For What It’s Worth

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