Get Rid of Your Ladder Rack

Ladder Racks: Problems They Solve

Ladder racks allow you to haul items that are large and long, like ladders, pipe, conduit, all-thread, and more.

Ladder rack installations are pretty simple, and once you've got one, you always have a spot to put long things, "just in case". When you have a ladder rack, you never need to think about whether you have room for a ladder or long materials.

If you absolutely need a long extension ladder, it's going to be hard to get rid of your ladder rack. However, there are substitutes that you might be able to use if you don't normally require a very long extension ladder.

Plumbers, electricians, and HVAC techs frequently use racks for a material storage tube. These have capped ends and hold lengths of copper, PVC, and conduit. Often, these materials aren't used on every job, but need to be there just in case a job needs short runs of something.

Some trades heavily use scaffolding or sheetmetal brakes that need to go on a rack. You can't really get around this, short of hauling this gear on a trailer.

Ladder Racks: Problems They Create

Perhaps one of the biggest problems with ladder racks is that many tradespeople simply assume they need one, but this often isn't true.

Ladder racks have some big strikes against them:

Bad Aerodynamics = Worse MPG

If you have a work van, you're already driving a large, fuel-guzzling, refrigerator-shaped thing down the road. Ladder racks with ladders can have significant impacts on your mileage, usually at least 1-3 MPG. With one van, if you drive 750 miles/week and lose 2 MPGs, that costs you $882 per year with a fuel price of $3/gallon. For a fleet of four work vans, that's $3529. What else could you do with that cash? Just investing it for 10 years in index funds would double your money.

Stickout

Some ladder racks, coupled with long ladders, will make your ladder stick out from the back of your van. This means that your ladder's position is one more thing you need to think about when you're reversing.

Ladder Racks Make You Slow

A standard immobile ladder rack may require you to open or close doors to climb up and tie or untie ladders. Then you need to manhandle the rack to the ground. Then you often need to manhandle the ladder through the doors of the jobsite. This is not an efficient process.

A side-access rotating ladder rack can make this process faster to get a ladder on or off a tall roof, but this comes at a price.

The consequences of the painful ladder racking process is clear when you're on the road: most of us have seen a work truck or van with ladders sloppily tied or with a tie at only one end, sometimes with twine. Bad habits like this also make ladder racks unsafe.

What if you could grab the ladder you need from inside your truck? How much faster would you be?

Ladder Racks Are Expensive

Relative to the cost of a typical upfit, standard utility racks racks are cheap: an aluminum rack is around $350. But for that money you could also buy a multipurpose ladder that would fulfill many of your climbing needs.

Side-access rotating racks are more accessible, but add hardware to your van and tend to be expensive, usually about 3-4 times as much as a standard rack.

Alerting Thieves

Ladder racks tell everyone that you're driving a trades-oriented work van. Besides branding, there is no clearer signal that expensive tools are in your van.

For some tradies, this doesn't matter, they've got branding and secure parking areas. But for many, like plumber Allen Hart, theft avoidance is one of the primary reasons they don't have a ladder rack on their van.

Stealth is a good way to avoid theft in high-crime areas.

Noise

There are studies linking low, continuous noise levels to increases in stress, such as in office environments. Why wouldn't this be true in a work truck?

Most work vans clank and bang when things move, and ladder racks can produce a significant amount of annoying, grating wind noise at highway speeds. If you're spending all day inside a work truck, it's reasonable that you should make the experience more than just bearable.

Some tradespeople, like general contractor Zach Dettmore, try to minimize van noise as much as possible and that is hard to do with a ladder rack.

The Cons of Going Ladder Rackless

There are three big cons of going rackless:

1. You don't have "just in case" space.
2. If you regularly need a long extension ladder, you need a ladder rack.
3. If you regularly need to carry long materials, and delivery or storing them in your van aren't an option, you need a ladder rack.

You'll have to figure out how important these cons are and how the costs of having a ladder rack compare to the costs of not having one.

If you need a long extension ladder once a year, that's a different problem than needing a long extension ladder once a week.

Conclusion

Ladder racks have been a constant for work vans and trucks for a long time, but maybe you don't really need one. In another article, we take a look at how you can configure your workvan and ladder setup so that you can be fast and efficient without a ladder rack.