Pickup trucks are great. They have room to haul stuff we need to carry, and life just wouldn't be the same without them. If there is one downfall to a truck, it's the driving habits when it's not loaded down. The lack of weight in the cargo area can make a peppy truck squirrely around corners, ride harshly on rough roads, and be downright dangerous on slick or icy roads. In the past, truck owners have commonly resorted to sandbags or cinderblocks to add a little weight, but who wants that type of unrestrained weight rolling around in the back of your bed?
We wanted to simulate a loaded bed during some testing procedures, and we wanted a considerable amount of weight, but we didn't want cement, sandbags, or 55-gallon drums strapped down in the back.
Made of a super-strong polyvinyl backed by a woven nylon mesh, the ShurTrax all-weather traction bags are designed specifically for pickup beds. Not only that, they can hold more than 400 pounds of water, but also 500 pounds of cargo on top of them! And since these ShurTrax traction bags have been tested in well over 100-degree heat (by us) and down to minus 40 degrees (by them), we know they'll be OK all year 'round, even frozen!
The ShurTrax all-weather traction bags are available for fullsize trucks, compact trucks, and now even SUV cargo areas. Our ShurTrax fullsize bags worked great in testing. The water bags made a significant difference for us in the back of the trucks, simulating hundreds of pounds of cargo, and also gave us better traction when we filled them up to try them out on slick roads.
Note how the ShurTrax bag...
Note how the ShurTrax bag is divided up to make different water chambers to prevent sloshing around in a corner. Since there are smaller passages between the bag divisions instead of one giant watersack, the water contained in the ShurTrax does not just immediately pile up in the corner of the bag when in a turn.
The ShurTrax bag comes with...
The ShurTrax bag comes with a hose connection fitting to make it easy to fill up the bags. Simply screw the connection onto the hose, and then put it on the pull-out spout. We filled our bag for 5 minutes and got 400 pounds in the bag.
Though the water weight held...
Though the water weight held the ShurTrax bags in place in the truck beds through almost any driving conditions we could think of, there are brass grommet tie-down spots at each corner of the bags to strap it down. These help ensure that no movement will take place, even in an accident.