Inspired by many contractor trucks in the US and specially, the RAM truck in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, I decided to model that same rack for a 1995 Nissan D21 that I bought in 2020.

The design didn’t need to have anything very original, just to have a few tweeks and for sure to include certain key features:

• The capacity to load boards of at least 4m, I have carried more than 70 12 foot boards in one 
• The possibility to take out the back bar to load anything above 1m to carry something tall like a fridge or similar.
• The reinforcements for the front part in order to avoid making the rack touch the roof of the truck.
• Include handlebars to jump into the bed of the truck, with these ones I choose a rounded design although they could have been simpler.
• Wind spoiler in the front to avoid sound interference – this one was actually not in the right angle at the beginning, we turned aprox 20 grades lower (just enough to skip the front horizontal bar) and it worked perfectly.

Probably the biggest challenge with this work was to find a good and committed welder who wanted to develop a project like this one – I can weld, but this was way above my skills. And I was very lucky because I had few or any contacts in Uruguay to develop it, and after talking to a few, the guy I found was not only very attentive to detail with the “fish mouths” he had to weld, but also open to listen to my special requirements. 

The result was over my expectations, I’ve used it for more than 5 years and it has never failed me.

The blueprints have been shared with many truck owners and they are pretty happy with used the same ones or adaptations they have done.