A longboard truck has to endure a lot of stress - high G turns, Shovits, curb hops, big air and big landings.

Serious riders want a truck that is durable, without adding weight.

To develop the the most durable, lightest weight, high performance truck, we went through an extended design evolution —optimizing the hanger and baseplate, using Finite Element Analysis (FEA), to determine the best design direction.

Using results generated by FEA, the shape of the hanger and the baseplate designs were modified, smoothing transitions, minimizing areas of stress concentration.

A skateboard hanger is an example of a simply supported beam. If you stand in the center of your board (also a simply supported beam), 1/2 of your weight is applied to the front truck, and one half to the rear truck. Likewise, 1/2 of the weight on one truck is supported by the left wheel and one half supported by the right wheel. The resultant forces that the wheels apply to the hanger create what is called a Moment, a torque on the hanger - where the highest Moment, (therefore the highest stress) is at the center, and the lowest Moment (and stress) is at the point of the supports. Don’t believe it? break a branch on your knee... no matter how you hold it, it will break at the highest moment, right? Takeaway: keep any major geometry changes away from that region. Note that the resultant force applied in each example below assumes the resultant force is applied 1/3 away across the bearing set.

A skateboard baseplate is an example of a cantilevered beam. The force applied is counteracted by the Moment - a torque at the base. M = F X distance. The further you are from the applied force, the higher the moment, and the higher the stress. Don’t believe it? When you have a bolt or a nut that you are having trouble removing, what do you do? you use an extender - or a longer wrench. So, a shorter, baseplate applies a lower moment to the base, a wider, compound shape also lowers stress. Force applied in both examples was 22mm from the kingpin/baseplate interface.