This is my story and review of purchasing and using a 1UP-USA roof rack.
My wife hates driving my Mini Cooper, as it is a manual transmission. But my bike is a tight fit in the back in the Mini. Due to the tight fit, I like to take my wife’s Rav4 with our hitch rack. My choice of the 1UP-USA rack was from reading reviews and my perceived ease of use. It was extremely easy to use. The 1UP-USA web site is easy and straight forward to use and made the purchase easy. The rack arrived quickly and fully intact.
Installing the rack is straight forward. I got the low-profile mount. The nuts did not fit my rack and I could not tighten them as I cannot get a wrench inside the rail, they just spun when trying to tighten. So like anyone I created rectangle nuts to slide into the Mini Cooper stock roof rack enabling the use of a hex key only to tighten the rack down.
I drove a mile or so around the neighborhood on the bumpiest roads to make sure I installed the rack firmly on the car and that the bike was placed on the rack correctly and securely.
The image with the bike in the rack and the bug shield is how the bike was loaded onto the rack during the trip when the rack failed.
The rack was the easiest I've ever used. No taking the wheel off, nothing touching the frame. Inserting the bike is simply moving the two ends firmly up to the tires, get in the car, and go. Removal is just as easy, press the lever, slide the rails back, then remove the bike. This rack does not have a secondary restraining system. For instance, all the racks I’ve looked at since the accident have wheel straps.
On Jan 1, 2025, at about 4:45am, my first use of the rack, I was driving to the start of a Randonneuring event in Moorpark, CA which is about 115 miles from my house. I loaded the bike and headed out. Me being me and I drove about 45 miles, pulled off the freeway, and stopped on the shoulder of the off ramp to check the bike and rack, at this point all looked good. I proceeded back on to the freeway. At about mile 96, I'm on the 210 freeway which is five lanes across and no underpass. I heard a strange noise; I looked into my rear-view mirror and saw my bike attempting to take flight only to see it hit the freeway concrete. My gut now nauseous, I pulled over as fast as I could, which happened to be an off ramp with a streetlight.
It's still dark out and there is no ambient lighting on the freeway. I get out of my car and start jogging down the shoulder to retrieve the bike from the freeway when I see sparks, a car just hit my bike. He pulls over and I made sure he was ok. He got out of the car and we retrieved the bike from under the bumper. It was lodged pretty good. Unfortunately, I did not get any pictures of this part of the accident. I was not thinking straight. If it was my car that hit a bike and was damaged, I would have been upset. But, the driver was calm. I’m guessing because he saw how upset I was. I was not in my right mind to collect the photos required, his car had no visible damage. We exchanged insurance information, and I put the bike in the back of the car. Note, it fit much easier broke in pieces.
I drove home and just felt sick for the next few weeks.
What could have happened? How could the rack have broken when driving on an open freeway in a Mini Cooper?
I contacted 1UP-USA via email and explained what happened. 1UP-USA responded:
Kevin, thanks for reaching out. We understand this incident and damage can be frustrating.
However, this breakage of the bent is not consistent with a non contact failure. These bent arms are rated for 65lb. A road bike would not cause a bent arm to spontaneously break as pictured here.
This is consistent with some sort of physical contact to the bike. Pushing the bent arm back beyond its threshold and breaking off where its connected to the strap assembly.
I responded:
Please have a person of authority call me. This is not acceptable. My bike weighs 20 lbs. You are making an assumption on what caused the issue.
I will never put a bike on this rack again.
1UP-USA response: I was unavailable when they called.
Kevin, we just tried to reach out to the phone number on file and did not get an answer.
a 20lb bike would not be able to break a 6061 aluminum bent arm in half with no outside contact. We sell thousands of these racks every year with multiple bent arms on each rack. If these were breaking spontaneously with no outside contact, it would be apparent in our reviews and customer feedback.
We are willing to replace the bent arm that broke on the rack for you. Unfortunately, we can only replace or cover our product itself. 1UP-USA USA is not liable for any indirect or consequential damages.
I sent 1UP-USA pictures of the broken part requesting they point out where the impact damage occurred. This was their response:
We are not saying there was damage prior. We are stating this arm will not spontaneously fail. We have only seen this break if there is contact to the bike or rack itself. A bike doesn't apply this kind of force or pressure to do this.
I eventually called and discussed the issue with customer service. They were unwilling to cover any of the damages to my bike or the car that hit my bike. They would only offer to send out a kit to replace the broken arm. I eventually had them send the kit.
I tracked down one of the founders/owners on Linked-In and message him. He responded and we had a nice conversation. He would not admit there was an issue with the rack or an issue with my actions. He repeatedly said that they sell thousands of the racks and they have never seen this issue before. He asked what they could do for me beyond sending me the replacement arm. I suggested at a minimum they cover the repair to the car that hit my bike and preferably cover all the damages. His response "We are not an insurance company" at that point I determined they would not do anything and knew I would not have any legal recourse worth following.
He also offered to take a return on the rack. I sent the rack and the arm kit back to 1UP-USA. I kept the broken arm as a reminder of purchasing something like this over the internet. They refunded my purchase price minus a restocking fee.
The guy who hit my bike decided not to make an insurance claim. The insurance companies told him it would be a 50/50 responsibility. He did not want to take the hit on his insurance. I did not think it fair that he have out of pocket costs for something not his fault. I paid $1480 to the shop to fix his vehicle. It cost me over $3000 to part out my broken bike and build a new bike. I saved money by buying the parts online and doing the build myself. I was lucky to get most of the parts on sale.
Let this be a cautionary tale. No one will take on a product liability case for the cost of a bike. If some one was injured or killed the lawyers would have been all over this case. You might say take 1UP-USA to small claims court. Being an internet sales company and not having a presence in California, I'd have to take them to small claims court in Wisconsin. I could find a lawyer to represent me in Wisconsin, as Wisconsin would allow for that and I would not have to be present. But the cost of the lawyer would be more money than the gain if I won.
I felt 1UP-USA employees were dismissive of the failure and their main concern was to limit their liability, there was no empathy for my loss. They were very careful with their words where they would not claim fault or blame me for the failure.
Be cautious purchasing something that could cause damage to your bike over the internet from a company not in your state.
This images highlights the single point of failure. If this breaks your bike will fall off.
Broken Rack Arm
Note the screw threads embeded in the aluminum.
The rear wheel was under the car, creating this nice Pac Man shape.
Not quite reusable.
Bent and broken, rip Di2 you worked hard for me over 40,000 plus miles
A car side loading your front fork does not end well.
Bent and unusable.
About a quarter of an inch was worn off the pedal body.
I don't think this will feel good to ride on.
Nose of the saddle.
Non Drive triangle is missing.
Broken off Di2 shift lever.