Need help trying to figure out how this guy folds his tarps

Yes the rail fold! I think this is how Maverick does theirs. It works great for windy days, and is quick.
If youve never done it before you
can "practice" or imagine it by folding a piece of paper or a towel at home.
Its alot like an accordian fold and you dont always have to take the time to lay your tarp flat after you get know the hook points that will be attached to the rubrail.
Its alot slower for me tarping the
load when tarps are folded this way because the center of tarp
gets lost easily vs a butterfly fold technique which is my normal method.
Im sure you could do this with a lumber tarp but it seems like itd be a few extra folds and 2xs as heavy in handling it to be efficient?

 

It's good for folding tarps on the wind.

 

Never tried it with lumber tarps. I would think it could be done. My guess is it would take a few more places hooked to the rail to make more of an accordian type fold. It is going to be heavy and may be hard to handle. May have to try a thing or two and see.

 

My theory for folding tarps is walk over to the truck first and slam your finger in the door. Gets you in the right mindset for anything tarp related

 

Great video and thanks for sharing!

I'm going to refer you back to what Riprap was saying, unfolding with lumber tarps will require you to walk the load and be quick to unfold the tarp vs a coil tarped indoors. Meaning you want to find and unroll directly on the centreline, and be able to kick off the 6ft drops/tail easily, and quickly in wind. The point I'm trying to make is, do you need a tarp easy to unfold or easy to fold... to me a lumber tarps priority is easy unfold.

Best of luck!

 

The rail method works great.

If your trailer has a bulkhead, you can drill and bolt on a large eye bolt. Then you can fold your tarps on the trailer and not in the mud. If no bulkhead on your trailer, grab a piece of steel or strong lumber that will fit in a stake pocket and attach an eye bolt to it. As you can guess, I hated rolling tarps in the mud.

 

Maverick teaches that in orientation but they say it only works for the 4' drop steel tarps.
One thing to note is that it folds your tarps inside out sort of. Say you have a 8 foot wide load that's 2 foot tall. If you fold your tarps the way I see most guys do it when you roll your tarps out on the load your sides are hanging down past the rail. When you fold them like in the original post the sides end up under the top on top of the load. You then pull down what you need and if your careful your sides remain folded nice and neat.

 

Here is a standard way to fold an 8' drop with flap.