The Pious belongs to the lady of the house. It gets 45mpg, but I (almost) never drive it. I drive a Toyota Echo (40mpg) and use the Ranger (18mpg on a good day) only for chores that require a truck. It's 5 years old and has <35k so you can see it doesn't get daily use. Oh, and FWIW, my mirth and amusement increase along with the gas prices over the fact that many of you drive humongous bigazz gas guzzlers
jfruser, thank you for posting that setup. I like it and wouldn't have thought of including the rubber grommets. It would probably work really well without the redundancy, and you're right, that box isn't going anywhere.
btw, it's not that I don't care about the bed getting beat up, it's just that I'm too cheap to spend hundreds $$ on some spray on RhinoLinex . It seems to me you could buy a whole 'nother bed for what that coating costs. Besides, I've got a heavy duty mat that keeps stuff from sliding around and does protect the bottom of the bed from doinks. Now, I do have some creases, scrapes and chipped paint along the rails that I'm not real happy about. Maybe I'll spring for some cheapo rail caps.
Mike, thanks for the tractorsupply link. They look to have good prices.
fistful, if you lock the cab doesn't that lead the thief to think there's something valuable in there worth breaking the window for?
And, I had a brainstorm. The light bulb above my head flashed on (actually it's a CFL). The reason for the portable box is so that it can be removed if it takes up too much room for carrying other stuff. Well, how about just putting the other stuff
on top of the space the box occupies? IOW, why not build some sides out of 1/2 or even 3/8 plywood? The bed is 16" deep, so the sides would be the same, going up from the rails. Bolt, or even nail, the plywood to some stakes. Then add two vertical strips, like 1 x 1's on the ends of each side to accomodate a piece of plywood that just slides in. Voila! The carrying capacity is doubled.