Atlas Trucks

Atlas trucks have arrived!

The new forged Atlas Truck Co. RKP’s have arrived after much anticipation. Atlas has done a great job of designing a truck that no other company is currently offering, filling a large niche in the market. With the growing popularity in ball-pivots and the constant issue of cast trucks bending, Atlas Trucks seek out to fill that void.

Lets take a look at some of the specs and other features of the truck:

Ball Pivot: The idea here is that with a ball pivot, you increase the axes (plural of a single axis) you are able to pivot on, thereby increasing the amount of lean available to you. See how the hanger can move side-to-side as well as rotate around the kingpin? That’s where all that extra “lean” is coming from.

Pivot Cup: Instead of coming with a soft, compressible, and frankly crappy pivot cup, Atlas come equipped with Nylon6/Perlon cups of patent pending design. They are self cleaning, self-centering, and threaded for easy removal using your axles. **The massive pivot leaves little room for tool clearance when mounting the trucks.** 

Baseplate: The baseplate comes with a 8-hole drill pattern for a little extra adjustability when it comes to your wheelbase options. BONUS!

Tapered Axle: This is arguably the most exciting and impressive part of Atlas trucks. They have forged the hanger with a 10mm axle running the full length of the hanger, however, it tapers to 8mm at the wheel mounts. This results in both a stronger and truer(straighter) axle overall. Gamechanger???

Tapered Kingpin & Hole: The kingpin and hole have both been tapered at a 1:20 ratio. This means as the kingpin is inserted into the baseplate it eventually runs out of wiggle room, leaving a zero-play fit. At first this seemed strange because it means the kingpin head does not sit flush in the baseplate, but Atlas assures us this is intentional and crucial to the kingpin fit and centering. Neato.

So… What does this all mean? How do you translate all this technical jargon into actual usable information? Well, I gave the Atlas trucks a couple days on the hills, and I will offer to you my completely biased and absolutely 100% non-scientific opinion of the trucks. Here we go…

I am used to riding and prefer riding raked trucks. So, in this sense, I was perfectly at home riding the positive rake for freeriding and the negative rake for a little more stable feeling set-up while mobbing runs. The 48 degree baseplate offers a rather turny responsive ride with positive rake, and a much more stable, less agile, and calmer ride with the negative rake.

As for the ball pivot, this is something I am not as used to in my trucks, and I immediately noticed a much different feeling to my trucks. Yes, there is increased lean, but it really seems to come in to play the most during hookup and initiation of slides. The ability of the hanger to lean on additional axes, allows for a more fluid feeling during hook-up and kick-out. There is no snappy feeling in these trucks, and I found them pretty forgiving, especially for big standup slides.

As expected, the trucks are heavy, but that’s a sacrificial decision to be made for yourself. Heavier trucks for a longer hanger life or save the weight and end up shelling out beaucoup bucks for new trucks.

Finally, the only other point of interest is that the hard Perlon(Nylon6) pivot cups do, in fact, change the sound of your set up. Call me a kook, but you may notice your board rolling louder over rough surfaces. It’s not really a pro or a con, unless you are some sort of stealth skater, it was just immediately noticeable on the rough streets and cobblestones of Chinatown.

Overall, Atlas is doing a pretty damn good job of offering a unique product to the market, and while I may not fully agree with their theory on how positive and negative rake works, the trucks definitely feel good and should last you longer than most other cast trucks on the market. For a $60 pricepoint, there’s not much to complain about there.

Jackson Hilts, signing out!