Top Truck Tips for Summer
Toyota’s Midnight Rider Tundra Tailgater has to be the ultimate pickup for the summertime
Summer’s here and it’s time to get your ride ready to make the most of the sunshine. Your Jeep or your truck offers far more potential for summer fun than sitting in a Saturn or cramped up in a Camry. We’ve put together a few summer truck tips that will max out your enjoyment while the sun shines.
Grinnin’ and Grillin’
We all know that summer is the time for cookouts and BBQs. Cooking outdoors has been man’s rite of passage since we lived in caves, and there’s no better way to bring a smile to everyone’s face than with some finger lickin’ grilled food.
A BBQ is an essential for any self-respecting tailgater
Top Tip! If you have a pickup then you can make BBQ a mobile meal to be enjoyed anywhere by stowing your grill in the truck bed. With a couple of tie-down straps you’ll be in business.
Keeping it Cool and Easy
While your grill is getting the food hot you’ll want something to keep your drinks and the coleslaw cool. A portable fridge freezer is the very thing to ensure your sandwiches and beverages stay cold until you need them.
Top Tip! Nothing says summer more than ice-cold dinks, so a portable fridge freezer is an essential on any summer road trip.
Clean up the cab with easy cab storage solutions
Now you’ve got the food and drinks sorted, why not get your truck’s cab cleaned up? All that fishing and hunting gear, tools, bungee straps, chains, tie-downs and other useful things sure get tangled up quickly, which is where additional storage comes in.
Top Tip! Dashboard organizers and overhead or behind-the-seat storage consoles really clean up the cab. Don’t spend hours rummaging for what you need – get organized, make life easy for yourself and spend more time enjoying the summer.
Save Gas on Long Trips
Summer means spending time with family and friends, but that can also mean long journeys. Whether you’re taking the kids to Disneyworld or visiting relatives a couple of counties over, you’re going to be putting the miles in. An air induction kit will improve your engine’s performance and improve its gas mileage, and a tonneau cover will clean up a vehicle’s aerodynamics which pays off at the pump. Even making sure your tires are inflated at the correct pressure will save you gas and therefore money, so with a few simple tweaks you can spend less money on gas and spend more time having summer fun.
Top Tip! Beat the oil companies by making some simple fuel saving measures to your truck or SUV and keep more of your money in your wallet instead of spending it at the gas station.
Don’t Try This at Home…
Finally one tip for summer we recommend you don’t try… The pickup pool (or redneck spa, if you prefer) might seem like an easy and tempting thing to do, but you could be facing hefty repair bills and even hospital bills if you do.
A typical truck bed can hold 60 cubic feet of water, which weighs about 3,500lbs. Turning the back end of your truck into a pool puts way more weight over the axle than it was ever designed to hold and could easily break something that’ll mean an expensive trip to the shop. Far worse, if you try and release a pickup’s tailgate when it’s holding back 3,500lbs of water, it can easily snap downwards and snap your wrist. Even if it doesn’t break your wrists it can just as easily break the hinges on your tailgate, and to see just how wrong a pickup pool can go, watch what happens to the fool in the video to the right (note: video contains strong language).
Have fun this summer and make the most of your truck, Jeep or SUV.
By John Bone
Posted on August 14th, 2013