Opinions wanted swaping timber tray with alloy

Hello Brian

Unless you do a lot of driving in hilly areas I don't think you will see much difference in economy .

The beauty of a heavily built tray is that they can handle 200ltr drums without damage . A lot of ute owners use their vehicles for drum and other heavy load carriage so when the time comes to sell your ute you will have an advantage if it has a heavy duty tray . Same comment for the drop sides .

Sell the alloy tray and buy oil shares to offset your fuel bill and hedge against price rises , Woodside may suit .

Why bother ? 135kg or so might just give you 1 poofteenth of a klm beter fuel economy ,but when your 100kg mate and 5 cartons of beer want a lift you will wish that you hadnt played around with the springs , LOL ,

You will fdind with the alloy tray you will have less traction from the rear tyres, they become to light in the axxse
Cheers Pete

Brian, I think it has a lot to do with how close you are to GVM when fully loaded. The load carrying capacity of most of the smaller utes (Hilux, Rodeo, Navara etc) is around 900 KG. If that's about right for your vehicle, 135KG is 15% of that. Not insignificant.

In my case, between LRT, bullbar, fidges, batteries, boat, etc, I push the limits of my GVM. If I had an easy and cheap way to reduce my load by 135KG without reducing the 'important' things I carry, I'd be into it like a rat up a drain pipe.

Thanks for the replies, decided to stick with what I have as you raised some of my concerns I was also wondering on.

For the little gain and the cost of changing, was really in the end not worth the thought process :).

So now can save for HF radio and other stuff.

Thanks again

Brian