A Money-Saving Tip for Protecting Your Truck Bed

Get a little help from your friends

This is a tip from John Ross of Bethel, Connecticut. John has figured out that if you get to know the guys in the back of the lumberyard, you can get one of the tarps that they use to protect lumber shipments, particularly the trim lumber that they get. These tarps are all rip-stop nylon, and they come 12 feet wide and 16 feet long. They wrap them up at the lumberyard he goes to, and they give them to the locals if they ask the right questions.

Keep your tarp where you want it

Once you have your free tarp, spread it out in your truck with enough slack at the sides so that when you start loading debris into it, the tarp doesn't slide down into the bed. We want to make sure this doesn't get pulled over when adding debris, so what are we going to do? Well, let me tell you. Every truck has stake holes in the top of the bed so you could put in some sort of extender to hold a larger load. Bring the tarp over, cut wedges that fits into those holes, lay the tarp over, put the wedges in the holes, and that tarp is going to stay put while you put that debris in there.