For those who have a trailer and the space to store it, life is good. For those who have a pickup and no trailer, here is a Backyard solution at a reasonable cost and can be done with one person.

Items you will require are:

1 – 1” x 4 x 8 sheet of plywood
3 – Crazy carpets or
1 – Old truck box liner
1 – Runner kit
1 – 12’ length of 1/16” cable or ¼” heavy duty rope
2 – Closed ring hooks
2 – Lead crimps

I chose real plywood as it stands up longer and more durable than other choices. Carefully staple the crazy carpets or screw the old box liner to one side of the plywood. Box liner is preferred because it has less friction than a crazy carpet when sliding in and out of the truck box.

The box liner or crazy carpet will be turned to face downward towards the box of the truck. A ski runner kit can be obtained from Royal Distributing online and is installed on the top side. If there is a couple of small pieces left, install them across where the track first comes onto the plywood for traction.

This material is the same as box liner material and is for the skis to slide along when loading the snowmobile on the plywood. The same runner kit can also be used for steel bed trailers as well. The actual purpose of this kit is to prevent the runner bars on the bottom of the skis from digging into the bed on which the skis are running across smoothly and preventing damage.

Last but not least, we need something to secure the plywood from sliding out of the box of the truck while driving the snowmobile up into place. You can either use rope or cable. I have had good luck with the rope and it is not as rigid.

Install the rope under the ski runners as per the image. Leave it about 12” longer incase an adjustment is required. Install the hooks and crimp down the lead stops which hold the rope on the hook.

As you can see by the picture the length of rope or cable will be determined on where it can be attached. See the next post on this topic for a video to now see how much easier 1 man loading now is.