Too cool for a headache rack?

Only a fool piles chains in a box. Mine store neatly in 1 qt rubber feed bowls...1 chain per bowl, stacked neatly in the box. Binders are standing in a bucket in the box. Straps are neatly rolled up in a milk crate in the box. Also have edge protection, coil racks, and some ratchet straps in there. I have yet to see a headache rack that could hold even 1/4 of what I have stored neatly in that box that wouldn't block the rear window...and the box was a fraction of the cost of even a cheap, low-grade headache rack.

I don't see any reason to waste money on an inferior storage solution.

 

Picture please of stacked one quart bowls with chains in them.

 

They are not 1 quart size.
This is the correct feed bowl for a 3/8x16’.

 

Ok, so maybe they are the 2 qt ones...all I know is they are the smallest ones my local farm store sells.

 

I think I found a home for my headache rack, I'm going to trade it for a lift axle. All this talk about cheezy aluminum, I'm going to build one out of steel, run the exhaust through it, waddayathink?

 

How long of chains fit in them rubber pails. I like that idea.

 

They're 20', and I have a mix of 5/16 & 3/8 chains, and obviously the 3/8 fills the dish a little more than the 5/16. Most farm stores sell both feed bowls and chains...just buy the size bowls that holds the size chain you'll be keeping in it.

 

I do not remember the exact year they changed all the securement laws, but prior to that you had to either have a headache rack or bulkhead to haul a load on an open trailer.
My international is short and has the single exhaust behind the sleeper, I built a rack just for show that missed the exhaust pipe and still close to the cab, after I was nailed for it. I never liked the looks of it so removed it when the law changed.
A month or two later the dot at the Tok scales tried to shut me down for not having one, we went round and round over it for over an hour with 2 of them steady in their books, before they finally admitted I was right.

While I didn't like the rack, it did save the back wall of my sleeper, a couple of years of running the alcan it now looks like it has been in a major hailstorm. lol

A couple of tanker only companies up here does not run headache racks, but glues that rubberized foam that is 1/2 in thick on the backs of their sleepers, just for that reason.

 

May not stop them but will definitely make sure it doesn’t cut clean thru the cab and possibly kill you. Instead it’ll make all the force spread more even to the back of the cab so the cab can absorb more of the impact before failure.

 

My cousin had a driver run off the road and hit a culver with a load of pipe in a K100, the pipe went through the headache rack and one joint went through the sleeper, but not through the upholstery. lol It did jerk the drives out from under the truck though.