I'm picking up my truck in a couple weeks and will need to get busy right away getting the new canopy and/or boat rack figured out.

Right now I have an Eide boat loader attached to an aluminum boat rack that attaches to the truck between the canopy and truck box. Sometimes I carry my 1436 jon boat and my son's 9 ft punt, so close to 300 pounds altogether up there. When I go off road there's enough flex that I've had to get the tubing of the rack welded up, reinforced etc, looks kinda ugly now.

My plan for the new truck is to use dual tubes spaced about 2" apart on the front and back and have the space between them covered with alum checker plate to make it less prone to flexing, and have the inside corners of the tubes gusseted, then having the whole thing powder coated. The truck will be white, looking at a nice cab high canopy and maybe having the rack powder coated in white as well. If it cracks like the other one did it'll look like crap if I need to get the coating ground off and welded up.


The frame on my old Ford flexes like crazy, the 05 Dodges are pretty rigid, but going off road down some rough roads to get to the lakes there's still a chance the rack will flex with the leverage of all that weight up that high.


Bolting the loader to the canopy is an option but all that weight with all the wind resistance would be tough on your average low profile canopy, especially the ones with all the glass on the sides, not too strong me thinks.

Any ideas and or pictures for me?
Thanks
Will