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Trust These Expert-Recommended Bike Racks for Traveling with Your Bike
Sturdy and dependable, these bike racks for your trunk, hitch, roof, or truck bed keep your ride secure.
If you ride your bike even semi-regularly, at some point you’ll probably want to try pedaling beyond your local streets and trails. Although it’s hard to beat riding from your front door to the trailhead and back again, sometimes driving to a ride is the only feasible way to go—and that’s where a good bike rack comes in handy.
Best Bike Racks
The Expert: I have covered outdoor gear, including bikes and bike accessories, for years as a freelance journalist. I ride frequently and have used bike racks quite a bit over the years. Growing up, I was in charge of setting up my family’s hitch-mounted bike rack before road trips, and I’ve put thousands of miles on my current trunk-mounted rack—including a cross-country road trip.
Types of Bike Racks
The first step when shopping for a bike rack is to determine what type will work best with your bike and your vehicle. There are five main types of modern bike racks. Knowing a little about each will help you choose the right one for you.
➥ Hitch Racks: These racks attach to a hitch receiver—the square socket mounted under the rear bumper of many vehicles (it’s where you can insert a hitch ball for towing). Not all vehicles have hitch receivers, but they can be installed on most cars, trucks, SUVs, and vans. There are two common hitch receiver sizes for passenger vehicles: 2 inches and 1.25 inches. Before shopping, check which size you have on your vehicle and ensure the rack you buy is compatible.
Hitch racks themselves can be either a tray style, where the bike tires rest on a metal tray and an adjustable arm(s) and straps secure them, or hanging style, where the bike hangs on arms that support its frame and straps hold the bike to the rack.
➥ Trunk Racks: Trunk racks attach to the trunk or rear hatch of a vehicle using an array of straps with hooks. The hooks grab the edges of the trunk or hatch, and you cinch down the straps to give the rack a secure hold on your vehicle. Compared to hitch racks, which attach to your vehicle at one just point, getting a secure fit with a trunk rack requires some extra attention: careful setup and finessing of all the hooks and straps. In addition, those straps can loosen over time, so it’s a good idea to check them during longer drives. That said, when installed correctly, they can be very secure.
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➥ Roof Racks: As the name implies, roof racks attach to crossbars on your vehicle’s roof rack system. That’s also the catch—if your car doesn’t have crossbars, you’ll need to buy and install those before using a roof rack. Some roof racks require you to remove your bike’s front wheel and attach it via the fork dropout; others utilize a “wheels on” style with straps and an adjustable arm to secure your bike.
➥ Tailgate Pads: These are a relatively simple bike-carrying solution for pickup trucks. A tailgate pad is essentially a heavy-duty padded cover that you place over your truck’s tailgate and secure with straps. Your bike rests on top of the tailgate with the fork and wheel hanging off the back of the truck, and you anchor it in place with straps. Most pads allow you to carry lots of bikes (five or more), but they only work with pickups.
➥ Suction Cup Racks: A relatively new type of rack, these attach to your vehicle’s roof or rear window using suction cups and provide a secure anchor point for hauling a bike. Aside from using suction cups to grab onto a vehicle, these mounts carry bikes in a variety of ways, including by the front fork, by gripping the wheels, or even by gripping the handlebars.
Michael is a freelance writer with years of experience covering gear and the outdoors for Runner's World and other publications; when he's not writing, he's usually biking, hiking, and running in the mountains around Los Angeles, where he lives.
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