I am looking for a ladder rack for my new F350. I have been looking
at other's racks in the parking lot. It seems like the round tube
ones are all premade, and the square tubing ones seem to be all
unlabeled and apparently custom welded.

I want to get a rack that matches the general load capacity and
durability I paid for in the '350. Is it a given that I have to
go custom for that ?

Thanks.

Rather than scouting the parking lot, there are plenty of after-market
truck accessory dealers on the web with photos of the units installed.
When I wanted a simple non-skid rubber mat for my F150 to replace a
preformed dropin liner, I ordered it off the web site. It fit well and
arrived in perfect condition.
All of them will be welded to fit that truck bed. You should not have
to go custom design unless you want something unusual.

Scott Moore wrote:
I am looking for a ladder rack for my new F350. I have been looking
at other's racks in the parking lot. It seems like the round tube
ones are all premade, and the square tubing ones seem to be all
unlabeled and apparently custom welded.

I want to get a rack that matches the general load capacity and
durability I paid for in the '350. Is it a given that I have to
go custom for that ?

Thanks.

"Scott Moore" wrote in message
...
| I am looking for a ladder rack for my new F350. I have been looking
| at other's racks in the parking lot. It seems like the round tube
| ones are all premade, and the square tubing ones seem to be all
| unlabeled and apparently custom welded.
|
| I want to get a rack that matches the general load capacity and
| durability I paid for in the '350. Is it a given that I have to
| go custom for that ?
|
| Thanks.

Many of the racks you see are not rated for real work, rather aimed at
some amount of looks. Look around at or for truck suppliers, many of them
sell amazingly stout racks that are beautiful. Not cheap, but stout.
I saw an aluminum one that was not only beautiful, it had movable
crosspieces that were just as stout wherever you put it, and it sort of had
a built in roll bar/headache rack that looked like it'd stop anything.
Needless to say it didn't just bolt to the top of the bed; there was some
structure that went through the bed as well, I think.

I looked into it about 15 years ago & decided none of the pre-built
racks was up to what I wanted. I welded up my own out of 1" square
steel tubing. They're not hard to make if you are handy with a welder
& have a chop saw with a metal cutting blade. One of the things that
made pre-builts so weak was not having enough bracing. You stack up a
few heavy duty ladders or a pile of long lumber up there & you've got
something that will try really hard to rack your rack. I've seen it
happen & it's really ugly.

I debated long & hard over removable cross pieces & finally decided
against them. It's a personal preference I guess, but I was a
remodeler & while occasionally it would have been nice to pull them, I
found those times to be pretty rare compared to how much time long
stock & ladders sat up there. A few times I whacked my head hard
enough to make me almost rethink the decsion. G

I don't recall what I paid, but I spent a fair amount of time on it. A
friend liked my design & got a similar one done by a local welding shop
- if I'd had the cash, I think that would have been the way to go. I
didn't at the time, though.

Jim

Have you looked at any of these?

http://www.truckaddons.com/Catalog/ladder_racks.htm

http://www.ustruckaccessorieswhse.com/ct-ladracks.html

http://www.cargogear.com/TracRac/TracRac.htm

http://www.haulerracks.com/html/truc...OVMTC=standard

Best Regards,
Keith Marshall


"I'm not grown up enough to be so old!"


"Scott Moore" wrote in message
...
I am looking for a ladder rack for my new F350. I have been looking
at other's racks in the parking lot. It seems like the round tube
ones are all premade, and the square tubing ones seem to be all
unlabeled and apparently custom welded.

I want to get a rack that matches the general load capacity and
durability I paid for in the '350. Is it a given that I have to
go custom for that ?

Thanks.

Thanks for the good answers in this thread.

I'm still looking. My requirements a

1. Needs to fit a F350 4 door cab long bed. It makes a difference
because the section over the cab needs to extend over the longer
cab and make sure it does not get dinged by any loads I will
carry.

2. pretty good carry capacity. I have carried some 24' lumber before,
and it wasn't pretty.

3. Needs to have a removable back bar to get high loads into the
bed.

4. Probally not mount to the bed. I understand that affects #2.

Frankly the best looking racks I have seen are the custom square
tubing ones, which is leading me to think I might do it myself.

