Malone TradeSport Truck Bed Ladder Rack w/ Load Stops - Aluminum - 800 lbs

Video Transcript for Malone TradeSport Truck Bed Ladder Rack Review

This is the Malone TradeSport Truck Bed Ladder Rack. It's gonna be great for a whole lot of different stuff. For you sports and rec people out there, it's gonna be great for kayaks, bikes and stuff like that. Of course, it's also good for ladders. So the nice thing about this is, it makes it pretty easy to load up and we can utilize over top of our cab. So we don't have a whole lot of overhanging items on the back.

So we don't have a need for any flags or anything. We're really utilizing our truck to the ultimate degree. The truck bed ladder rack being in the bed of the truck makes it super easy to tie your stuff down. Whenever I'm tying kayaks down up on my roof and I'm standing on the ground, it's a little difficult. With this, you're right up close and personal.

So you can be extra confident that it's not gonna go anywhere. Also with our ladders, we're gonna have some ladder load stops right here, which this can be used with the ladder, could be used for your lumber, your pipe, whatever you really need to bring to that job site. You loosen it up, slide it all the way up against our ladder, tighten it down, and we have plenty of spaces here for tie-downs. So I have a standard size little hook and it fit's through there pretty good. And this thing's extremely solid on here.

The whole truck is shaking, but we do wanna take it on our test course to see how it does. First, we'll start with the slaloms. This is going to show these side-to-side actions. It's kind of gonna mimic the movements that you'll see whenever you're driving down the road normally. Now we'll have these speed bumps.

This is gonna be more so like the uneven roads in some of that uneven terrain you might be traveling on. Well, we set up some GoPros, went over the test course and I didn't see a whole lot of movement but the footage will tell you exactly how much. I think this thing is extremely rigid. But now that all that's done, let's go inside and we'll go over the whole entire kit and see what you're getting. The clamps right here is what's gonna secure the ladder rack assembly to your truck. This is gonna work even if you do have the drop-in liner. You might have to maybe trim it out a little bit. If you have a spray-in liner, it is going to work as well. And if you do have tracks on the inside on your Tacoma or your Tundra, there is a kit that comes with it with extra long bolts and extra hardware to get that installed into the track. So there's really not a truck that this isn't going to work with, but this is not gonna work with any type of Tonneau cover. It's gonna protect your truck's side rails. Right now, I don't have any covers on the side of my truck, so I don't want the paint to get scratched. If you can see the little black piece right underneath, it does have pads on there already that is bound to this little foot. So you don't have to worry about it scratching up your truck. We can utilize our load stops on the side of our bar and the way you want to do it is, you take the little tee slot piece here, and put that in and you're gonna slide it up and fit the other slot in and put our knob in here. And you can't really put it in your bed. This is just one way you can utilize the sides. I would just put it up here. I do like when it's all the way up against the bar. So I just take it, move it up, take it, move it up. And then we can utilize this, not up there, to tie it down properly. I plan on utilizing the tracks on the side and on the top. So I didn't put this little rubber strip. But look how much we get. So if you really want to, maybe, cut down on that wind noise a little bit, all you have to do, just take this stuff, is kind of squeeze it together like that, all the way down. This will just cut down on that wind noise. And you could always take it out really quickly if you needed to use the tee slots for an accessory or those load stops but it is nice that they include this just because whenever you have any type of slot like this and you're going down the highway, or at all, wind's gonna come in and start to whistle a little bit. I didn't notice a whole lot when we we're driving around and I did take this home last night. I still didn't really hear anything. The only thing I heard was the ladder, but that's just kind of what it is. But they do give you that little strip so you can fill the whole entire tracks on all the open tracks. So it's gonna be a little quieter for you. All the accessories that have the little bolts right here, and then the plate that goes over top of it, we've tried about two or three of them. And none of them really work just because the hardware is a little too short that comes with the kit. It doesn't want to catch on those threads. So if you do have something like this already, what you're gonna need to do is just get longer hardware. But if you're looking for an accessory I suggest going with the band style or the clamp style like our two kayak carriers here. We have 72 inches of bar space up on top. And if you pick your accessories wisely, you can really utilize the bar a little bit more. What I mean by that is we have the Yakima ShowDown here which has a little bit of overhang off the bar. So we can have that overhang a little off the bar, so we can use the assisting feature of this rack to help get our kayaks up 'cause it is gonna sit 29 inches above the bed rails of your truck. So it's really difficult to get a kayak up here with the assist kayak carrier. It's super nice that you can just get it down and low but there's a lot of stuff you can really do with this ladder rack especially with the side slots as well. So if you really want to do more truck stuff, I do think that this is gonna be a great option for you. If you do want to, maybe, not have to get a assisted kayak carrier, you just want to adjust the bars up and down, this one is not going to do it. But the Thule Xsporter Pro will do that. It's just gonna be a little bit more premium option. I do think that the Malone TradeSport's gonna be the best bang for your buck. Meaning we have tee slots, we have side slots, and it's gonna fit a wide array of different accessories. If I we're to compare it to something that's in the same ballpark, I would definitely say the Erickson Ladder Rack. So that one's a more cost effective option but it's not gonna have the tee slots. So if you do like the tee slots, I think the Malone's gonna be your best bet. And if you don't really need 'em I think the Erickson is gonna be a great choice. If you wanna out-truck all your buddies, definitely put a ladder rack on your truck. So you can have twice as much room to put twice as much stuff. That's pretty much it for a look at the Malone TradeSport Ladder Rack. And I'm Adam with etrailer..