The Dancer now has a new vehicle with which to haul around all of the crap she has to take with her when she does her outreach classes in the schools- a 2019 Chevy Colorado. Which is nice because it has a lot more space for her to carry everything in the bed while keeping the back seat free for people, groceries, etc.
The downside is that as short as she is (she's barely over 5') , it will be a challenge to get things in and out of the back of the bed easily. So, I'm tasked with coming up with a way to make loading and unloading the main thing she needs to worry about- the small horde of short, kid-height chairs she uses in her classes- simpler and easier for her. Before even looking around at what actually existed already, I was figuring some kind of sliding/roller system with a platform or platforms to lay the chairs on and slide back into the bed or pull out for easier loading/unloading. Once I started looking around, I found the following:
Both of these would likely work- the double one would be more convenient as she doesn't always need to pull all of them out at once so would make it a bit easier when she only needs some of them. The downsides I can see are a) both look like they add a fair amount of height on top of the bed and the chairs would be getting REALLY close to the top of any cover we put on (which it will need to protect them from the elements) and b) they're NOT CHEAP AT ALL.
So, both because of the cost and of course I'm going to, I want to figure out if I can make something similar myself that is a bit more customized for her uses and also cheaper.
So far my initial looking into hardware for it hasn't been the most promising- looking over McMaster-Carr for linear motion rails and slides, the slides and carriages alone start getting up into the range of the price of the single-tray setup linked above.
Anyone have any experience building (or trying to build) something similar?
