Get Your Dirt Bike from Garage to Gorge

By Scott Carson

It would be nice to have a motocross track in your backyard so you’d never need to transport your dirt bike more than 50 feet. For those of us living in the real world, however, getting your bike from one side of the state to the other and back again requires a bit more preparation and planning than turning it on and off. Even though the average American spends more on biking trips than they do on plane tickets, you won’t have to spend much on the transportation side. How can you secure your dirt bike in the back of a truck or trailer?

Load it Up

A few decades ago, pickup trucks had much larger beds and it would be possible to transport three dirt bikes without ever getting so much as a scratch on the paint job. Today, however, you don’t want to put more than two dirt bikes into the back of a single pickup, unless one of them is a smaller (50cc) bike. You may even need to leave the tailgate open in order to accommodate your bikes. It’s easy to tie them down, however, since you only need to tie the handlebars and wheels to the tie-down points in the truck bed. You want ratchet straps in order to keep even pressure on the suspension. If your new dirt bike accessories are too large to fit in a duffle bag you can put them in the truck cab’s rack. Cover any accessories, especially those made from steel, or else rain and snow will produce rust or cause warping.

Trailer Hitches

A good size trailer can transport an entire family’s dirt bike armada. For a long trip, you want a set of wheel brackets in the trailer that you can strap the wheels down onto. These brackets need to be set in specific areas of the trailer, since you want the weight distribution to keep the trailer in line instead of swaying from side to side as you haul it. Use spring bar systems for the tow hitch in the event that you intend to pull more weight in dirt bikes, accessories, and any other parts than half of the weight of your actual truck itself. Without a weight-distributing hitch, you put too much pressure on the back axle of your truck. Tie down the handlebars to the trailer’s internal hitches with a small amount of sway, so that the suspension doesn’t compress too much, and tie down the tires to brackets without any play at all. Store accessories or items side-by-side with bikes instead of in front or behind them, so that braking and accelerating will not cause gear to slam into the body or tires.

Scott Carson

Scott is a writer, husband and father. He loves to mountain bike and race his KTM enduro motorcycle on the weekends. He’s looking forward to the day his kids can ride with him.