Pittsburgh-area inventor Graham
Hodgetts had to replace much of the
gravel in his 1,000-foot-long driveway
every summer after the spring rains. He
preferred using his pickup to hiring a
dump truck, but he was tired of having
to shovel and spread the gravel by
hand. So he invented The Loadhandler,
a conveyor system for pickups that
looks like a souped-up window shade
with a hand crank. It consists of a roller
mechanism wound with a highstrength
woven-polyethylene drag
sheet, a pair of mounting brackets, and
some adjustable straps. You simply slip
the brackets onto the tailgate of your
pickup (no tools are needed), tighten
the straps, pull the sheet across the
truck bed, and load the truck. When
it's