For a painfully long period of time, the best way to haul a mountain bike from garage to trailhead was painfully inadequate, either via a janky trunk-mounted rack that strapped flimsily to the back of a car and took several minutes to attach and secure or roof racks that required burly backs and shoulders that often led to parking garage calamity. These days, every manufacturer of bicycle haulers has developed at least one version of a better way: hitch-mounted bicycle racks that grab the wheels for an easy-on, easy-off answer.
Wisconsin’s 1Up has been around since 2001, introducing its Quik Rack system in 2009 and watching competitors play catchup. I hadn’t heard of 1Up until a few years back when I started noticing the distinctive silver racks popping up around Oregon. I bought my first 1Up rack to solve a puzzle: how to best carry a mountain bike and tow a Droplet teardrop travel trailer behind a Subaru Outback lacking much payload. That was the company’s Quik Rack model, and it worked beautifully because the rack naturally angles upward and provides enough clearance for me to use a hitch adapter where the bike rack goes in the top slot and the trailer hookup in the bottom one.
Then, in 2024, the company released its newest addition to the lineup: the Super Duty (SD), a beefy upgrade to my Quik Rack, the burliest bike rack I’ve ever seen.
What makes the SD so tough is it’s all built from either powder-coated aluminum or steel—there’s no plastic found anywhere on any unit—and every part for every rack can be purchased individually for easy repairs. It’s also arguably the nicest-looking rack on the market, especially in its black finish, and the hitch ball-tightening system employs a hex wrench to secure a ball inside the receiver, eliminating wiggle room and the chance of theft. The SD is capable of hauling up to four bikes up to 100 pounds per tray (if you add additional trays), and the wide arms can accommodate fat tires up to 5 inches thick. For my Specialized Turbo Levo, the SD is a bit of overkill, as those arms mean the tires slide slightly front to back, but not in a way that hurts anything or would cause the bike to leap out of the rack. And there’s an optional wheel chock that keeps the front tire in place. As the rack can require some manhandling to rotate in and out of the stowaway position, I highly recommend the EZ Pull 2, a nifty add-on that releases the rack from its locked position for easy adjustment.
$600-$950 SD | $99 EZ Pull
Images: Jordan Rosen
Read more: Bikepacking Gear That Got Me Through the Wolf’s Lair
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