Why We Test for Strength and Durability

From The Desk Of Bernhard Leitner, CEO

I remember having the best jobs as a kid working for my father in the early 90’s. At the time he had a bicycle company designing and manufacturing some of the first full suspension mountain bikes on the market. He would call me over and in a deep Austrian accent say “Test this bike and don’t come back till its broken."

I would spend all day mountain biking the trails of laguna beach and when that failed to produce results, I would jump it off loading docks until it did. I would hand the twisted hunk of aluminum back to my dad with a big smile and he would get to work fixing the flaws in the design and a few days later I would have a new bike to test. 

And every time he handed me the new bike he would say “You won’t be able to break this.” Over those 6 years I broke countless bicycles as well as 4 collar bones, 2 wrists and a concussion so bad I am still missing 2 days of my life.

When I design a bed rack, roof rack, or accessory, I’m not interested in whether it works under ideal conditions. Most products can pass that test. What I care about is what happens when things get ugly, high speeds, rough terrain, hard impacts, vibration, and loads that don’t politely stay within a spreadsheet’s limits.

Roulette wheel for steering but the rack is fine

We test our racks off-road because that’s where the real forces show up. That’s where welds are challenged, fasteners are stressed, and designs either reveal their weak points or prove they don’t have any. More than once, I’ve pushed a setup so hard that I’ve destroyed the vehicle before the rack ever complained.

And just to be clear, I do not recommend you do what I do.

But the fact that our racks can take those kinds of hits and keep going is exactly the point. If a design survives my kind of testing, normal use becomes a non-event.
That said, real-world testing is only part of the story.

High Cycle Fatigue Testing on the ACS Forged

We also use high cycle fatigue tester to simulate years of use in a controlled way. These machines allow us to apply repeated loads, vibration, and stress that would take thousands of miles to accumulate in the real world. The goal isn’t just to see if a rack holds weight once. It’s to see how it behaves over time, after being flexed, shaken, and loaded again and again.

If machine testing tells us where a design might fail, real world testing tells us why. 


When a new product or component comes in, we work closely with our vendors to ensure materials, coatings, and manufacturing processes meet our standards. If something doesn’t pass testing, it doesn’t move forward. We don’t fix it later, and we don’t assume it’ll be fine in the field. It either meets the bar, or it doesn’t ship.

105 pounds on a single load bar - 1,000 miles off-road tested

Most customers will never drive the way I test. Most will never hit terrain hard enough to find the limits of the rack, and that’s exactly how it should be. The testing is done so everyday use, whether it’s commuting, traveling, or exploring, feels effortless.

If a product is engineered to survive hard hits, high loads, and constant vibration, then carrying gear down a washboard road or across a job site is easy by comparison.

Over the years, we’ve also had a few customers reach out after being involved in serious accidents with their trucks fully outfitted with our racks. While our racks are not designed or certified as safety equipment, multiple customers have told us that the rack acted like a roll cage in situations that could have been deadly.

Bed Rack after an accident

This is not what I test for. But in the photo shown here, you can see a truck involved in a major accident where the vehicle suffered significant damage, yet the rack itself remained largely intact. To me, that speaks to the result of proper materials, sound engineering, and designing for forces far beyond normal use.

I don’t recommend finding out firsthand.

But knowing these racks have performed this way in real-world situations reinforces why we test the way we do.

Proud of the Strength and Durability of ALL Leitner Products

I test this way because I use these products myself. I trust them with my own gear, my own vehicles, and my own safety. And if a design doesn’t earn that trust through testing, it doesn’t earn a place in our lineup.

It’s been 35 years since I worked for my dad, but I still have the best job.