Now, Where Will I Put All My Stuff?

Bakkies. Utility trucks. Utes. Those who have them love them. Those who don’t often consider getting one for the utilitarian kudos that comes with them – myself, I’m on the absolute verge. That and the lifestyle of course – that rugged, go-anywhere, braai-anywhere, kerb anything lifestyle that pairs so sweetly with rugby and gravel travel. Since moving to the Northern Suburbs I see them everywhere, in fact I’m entrenched in the high-riding things.

Old ones and new ones brandishing aftermarket bullbars and factory-accoutrements galore be they vinyled with Raider, Drifter or Wildtrak emblems – see even the manufacturers realise that there’s money to be made by out-butching the competition. And it’s all well and good when you’re loading up piles of firewood and an inordinate amount of braaivleis and maybe even the weekend’s liquid groceries from the shop to your entertainment room, but what about everything else?

No really, your week’s groceries – where the hell do they go? Or dare I ask for that matter a laptop satchel, backpack or gym bags, my fiance’s cornucopia of handbags, that thing being sold on the side of the road – literally anything of fair value? Sure if it’s to the shops and back, then no harm no foul, apart from someone opening the load bay at the lights (please don’t do that) you’re quite alright, and even then that’s only a problem if you haven’t locked the tailgate since the load bay is typically covered by a tonneau cover.

But it’s hardly infallible is the cover? All you have to do is pop a few clips and rifle under its canvas skirt at the wares underneath. It’s a superficial sort of protection, only really useful against the thieving wind and nothing more. Since I don’t transport beach sand, feathers or balloons the tonneau doesn’t serve me much beyond creating a smooth aesthetic for my test bakkie’s bum, and inadvertently transforming itself into a splash pool for pigeons during winter. Which if you think about it, really just robs them of an even bigger and more impressive pool had it not been there in the first place.

For a while we’d place valuables under one of the front seats, things like laptops, tablets and so on, but that’s severely limiting as it will accommodate little more than an envelope, since this is 2018 and the modern car seat has become an obese thing. We lived on the edge for a while, piling bags behind the passenger pew and reclining it all the way as though the person who had been riding shotgun had fallen asleep just before parking, so as to hide our belongings. But that was tantamount to putting a sign on the door saying ‘expensive stuff here!’, so that didn’t work either.

If you thought this was the type of clever column that solved a common problem then I’ll tell you now that it isn’t, because you’ve in fact come to the end of it and I’m still just as out of ideas as I was the beginning. I realise there’s the aftermarket route, that I could spend money armouring the Hilux with the kind of lockdown peace of mind that even the smallest of hatchbacks come standard with. But no, we’ve instead resorted to rerouting our entire lifestyles around the fact that we cannot buy or store anything of any value unless we can return home immediately afterwards. That, or wear and carry all our belongings whenever we go anywhere for anything. We’re now the folks who visit our loved ones with a shopping trolley’s worth of groceries which we’re happy to leave in their lounge while we’re there.