I once pulled into the home depot parking lot, and saw a guy load 4 2x4'x10's into his new shiny lifted with oversize wheels and low profile tires shortbed quadcab pickup, with the tail gate down. The 2x4s were visibly twisted, and I just knew.
I figuratively, broke out the popcorn and watched the stupidfest unfold out my windshield.
He then opened a package of ratcheting straps, and took a few minutes figuring out how to release them from the plastic packaging and how to make them the right length.
I really should have started videoing at this point.
all 2x4s were flat side by side for a 14 inch width, 1.5 inches tall, and hanging out the back of the truck a good 4.5 to 5.5 feet.
First he uses the hooks in the back of the cab corners, and the ratcheting strap pulled tight as a guitar string, hovering about an inch over the 2x4's, doing nothing.
He then gets the bright idea of wrapping the strap around the tailgate, and even found some rags to protect his paint, and started tightening, but not too much. he then jumped in the bed and ran another strap over the ends of the 2x4s, which was hovering above the 2x4's, and stuffed a few rags under it to exert 'some' downward pressure.
Then he jumped out of the bed, and went to town on the ratcheting strap, and bent the metal edges of his tailgate and there was a 'booong' type of noise which I suspect was the metal exterior of the tailgate folding inward
Then the cursing began, and I noticed another Audience member was 2 cars over watching this unfold, as he was guffawwing.
Mr numb nuts then tested to at least see how tight the 2x4s were held down, and of course with so little leverage pulling them to the bed of the truck, could be easily moved side to side and out.
But he was over it as the guffaws grew louder and louder, and he jumped behind the wheel, backed out of the parking spot, braked slowly, and slowly accellerated away. the lumber stayed put. At this point I got out of my van and got to where I could see him waiting at the traffic light to leave the parking lot.
The Guffawer was not far away, tears in his eyes from laughing so hard and we both walked towards the carnage soon to come.
Light turns green, numbnuts gets half way through the intersection, begins the turn and accellerates, and all the 2x4s dump on the ground( and 2 of the remaining ratcheting straps), and the 'bro truck' then showed us how loud and fast his truck was as he tore out of there.
We went and collected the 2x4s from the intersection, the nearby drivers who stopped so we could collect the wood, were mostly surprisingly tolerant and patient.
The 2x4s were total rejects. I cant imagine anybody actually selecting this wood. We put them out of the way near the entrance and each took one ratcheting strap from the plastic packaging.
