TRUKD Bed Rack Buyer's Guide

Key Points

Buyers need to be aware of what their rack is made from. Steel, Sheet Aluminum, Cast Aluminum, Extruded Aluminum, and Stainless Steel are all popular materials to make bed racks from. Each one of those materials come in different grades of thickness and strength. Extruded aluminum is great for crossbars, but only if the extrusion design is robust enought to carry the weight you are planning to carry with your rack. Extruded or bent sheet metal crossbar designs that are extendable are not as strong as solid bars, and can lead to failure or spontaneous readjustment on tough trails. Solid extruded bars are the best, but they are also not created equal. See if you can find a picture of the extrusion before purchasing you rack, extrusions with thinner walls and more holes are generally not as stiff as extrusions with thicker walls and fewer holes.

This is important espicailly on full size trucks with longer spans. Some extrusions will have visiable sag under heavy RTT or other loads In our testing, any structural steel or stainless steel parts should be made from at least 10 guage material. Any thinner and you risk deformation over time. Steel parts should be double treated to avoid rust as much as possible, but no matter how good the coating is, any steel part will show rust eventually. Stainless Steel with a grade of 304 or 316 is the best structural steel to have your rack built from. These are stiffer than standard steel, and resist rust or corrosion extremely well. Cast or "forged" Aluminum parts are a great choice for racks, but the drawback is the lack of adjusability and potential for cracking under heavy loads. There are a few companies that do these right, but there are others that don't. Typically smaller companies don't employ this manufacturing method, as it is very expensive up front for the molds.

What to Watch Out For

Beware of inexpensive racks made from thin-gauge steel (12-16 gauge) or thin aluminum components (1/8" or thinner) made from lower-grade alloys like 3003. These may not stand the test of time or carry the weight you need. Pay attention to which materials are used for load-bearing components.

TRUKD Advantage

TRUKD Racks are crafted from 5052 3/16th Aluminum (the strongest formable grade of sheet aluminum) and 10-gauge 304 stainless steel. They're powder-coated with a light texture black finish for a sleek, long-lasting look. We use stronger stainless steel for uprights and bar end brackets with extruded 15 series aluminum used for crossbars (the “heavy” profile for the maximum stiffness).

Key Points

Racks are designed to work with other gear from the start, yet so many limit what you can use. Most racks are only compatible with a few different tonneau covers, or they are designed to fit a specific topper. Check to see if the tonneau or topper you are consider will work with the rack you are considering and it if will function as well. In order to work with the largest number of tonneau covers and toppers you will need a rack to be adjustable in length. Only about 1/4 of the racks available are length adjustable. Second, you'll want to see if the rack you are considering is height adjustable. This is important depending on what you want to carry and where you want it to ride.

TRUKD Advantage

TRUKD Racks are adjustable in height and length. Our racks have a foot of length adjustability (18 and 24" bed racks) and are adjustable up and down every two inches. If you decide to pair our racks with an accessory panel, the length is adjustable in increments of 2.5".

What to Watch Out For

Watch our for racks that are designed to work inline with a roof rack. While these options look great they are not very useful and require additional accessories to raise you gear over the roof rack. Truck beds and cabs are designed to move independently so any rack that lines up with a roof rack only does it for looks around town or it will limit your ability on what you want to carry and how. Also watch out for load bar racks that do not have any fron to back support. Racks below 12" can get away with out those parts, but over 12" you need some sort of front to back connector components which should not be fixed length if you want it to work with your tonneau cover. Also watch out for racks that utilize t-slots for vertical adjustment, compression nuts, t-nuts, and t -slots are not designed to handle heavy loads.

Key Points

Load ratings are a topic that is extremely...loaded. Trustworthy bed rack companies should always publish Static and Dynamic load ratings for their racks. In most cases load ratings for racks can or will exceed the strength of your truck bed. In our experience anything over 1000lbs static and any rating over 400lbs dynamic is unrealistic for your truck bed to carry and ratings above that do nothing to indicate the true strength of a rack. There are very few exceptions to this rule, but there are a couple, notably if you have a rack that is tied into the frame of the truck in some way.

It is important to consider what your truck bed is rated for when choosing a bed rack and this information should be available from your manufacturer. You may see two dynamic ratings from some companies, an onroad rating and an offroad rating. The offroad rating for overlanders is the most important. If a rating looks low to you, reach out to the company and ask how they came about their rating. Was FEA involved? Is there a margin of saftey? What real world testing have they done to validate their claims? Reputable companies may choose to list a lower number to add to the margin of saftey and or they may have testing data that warrants the number they publish. Pick up the phone and talk with a representative from the company, you'll be able to get a good feel on what is real and what is fluff.

