Swagman Paramount Tailgate Pad Review | Tailgate Pad Tuesday

Based in Penticton, BC, Canadian company Swagman was one of the original purveyors of the hitch-mounted bike rack, and have been all about carrying bikes and gear on adventures since their conception in the early 90’s. As trucks have become increasingly popular for mountain bike rigs, Swagman saw the opportunity to offer their swag-carrying services to this new area, and produced a couple of tailgate pad options to suit truck-owning bikers. We got their high-end Paramount tailgate pad to put to the test in our Tailgate Pad roundup, and it left us a bit underwhelmed considering the price tag.

THE DIRT
The Swagman Paramount Tailgate pad fit all our test vehicles fairly well and offered a fair amount of tailgate coverage. The standard three strap design and the pads’ rather thin construction made for an easy install. Though the install was easy, that pad itself had a less than desirable look with plenty of wrinkles and bunching. I do believe going to a four-strap fastening set-up could offer a slight correction to this, and slightly thicker padding could also help in this area. The fleece lining is great to see in a bid to protect the paint of the truck, and the materials used seem durable without any signs of abrasive wear after testing. The mesh pockets proved to be useful and effective, though we’d be wary of leaving any items in there that could potentially fall or blow out of the unfastened hole. However, bikes would likely keep most items from vacating the bed of your truck without warning.

The full-size Paramount pad has seven adjustable Velcro downtube straps that need a bit of work. Something we took issue with is that they aren’t securely fastened to the pad itself due to their single loop construction. This means they could easily be lost if they aren’t closed with an empty truck. There is nothing keeping the straps secured to the pad in the event you forget to close the straps when you aren’t hauling bikes, whereas some of the other pads, like the Race Face T2, have a double Velcro construction keeping their straps secured to the pad at all times. Without a solid way of keeping the straps secured to the pad, the straps have to be adjusted for whatever bike you are hauling, and it can take a few tries to get the straps snug enough on the downtube, increasing the time required to get them loaded up.

Once our bikes were mounted up we ran into our next couple of issues. The Paramount Pad offers very little padding between the tailgate and the downtube and stanchions, leaving the tailgate susceptible to some potential damage if there’s a lot of movement with a heavier bike. Not to mention, the bikes move around a ton on the pad even when secured in place as best as possible with the downtube straps. They do not move side-to-side thanks to those stanchion pads, but they do lean (or tilt) a lot, meaning bike-on-bike violence can be prevalent when driving mountain roads or shuttling fire roads.

The handle flap works fairly well thanks to its generous sizing and easy clip-out, but it looks like a real afterthought and is a bit cumbersome. Swagman claims that the Paramount Pad can carry seven bikes in its full size configuration, but that’s very dependent on the type of bikes you are carrying, and we regularly found that we’d struggle to get more than 4 or 5 without the bikes being too close for comfort on all but the smoothest roads.

This is just an excerpt from the written review, which you can read here:
https://theloamwolf.com/2022/06/21/review-swagman-paramount-tailgate-pad/

Buy Now | Swagman Paramount: https://bit.ly/3QxR7Mx
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