Tying a Load Safely and Securely!

Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. Today I'm going to show you how to safely and securely tie down a load in your truck or trailer and make it easy to untie. Alright, a common task around the home, whether you live in the city or out in the country, is securing a load. Something you bought from the store, something you're hauling for a friend, something you're taking to the store. It might be in this case in the second part of the video here we'll show you how to tie down propane tanks or irregular items. In this case we're using long items here, a mix of boards and some PVC pipe and that sort of thing. I'm going to show you very quickly how to tie this down and make it easy to untie. So the first thing I like to start with is a medium-sized rope for medium-sized loads. Heavy-duty loads, I'm probably going to use webbing straps or ratchet straps, that sort of thing. That's another video. But for today, medium-sized nylon base rope. This rope is really easy to work with. I always keep it ready to go for the next load. When I untied the last load, I just put it into a set of loops and wound around the middle and tucked the end back through it. So it's ready to go when it falls apart and it's ready to go. This rope is really supple. It's easy to work with. It doesn't twist too much. So we're going to start with that. The first thing we need to do is attach this to one side of the device. In this case the truck bed. There's a loop on the other corner here. And I'm just going to tie this on with a series of half hitches. Two half hitches. I'll show you how we do that very quickly. This is a basic rope tie that is used. And you may know already how to do this. But you need to just tie this. What I'm doing is just going down one side and back the other with the end. Take a right turn and go around. When I pull that, that's what I get. I'm going to pull that against the attachment point and I'm going to just repeat. Now obviously when you become skilled at this and fast, you're not going to do it in this almost wooden mechanical way I'm showing you. But for clarity, I'm showing you how that goes together. So when that's tied, you can see there's a loop against a loop right there. And that will not give. As you can see, I'm shaking the camera. I'm shaking the whole truck here right now. So that will not give. But it unties very easily just by reversing the direction of the rope tie that you just did. Now what we're going to do is take this across the top of the load. The reason I take it across the top of the load is that I'm actually going to exert pressure down on the tailgate and secure it very well there. And I'm not just going to go across the top and tie it. The reason is, if I did that, that would allow the movement of the load back and forth, which we're eliminating with this method I'm going to show you. So all we're going to do is we're going to take this around and go back around. Now here's the beauty of this system. You notice I've got different items here. I've got some boards under there. I've got some PVC pipe. This system takes into account different types of materials and shapes. And it doesn't care because what we're going to do is entrap the whole thing around this loop. By doing it this way here, we have a nice, secure bundling of the entire load. Now this is what I'm going to do right here. I don't have to keep it tight under pressure. I'll apply pressure later. Simply taking the end of the load here, excuse me, the rope, putting it through the loop that's on the other corner of there. So you can see I'm against that right now. Now here's the really cool thing. Some of you may have tied a loop in here where you take something and you go like this and you tie a loop and do that sort of thing. And that works very well for what I'm going to show you. The problem is it's hard to untie. And so there's a superior way to do it that makes this thing almost fall apart afterwards. All I'm going to do is up further away from the attachment point here is I'm going to just do like this and rotate. That's all I'm doing. See there, I'm winding a loop into this. Once I have that loop, I take the other end of my rope, put a loop through the loop. See there? I'm going to shorten that up because I don't really need much. Now that becomes my attachment point. There's my other end of the rope. I'm just going to put it through there and thread back in the direction of the other attachment point. Notice what's happened here. As I pull this, this just all tightens more and the whole load now is getting tightened down. And I can... See there? So I can get that very tight. The only thing I need to be careful is I don't overexert it here because there's an incredible amount of pressure right here. You can literally cut this rope in half if I was sitting there sawing back and forth. Just get it good and tight where everything's not moving. Look at this. Literally, it's moving the truck with the downward pressure here of what's going on here. Now, here's the cool thing on this. To keep this tight, all I need to do because there's an extreme amount of leverage by this rope going back in the direction almost 180 from where it's coming, all I need to do is pinch that. Notice, with just my... And this is moderate pressure. I still have all that. Now, how do I tie it off? This is how. Create that loop just like this. Come out here, reach through the loop, pull that, and go backwards against your finger. Bang. Done. Now, to extra secure it, you can simply do that and do it loosely. You've got some extra rope here. I usually do, you know, just some loops around this just to use it up so it's not, you know, waving in the breeze. Now, here we've just secured this load very tightly. And by the way, a lot of states have laws against unsecured loads. And the reason is it's fairly common for a load like this to get blown out or you take a hard corner and now there's debris on the road and it's led to all sorts of tragedies, expenses for other people, loss of life. And we certainly want to avoid that. It's not your