Economic Adaptation

As you all may know we are starting to run out of rivers close by, which means we are having to drive farther to get to new exciting waters. With times being the way they are we need to spend less on our trips. One way I think we can cut back is with fuel expenses, so for the past few weekends I've been working on adding wooden racks to Dad's car hauling trailer. In the past we've been using a cattle trailer with racks to haul all the rafting gear from place to place. This trailer works fine, but it has a couple of down sides. One downside is that it's 3 to 4 feet off the ground so it's a long way up to load things into, also the opening is small and the racks go up at least 8 - 10 feet so you can only load from one place. The second down side is wind resistance, which is the real economic crisis. Dad's truck that normally gets over 20 miles to the gallon when it's not pulling anything, but add that trailer and the mileage drops to 11. I'm hoping with the addition of the 2 foot racks we can use this other trailer. The trailer has a much lower profile which will reduce the drag and also allows for easier loading where the back end is a foot or less off the ground. Dad also welded about 15 "D" rings to the trailer to strap things down with and steps for easy access over the sides, making loading and unloading much easier. One more good thing is that this trailer is big enough to haul one fully rigged raft where the other one could not.
Here's my nephews helping me add the last coat of paint to the trailer.