taken a couple of dozen trips to the steelyard in the last 3 years or so using my outriggers, and have saved thousands of dollars by not owning or licensing/insuring/storing a truck or trailer. When I have a load up there I drive extra carefully, in fact I'm paranoid as heck. If I am just carrying something like 3 or 4 pieces of angle, I clamp those to the top bar using C clamps, which generate quite a bit of clamping force.

As a data point, today I drove home a 2x5 pile of square tubing, all oiled as new steel tube is, and it went on with a magnetic crane so all the ends were dead flat w.r.t. each other. When I got home, they were - well, you can see it in the pictures - still very even.

Grant

"Justin" wrote: 2 straps, each with 1000 lb of tension. A (generous) coefficient of

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I think it's safer than that. See if you can accept my reasoning: 1.) The tiedown straps make several turns around the load, so the friction force has to be multiplied by that number (sort of analogous to a block and tackle, where you count the ropes and multiply by the tension.

2.) If the load starts to slip (like a javelin being loaunched) it has to slide forward about fifteen feet before the forward tie-down loses its grip. In an accident, I wonder whether the deceleration will remain above the slipping "threshhold" long enough for the tail end of the load to come out of the forward tiedown. You might end up with the stuff resting on your hood, but probably not impaling that child in the stroller.

Interesting!

I saw this happen. A car stopped for a guy in a crosswalk and the plumber behind her stopped, but one of the pipes on his rack didn't. It went thru the back window and her skull. A simple plate in front of the pipes could have prevented that.

"JR North" wrote: in message news:qPudnerkutAekLrYnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@seanet.com...

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ And they always have something called a "headache bar" (I think.) It's a metal barrier behind the cab which is to keep the load from shifting forward and crushing the driver.

"Ignoramus7272" wrote: a similar thing happened to a lesbian friend of mine. she remained alive due to pure luck. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Couldn't have been pure luck. Probably related to the fact that she was a lesbian. (Just kidding--but seriously, why mention that she is a lesbian?)

Same thing my uncle uses to take tipi poles

\~eph289 to freight line to ship to customer.

Wes S