Is a cargo net in your appetite for a van or passenger vehicle? Graham Custom Truck Accessories, LLC and www.cargocatch.com are planning to release within the next few months a heavy duty passenger van cargo net kit for vertical cargo nets in the following vehicles:
Mercedes Sprinter
Dodge Sprinter
Ford Transit & Transit Connect
Dodge Caravan
As you may or may not know, we custom design and manufacture these vertical cargo nets for these vehicles and have been doing it for years. We generate multiple cargo net designs on a daily basis. Customers we have dealt with constantly tell us that they’re sick and tired of their metal barriers, too heavy, too difficult to take out, etc…or some of them have actually never used a metal barrier and prefer a cargo net of some sort that is easy to install and remove and is strong enough to withstand working loads of cargo in the event of an accident or cargo shift while driving.
Depending on the general mounting locations of the cargo nets which seem to be either directly behind the driver and passenger seats or behind a last row of seats just inside the back door, we will probably offer 2 different designs for each vehicle. We are currently in the process of organizing all of our engineering drawings and there are literally hundreds, so we want to make sure we cover all vehicles as much as creatively possible. After initial prototypes are made, we’ll start demoing and/or testing in various passenger vans. Once we determine a final design for each vehicle, they should be available for release shortly thereafter. If you know of any dealerships that may be interested, or van conversion shops, please have them contact us directly. We will be contacting all conversion shops and dealerships nationwide after the final designs are ready to ship, so we’ll be busy. Most of our customers have been small to large companies that use passenger vans for a certain cargo, or companies that actually shuttle people from one location to another. Example would be a tourist company or an airport shuttle company.
Do you know what really cracks us up about the cargo net designs we’ve made for these different passenger vehicles? A lot of the designs overlap some other vehicles. In other words, a customer might choose one design that actually fits in a completely different van than it was originally designed for. Here are the most popular drawings below for the Ford Transit (3), the Mercedes or Dodge Sprinter (2) and the Dodge Caravan (2):
CN-SN8-Spevco – Hi Roof Transit – thumbnail can be seen below or blown up by clicking these links
CN-MedRoofTransit – Medium Roof Transit
CN-SN-TC – Transit Connect
CN-SN8-2 – Hi Roof Sprinter
CN-SN-WVS – Med Roof Sprinter
CN-DGC2005wD – Dodge Caravan Option 1
CN-DGC2005S – Dodge Caravan Option 2
At the time we seem to be the only company willing to take on these custom projects that sometimes take weeks to complete if things change with respect to design due to many factors including body shop mods, anchors used, location of anchors, or angles of D-rings welded to drilled plates. We’ve spent years and lots of research on various vehicles, and we’re not done there yet. We still see newer versions of whatever passenger vans hitting the streets.
Most people who drive a Mercedes don’t have an issue shelling out another 600 dollars or more for a quantity one cargo net that will help keep them and/or their customers safe. It’s hard to put a price on somebody’s life, and it could possibly save you money on your insurance premiums as well as lowering your blood pressure in general. Just make darn sure you have that cargo net very well mounted and secured, because the strongest link of any cargo net is its weakest link. You need to make sure your hardware is properly installed and that the net is free of defects. Typically, our nets use webbing either 1 or 2″ webbing that carries between 3-6K lb breaking strength or 1-3K lb working load. We also have the option of using heavy duty 10-12K webbing in 2″ if it makes sense, for a minimal extra cost.
Traditionally, everybody’s gone custom for this and we’ve been at the forefront of that battle. Many people don’t want a heavy expensive and difficult to remove metal barrier, so they’ve gone with customizing their vans to accommodate whatever anchors in whatever locations. The cargo net could be installed directly behind the driver and passenger seats, or it could be behind a set of seats, or at the rear. Everybody’s had a different idea of what they’ve wanted and what types of anchors they’ll use, whether or not they have panels installed on their walls or not, etc…maybe they have something blocking this area or that. Bottom of the book is that we will continue to design a custom net for anybody to their specs, per their anchor locations, type of anchor they’re using, etc…L or E-track what have you, but it’s going to be a bit more expensive if you’re a new customer with a different design.
It takes sometimes weeks to finalize drawings given the customer’s ability to quickly and efficiently get us what we need, etc…so what we’re going to do is this. We’ll take all the most popular designs for all the vehicles we’ve done so far, and we’ve done hundreds of them, we’ll cross reference the designs, come up with a basic design by shrinking it down just a bit for example it will be the smallest net out of all of them, with extendable straps/cams/snap hooks in obvious places and most likely using floor anchors where applicable. It may be decided that we only go top to bottom, or floor anchors to top corners, who knows, but soon, we will have samples, including a carrying bag, marketing labels and D-rings included regardless of your need or not for them. There will also most likely be steel rings, either 1 or 2”, installed at either the top, bottom, sides, or all of the aforementioned, in able to allow the customer to have a multi-directional strap where and how they may or may not need it.
We hope to have something out asap. Thanks for reading, and sharing.
CargoCatch Current