Yakima, Rhino et al make one. This is an example:
https://www.boonedoxusa.com/product-page/classic-t-bone
Anyone ever use one to transport a kayak? If so, what was your experience, and what was your truck bed length and kayak size?
We have the Yakima one, used on a Honda Ridgeline. We’ve used it for 12’-15’ x 24-29” wide kayaks, as well as 16’ x 30” canoes. We strap to the tiedowns at the front of the bed, as well as to the rack itself, plus use the straps that go from the ends of the bar to the back of the bed. It’s very secure, as long as you strap it well. If you neglect the ones from the ends of the bar to the truck, it would sag and bounce all over.
We prefer roof mounting with saddles if going very far, or on highways, because the boats do stick way out (flags are a must). But it definitely does the job!
It came with a really nice red flag……which got stolen pretty soon, as I guess someone else liked it and decided to make it their own while we were out paddling.
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Awesome thanks. In fact, a Ridgeline is what I would be using it with, for up to about a 14-15 foot kayak. So this is helpful.
Yeah I have roof saddles now for two kayaks but that’s on a lower roof car-based SUV/wagon. So I was considering whether I would get tired of the higher truck roof, or would rather do a trailer or something like this thing. Jury’s out.
I don’t usually have to travel very far to get to water…my home launch is a 5 minute drive at 25 mph…and many other launches are within about 60 minutes at state road type speeds, 45 mph.
But it is nice to know if I wanted to take a longer trip, I may want to reconsider this type of approach. Cheers
That’s funny about the flag 
Oh wow–yeah so that’s a decent sized boat
The Yakima one is nice, because you can adjust the angle, as well as the length (can’t remember if we had to buy an extension for it?) A friend has a different brand, that sticks straight out, but I think can be flipped over for a different configuration. It seems to work well also.
Edit: It’s way easier to load solo than trying to get the boat onto the truck roof alone
I have used bed extenders for years. My bed is 6’ long .The longest boat I’ve carried was 16’ / 85lb. My usual load was a Tarpon 160 and a Pungo 140
Now it’s a Tarpon 140 and the Pungo.
The only trouble I’ve had was a kid rear ending the boats which were tightly strapped to the extender and the bed.
There was no damage to the plastic boats but the extender was mangled as was the grill and hood of the kid’s car.
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Thanks–yeah it seems like the biggest concern is drivers behind you
So no stopping at red lights. ha
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I had stopped to make a left turn. He was late for work.
A favorite topic of mine is dealing with loading on high roofs, but without needless extra effort. With a bit of tinkering it would be easy to set up your roof rack so that no overhead lifting would be needed. Of course, standard factory-made loading aids like side-extension bars would work in this case. However, using JHC-ski’s photo for reference, what I would do is the following. I would add a pair of lengthwise bars to the outer ends of cross bars of the roof rack so that they extend farther forward and backward than the existing cross bars. Then I’d attach a new set of cross bars to the ends of those two lengthwise bars. The result would be a greater spread between the cross bars, but most importantly in terms of your particular worries, the rear bar would be far enough back that you could load slide your boat on that bar when loading/unloading. You’d put a bathmat or something over the top edge of the tailgate for the boat to slide on first, and set the boat overlapping the tailgate and with the other end on the ground. Then you’d climb into the cargo box and slide the boat forward on the tailgate until you could lift the front end of the boat up onto the rear cross bar of your extended roof rack (you might also be able to do this with the tailgate down, but in that case, if the boat is long, there’s a good chance the rear end of the boat would need to drag the ground while you lift the front end up onto the rear cross bar. If that’s not the case, leaving the tailgate down would make the whole process even easier). Then you’d just slide the boat up onto the roof with the rear cross bar being the contact point. You’d never have to lift the full weight of the boat higher than your waist during the first part of the process (that would be when first setting one end of the boat on the tailgate, since you could just tilt one end high enough to overlap the tailgate while supporting the boat at center), and during second part of the process you would be lifting just a fraction of the boat’s weight at any given time, and only to the height of your stomach or lower chest. This is just SO much easier than overhead lifting of the full weight of the boat.
If using saddles, a towel or bathmat draped over the rear saddle will make things a lot more slippery for this kind of loading/unloading.
I have old pictures online of my method for extending cross-bar spread. I have been accidentally locked out of that photo site but I can still provide links to photos there if you are interested. Building such a setup requires a bit of extra material, but it’s a minuscule fraction as much “extra stuff” as what you’ll have attached to your truck if you use a hitch extender, and you won’t have all that cumbersome use of space behind your vehicle. Also, Yakima used to have a very similar setup that you could buy, and they might still sell it. I’ve seen people use this for providing extra-long crossbar spread for delicate racing boats carried on cars with a short roof length.
