During the Dust Bowl storms of the Great Depresssion, many farmers left their ruined Oklahoma and Texas farms and headed for California on Route 66 in their overloaded run-down automobiles. See the movie "The Grapes of Wrath". Hal
Whether just hauling junk or really moving from one place to another, that's pretty much a common sight around my neighborhood. Since there is an over abundance of pick-em-up trucks, the attitude seems to be that "U-Haul's are for sissies". The more macho guys do not even use tie downs and just let everything sway and rattle until something eventually ends up in the middle of the street.
@Bobby Cole I was heading northbound on I-17 going to work, in Phoenix, as I came up behind a pickup with an extension ladder braced against the tailgate, ladder extending up over the cab. I may have been 8 lengths back when the tailgate jerked open, the ladder quickly sliding back down and off the truck! Now I had a 65 mph aluminum ladder sliding crazily on the pavement in front of me! I quickly perceived I could jerk over left one lane, figuring the slight crown present might cause the ladder to slide to the right. In seconds, folks around me saw the ladder sliding, and they, too, dodged; no one hit it, or anything else! The ladder may have slid for 10 seconds or more as it wound up on the right shoulder which means it slid along for several hundred feet. My friend and co-worker, Bruce, saw an incident even more terrifying. A pickup with no tailgate at all was hauling a V-8 engine, complete, when it bounced out of the truck and began rolling and bouncing within the traffic flow! Again, by miracle perhaps, no one hit it. Frank