Video Transcript for Review of Thule Ladder Racks - UtilityRac Sliding Ladder Rack - TH42102XT

Hello neighbors and friends, Steve here with etrailer.com. Folks, thanks for joining while we take a real quick look at the Thule TracRac UtilityRac, it's a sliding ladder rack for your utility vehicles 22 inches tall, ready to hold 1,250 pounds. So folks, first thing I wanna do is start by telling you I just have half of this kit kind of demoed set up today together. It would look something like this out of the box. So again, you're gonna get all these parts you see on the image on your screen, all the nuts, bolts, stainless steel hardware. There is some drill required as this kit does go on that utility rack or rather utility vehicle bed.

And when it's fully assembled in that, it's gonna look something much like this. As you see there, it says typical photo that's just a generic. It's gonna fit pretty much the utility bed that are out there. And these aluminum base rails I'm gonna show you here in a second will help you understand how it's gonna work. So again, adjustable ladder rack, it's gonna slide.

It is very unique. It can slide with what's called a T track base rail, and that's gonna be these parts here, it's gonna be perfect for long loads, short loads or anything in between. So whether you're doing plumbing or maybe a ladder or anything like that, long boards potentially, metal, steel, whatever. It does have nice integrated quick release clamping knobs so that you can loosen it to move the whole rack either forward or back or simply slide this off the rails and take the whole rack off. Now the part that would be permanently on your truck or bed would be these two front aluminum pieces.

Let me see if I can zoom into one of them better. So this base piece here, so as you can see, this whole kit slides forward and back on the rail itself. And just bear with me, I don't have this bolted down obviously. And as you can see, there are holes in here. So you would screw that down, bolted down to the utility bed itself.

Now you can get additional tracks sold separately. So if you want this one straight continuous piece, you could do that the way you could slide 'em forward or back and not have to worry about a set length. So what I mean by that is again, you're gonna get four of these bases that this whole unit slides onto, and those bases are 24 inches long or two feet long. So again, you're gonna get four of them. Ideally, just like the picture I had on the screen, you would have two close to the front, two close to the back. But if you want some in the middle, again, just purchase those separately. That way you can make one streamlined seamless rack to slide the whole thing on. Now these are an elliptical style blade or bar, what they're called, elliptical, meaning it's aerodynamic. The wind's gonna push right over the top and underneath and streamline to minimize wind resistance, minimize any kind of like vibrations, those kind of thing. And it's an airfoil tip here on the front and that prevents the whistling sound and those kind of things as well. Now as you see, you've got some tie down points on the sides here and you've got tie down brackets here on the top. These simply twist in to hold tight and they have anchor tie down points through here. You could simply loosen those. You could slide it all the way over here and maybe tighten 'em down here and have a ladder or something secured. Maybe you want something right here in the middle. It's whatever your needs and wants are. Very simple to slide. Let's say you want to take 'em out, you're gonna have end caps that come with this kit and that would seal off the end cap and that prevents these from sliding out. So here in the top you have a little slot that's specially made for these to pop out of and I can simply just pop it back in. And then obviously you'd have to be right on one side of that slot to keep this from popping back out. But once you got it in place and you tighten down those knobs, it's not going anywhere. So Let me see if I can show you so I won't be able to show you the knob. It's a little bit off the camera here, but this is the T slot. That's what these are sliding through. And I'm gonna go ahead and pop one of these out so you can get a better look of the bottom of it from above. So you can see it's got the built-in slot here, and then the nut and plastic keeper here or what help it simply pop into place and then make it to where you can slide it and then you just simply twist that, it's pulling tight and now it's locked in place. Now both these are aluminum, as I said, so super lightweight but super durable. It's a simple bolt on installation. Again, the only permanent thing in drilling is putting that base part down onto the utility part of that bed. Now from the top of this bar down to the flat surface here is 22 inches. So you get a height of 22 inches. And again, this is rated for 1,250 pounds capacity. There's an internal web structure on the crossbar that increase the strength and agility and it is E-coated, followed by a clear coat finish for extra rust protection and that's gonna help it be resistant to scratches, dings, bangs, those kind of thing. And again, everything here, the load stops are aluminum, the side ones, everything. The hardware again, is stainless steel. So I'm gonna throw an image up one last time with the hardware. Now obviously everything in black that's plastic would be just black plastic, but the upright tie down points, all those are aluminum that have been powder coated and E-coated. Well folks, I think that will wrap it up. Just a quick look together today. Again, I want to thank you for your patience and again, I'm limited here to how much space. I've only got the one side set up for you today for demo. Again, nice. It can slide forward or back and really easily. And again, if you want to slide it fully off, you could and then take it off. There would be stop knobs here and here to tighten that down to keep it from moving. Folks, I'm Steven. Thanks again, have a good one.