responsibility to do this and do it well. But you want to make it convenient for yourself as well. So now here we have this great load. This thing's not going to go in there. It's tied down. Now you get home and it's time to untie it. And what you don't want is something like this where you go, honey, where's the knife? Because it's too hard to untie. Well, all you do in doing ropes is just reverse what you did. Just back everything out, pulling the opposite direction. And here we are. We're right back to where we're now at this rope here. Now, here's the beauty of this. All's I'm going to do is back that loop out. Back this loop out also. Now because that tail's there, notice I can just pull that. Out it goes. Bam, it's loose. I'm going to take that out. Now, here's my very, very favorite part. Gone. No untying. No cutting it loose. No getting a fork or an awl or something to work it out. It just comes out automatically. Now you can stow your rope here. Now, let's show you how you tie another kind of load. I'm going to show you how to tie in some propane tanks or some empty fuel tanks you're taking down to fuel. You certainly don't want those skidding around the back of your truck. Let's take a look at that. Okay, here we have a different kind of load. Instead of boards going out across the tailgate, in this case, I'm getting her take a run down to the town and get some propane in these cylinders. And I've got a gas tank I need for my chipper. So I want to be able to secure these here. I like tying them against the tailgate to make sure the tailgate is secure. I like them here just so I'm not having to lift them in and slide them around. This also makes this easy to take out at the gas station. You should never fuel a gas can in the vehicle itself. You can have a static discharge. So you're always going to take that out, set it on the ground, fuel it there, and then you're going to place it back in. And of course, you can open the tailgate to slide it in, set it here, and put this right back against here. So I'm going to keep this all closed here. Now, here's how I'm going to do this. We're going to use the same attachment point that we had here before. I could simply run the rope through all the way over here and then kind of come around the front and tie it off. And we're going to use that securement in the method I was going to show you, but not this part here. And the reason why you just run it through there like that is just for an extra path over there tying things together. But it doesn't work very well because things can slide back and forth up and down the rope. So instead, what I do is I create a loop at each item. Just going to create a loop, bring the tail through, pull that loose end through here, come to the next item, create a loop again, pull the long item through it. And again, you're doing things that make it real easy to untie. There's the loop. Simply going to pull through there. Now, what I've done is secured all these together. And I can just put moderate pressure because this is not really where the tying is. It was just a path to get over to the second loop. Down in the corner of the truck here, obviously, I have another attachment point. I'm going to take the end of the rope, put it through there, and come back towards the other, but not over the top. I'm securing this to the back. So I'm just going to go down around the front like this and go back through this loop with the loose end. This will all be clear in just a second here. And now I have my attachment point across the front of these. Now, I'm going to use my same trick again here. I'm just going to reach in here someplace and put my finger like that and start twisting the rope. So, see there, I'm just rotating around until I've got that. Then I'm taking another section there, create a loop, and put the loop through. The loop, I just tied my finger pretty tight. There we go. Just going to put a loop through there just by reaching through and pulling. If you want to see that clearer, I could create the loop first and put it through there like this. And now I have something to tie with. I'm going to put this loose end right here through the loop and pull back against the side here. I'm going to let this fall down until it's at the front of things. You can see it now creating pressure. And I'm going to pull hard back against that. Again, hear it? Got plenty of pressure. All's I need to do is pinch that and I'm going to go ahead and just tie around again like this. Notice here, all's I'm doing is getting that loop, pulling back. There you're done. And as I showed you earlier in the video here, all's I'm going to do to reverse everything, if you want to untie all this, you just keep pushing the rope backwards the way you came. This comes undone very quickly for when I take it in for these items to be filled. I can reload it back in. It's backed by the tailgate safe and secure. I'm Dirt Farmer Jay. From DirtFarmerJay.com If you like what you saw today here, like the video, better yet, subscribe to our channel. And if you have any comments or questions on this technique, or you want more clarity on something, or you have something to offer in the way of commentary or experience, feel free to do so. We look forward to hearing from you. Another thing you want to make sure you do after you've properly secured the load is to put a flag on it. Again, this is state law in many of the places, many states, that require you to be able to do this. This is a little device that Dirt Farmer Maggie did. She just came up with one of these bungee cords, did a, tied on one of the home center flags on it, which are usually out in the tying station in the loading area. And we just keep these in the truck and it becomes really easy to flag the load. In this case here, we've got a piece of rough sawn cedar, 1x12, and I'm just going to take that, snap it around there, bam, we're done. And it just makes it safe and secure and the next time, I can just pull that off of there and you can shorten it up or tie it through or you can do a few different things. Just keep one of these handy as well. MUSIC