roping and sheeting

dafdave:
Iwas tought never to rope or strap over a flysheet as it defeats its purpose I.E. to lift slightly like a balloon over the load,keeping the load free of water.I was also told roping down over corners could also cause minute holes making the sheet porous,and also never use one on steel unless the load was sheeted as well.
regards dave.

Dafdave.

You’re correct. You should never rope a fly sheet, as you say, it defeats the purpose of the exercise in that the fly sheet can’t fly and shake the water off. It was allowed though, to cross the front and rear with ropes and leave the rest of the sheet “loose”. However, in the picture of Scotts ERF 4 wheeler and drag, he hasn’t got a fly sheet on, it is in fact on closer inspection a “bottle sheet”. It has the ropes running through the edges of the sheet and at intervals ropes braided into them, hanging down. They weighed a ton for the one’s designed for the 40’ft trailers and 2 tons if they were wet !! Obviously they would not cause damage to the load, but it was permitted in the day, to rope over a bottle sheet, in-between the pallets of 2 high bottles to give extra security which believe me you needed. Along with timber, bottles were my next least favorite load. So Mr. Scott has done a good job, and not committed a cardinal sin as he would have done had it been a fly sheet .