Truck Loading Simulator: Pack a U-Haul 26-Foot Truck in 3D Before You Rent It

A truck loading simulator lets you pack a 26-foot moving truck in 3D before you rent it, and our example club tour load of 43 road cases fills about 24.5 of the truck's 26 feet at 4,125 pounds. Most people searching for a trailer loading simulator want to try the thing, not read about it, so this post is one real load you can open, poke at and copy. Here is the pack. It opens in crew view on a phone or a laptop, no account needed.

A U-Haul 26-foot truck holds 1,682 cubic feet and 12,859 pounds

Source: U-Haul, 26' moving truck

U-Haul lists the inside of its 26-foot truck at 26'2" long, 8'1" wide and 8'3" tall, with a 35-inch deck height and a ramp that's 2'7" wide. It's sold as the truck for a 3 to 4 bedroom home, but it's also the truck a lot of bands and small production shops rent when the van and trailer stop being enough. We built the simulator load on those exact inside dimensions, 314 by 97 by 99 inches, so what you see in the pack is what you get at the rental counter.

A 43-case club tour rig fills about 24.5 of the 26 feet

Source: Truck Packer load plan, U-Haul 26 ft club tour load

The load is a typical club tour: two subs with the tops on them against the nose, then the amp and drive racks with the consoles, guitar and bass cabs with the heads on top, drums, keys, the mic and stand trunk, three cable trunks, the guitar vault, IEM and LED bar trunks, six merch bins, wardrobe and the hazer, with the rolled drum rug last. Heavy goes low and forward, and nothing is stacked higher than about 52 inches. That leaves a little under 2 feet of floor at the door, which is about one more cable trunk or a hand truck.

Top and side view of the 43-case load. The ruler runs from the nose at 0 to the door at 26 feet.

The load weighs 4,125 pounds, about a third of the truck's limit

Source: Truck Packer load plan, weight totals from the case weights in the pack

Road cases fill a truck by space long before they fill it by weight. This rig comes in at 4,125 pounds against a 12,859 pound limit, so the question on a 26-footer is almost never "is it too heavy" and almost always "does it fit in the order we need it off." A load of steel deck or a lot of amp racks changes that, and the weight view in the simulator shows it as you build.

A 20-foot U-Haul gives you 19'5" of floor, about 5 feet short of this load

Source: U-Haul, 20' moving truck

The obvious way to save on the rental is to drop a size. The 20-foot truck is 19'5" long and 7'1" tall inside, with 1,016 cubic feet and a 5,700 pound limit. Weight isn't the problem for this rig, floor is. Laid out the way we load it, the 43 cases run about 5 feet past the end of that floor, and the shorter box takes away a foot of height to stack into. You could make it fit by stacking harder and leaving the merch behind, or you could find out it doesn't at 11pm in the venue lot. That trade is the whole reason to use a simulator first.

The numbered checklist the crew loads from, in order from the nose back.

What a truck loading simulator should do

Most "packing simulator" results are games. The useful version for a real load does a few specific things. It uses the actual inside dimensions of the truck you're renting, not a generic box. It knows which cases can't be tipped, so a console or an amp rack stays upright. It shows weight as you go. And it turns the plan into something the person at the bottom of the ramp can follow, which in Truck Packer is the crew view: top and side diagrams with a numbered checklist, shared by link or QR code.

To build your own, start a pack on the same truck, add your cases (or pull them from the manufacturer library), and change the truck if you're renting something else. Every plan starts with a 7-day free trial with the full feature set and no credit card.

Want to try your own load? Log in to Truck Packer and pack it.