I'll agree that square tubing is the way to go. I think I made the
side rails 4" high, which was enough support to run the top one down at
a diagnol to meet the front bar which I put about even with the top of
my windsheild. It was also low enough that I could put stuff on top
from the side. I see a lot of the bigger cabbed trucks actually run
the side rails the entire length of the truck & bring a leg down to the
front bumper. I didn't think I'd like that nor did I ever find I
needed that kind of strength at the front end. With really long
boards, I'd let 4' or even 6' hang out the back rather than put too
much weight up front. It didn't come up too often anyway. I'd talk to
a real welder, but I would think that 8" high side rails would give you
the strength to go over a crewcab with the top bar coming down at a
diagnol. I would corner brace the front on the horizontal plane. A
lot depends on the size & thickness of the square stock you're using.

My legs were connected to the front & rear of side mounted tool boxes &
sat right on the top of the bed sides. I've seen others who don't have
tool boxes put the legs into the vertical pockets in the bed, but they
need to reinforce & bolt through the pocket. I heard of a guy who
didn't & had a heavy load pop the bottom out. Not sure if that was
true or not, but if I were doing it that way, I wouldn't like the legs
to be a sloppy fit at all.

The best removable bars I've seen were on a friend of mine's truck (co
worker, too). He used a larger size square tube with the top cut out
mounted to the sides & laid the normal bar into the pocket formed by
it. He drilled through & kept a snap pin (one of the straight steel
pins with a long, semi circular piece of wire that wraps around &
catches the front.) He had 4 cross bars on an 8' bed & did that to the
back 3 of them, so that in theory, he could use the entire bed for a
tall load. I think we did it once in the few years we worked together
for a refridgerator when he moved. It was certainly easy to do, but we
did have to put the back bar back in after we went down the road a
piece. The back of the rack was flopping around too much. He had a
couple of ladders side mounted that we had left on.

Maybe I'm too picky, but after years of working out of a van & then a
truck with a crappy set of racks, when I built mine, I wanted exactly
what I wanted. I can't weld aluminum, so I figured if I wanted to make
alterations, it had better be steel. It was good I did because my
original side mounts for ladders & such didn't work out. I cut them
off, made new ones & was happy after that. I practically lived in that
truck between 10 & 14 hours a day, 6 days a week. On the 7th day, we
often used it to pull our old horse trailer. Anything I didn't like
quickly became a major annoyance.

Hope this helps,
Jim

On 22 Apr 2005 08:32:53 -0700, "Jim" wrote:

I'll agree that square tubing is the way to go. I think I made the
side rails 4" high, which was enough support to run the top one down at
a diagnol to meet the front bar which I put about even with the top of
my windsheild. It was also low enough that I could put stuff on top
from the side. I see a lot of the bigger cabbed trucks actually run
the side rails the entire length of the truck & bring a leg down to the
front bumper. I didn't think I'd like that nor did I ever find I
needed that kind of strength at the front end. With really long
boards, I'd let 4' or even 6' hang out the back rather than put too
much weight up front. It didn't come up too often anyway. I'd talk to
a real welder, but I would think that 8" high side rails would give you
the strength to go over a crewcab with the top bar coming down at a
diagnol. I would corner brace the front on the horizontal plane. A
lot depends on the size & thickness of the square stock you're using.

If you may put very heavy stuff way forward on the roof rack, rather
than extending all the way out over the hood and bracing to the front
bumper (which provides big visual distractions to the driver) consider
using a set of cab-over camper shocks between the front of the rack
and the base of the A-pillars at the cowl. You can usually slip the
brackets through the panel gap between the cowl cover and fender, and
the mounting holes are hidden.

The shocks provide some added strength, but their main job is to
control any flexing of the rack versus the cab - the rack can't bend
as easily and either buckle under tension or kiss the cab roof.

-- Bruce --
--
Bruce L. Bergman, Woodland Hills (Los Angeles) CA - Desktop
Electrician for Westend Electric - CA726700
5737 Kanan Rd. #359, Agoura CA 91301 (818) 889-9545
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