TRUKD Advantage

TRUKD racks all carry a static load rating of 1000lbs and 250lbs offroad dynamic. Call us anytime, we'd love to walk you through how we landed on these numbers and why they are set at those points!

What to Watch Out For

Load ratings well above the industry norm are cause for concern. Anything over 1000 lbs static or 400lbs dynamic should be scrutinized.

Key Points

Is the rack you are considering universal or truck specific? Most racks on the market are truck specific. What happens when you get a new truck? Most people have to sell their beloved rack and purchase a new one. There are a small number of universal racks that work on a lot of trucks which can be great but many of them are not well suited to most vehicles. This is another big reason adjustability is an important feature( see above). With an adjustable rack it makes it much easier to switch your rack over from one truck to another.

TRUKD Advantage

TRUKD racks are a blend of truck specific and universal. Our system allows the easy switch over of your rack from one truck to another. In the worst case scenario, you'll need to purchase new crossbars and different bed attachment hardware. We think that's way better than buying an entire new rack!

What to Watch Out For

Universal racks, not well suited to any truck or highly specific racks that are only useful on a certain make/model/year of truck.

Key Points

There's a ton of rack companies out there. Some are huge names that have every accessory ever, others are smaller companies that don't have quite as many options. The important question is: will the rack carry what you need to take out with you? Will it provide you the features you need to make your trip easier? In most cases, bolting gear onto most racks is pretty easy and straightforward. The accessories that matter the most are the structural or functional accessories like accessory panels, hinge kits, and other larger scale functional systems. Does the rack you are looking at give you options or does it prescribe exactly how to set up your rack? What matters to you? in our opinion, your goal should be the ultimate in flexibility, there's a ton of gear out there with different shapes, why get locked in?

TRUKD Advantage

TRUKD Accessory panels are designed with the same slot, hole, and square pattern across the entire panel. We've eliminated the rack mounting black outs other racks have, and we don't tell you where to mount your shovel or water tank or gas can. We also offer hingle kits that can be added onto your rack at any point in the future, and we are committed to making all future accessories backwards compatible to V2 racks or newer. (V1 was a great first rack, but we've really advanced with V2 and now V2.5)

What to Watch Out For

Do you like being told what to do? No? Me neither. Watch out for accessory panels that tell you how to put together your build or racks that make you buy everything upfront.

Key Points

We are possibly the only rack that makes this an easy consideration. Most, if not every, other rack on the market locks you into a specific design. Our racks are built from a modular set of components, which means that if you start out with a 12.5" rack and decide to upgrade to an 18" rack, there's only a few parts to purchase instead of an entire new rack. Did you pick up canoeing and you need a taller rack? Just upgrade! Did you upgrade from a soft sided tent to a longer clamshell style? Just Upgrade to a taller rack!

TRUKD Advantage

TRUKD sells all of the parts we produce in our parts section, making it very easy for you to pick the parts you need to upgrade the structure of your rack.

What to Watch Out For

Racks that only work one way and can't be upgraded for future needs.

Key Points

We don't know this for sure, but a lot of racks do not seem like they were designed by people who understand good mechanical principles or the importance of your user experience. We recommend watching or reading the install manual before purchasing any bed rack. What size hardware are they using? Does it look big enough to support 1000lbs? Do you need to add lock tight? Are there tapped aluminum holes that could easily cross thread or run into dissimilar metal issues like galvanic corrosion or galling? Most importantly look for fasteners in shear. Is the entire rack supported by a couple bolts in shear (meaning are the forces perpendicular to length of the bolt?) Bolts are very strong in tensile strength, but much weaker in shear strength. How difficilut does it look to attach everything and how many tools are required? Are their positioning pins to help line up critical parts?

TRUKD Advantage

TRUKD uses 3 guiding design principles. 1. No threaded aluminum holes ever. 2. Connect in 3 dimensions, not one. 3. Utilize the principle of a face mount reducing the stress on the bolts and transferring it to two large faces. (this effectively turns the bolt stress into tensile vs shear by creating tension and friction between two mating faces)

What to Watch Out For

Threaded aluminum holes, small fasteners that don't look big enough, bolts in shear holding too much weight.