Bike Transport

[Turbo]

Not having room to store a trailer, I recently bought a Hilux to transport the bike to and from track.
The tray is pretty high so getting the bike on and off of the back has been an experience in itself!
Until now I was using an ALDI special, folding ramp. It’s not terribly long, fairly narrow and has some relatively sharp edges.
Also, only having one hinge, it really reduced the amount of useable space I had on the tray...



It was quite a steep slope to get it onto the back and if I ran out of momentum motoring it up, I was scraping rubber off my tyres like a carrot peeler!



I did a fair bit of googling to see what else was out there and eventually found this:
http://www.readyramp.com.au/
geoff@readyramp.com.au



Geoff Cooper is the company owner’s name. He started the company in Oz a couple of months or so ago and brings in the ramps from the US manufacturer.
From my first enquiry until taking delivery, Geoff has been an amazing help. He’s provided advice, technical drawings and even legal advice in order to comply with the state rules for licence plates compliance etc.
My solution is a generic $7 Chinese tail tidy with a bike-rack licence plate. I'll clamp this to the folded ramp and plug in to the trailer outlet, like a light board.

The Readyramp itself is much wider and longer and feels really well put together.





It comes with various fixings to clip into most manufacturers tailgates.
Once you’ve adjusted the cam straps, it’s just a case of clicking the fixings in and out of the tailgate each time.







It also functions as a bed extender and gives about 600mm of extra storage room.
For me that’s the difference in being able to load spare rims and spare tyres in addition to all the usual tools etc.



At $399 delivered, Its a premium product so it does cost more than the silver foldy ones but, you really get what you pay for. I’ve been so close to dropping my bike from the old ramp a number of times, not to mention taking chunks out of my tyres.
I don’t have anything to do with these guys other than having a refreshingly good experience with their service and just being generally impressed with the product. If you’re in the market for a ute solution, these are really worth a look.