ProView – Thule ReVert Review

I used to think getting six bikes to the trailhead was an impossible feat. My husband has a full-size mountain bike. I have mine. Our two kids have theirs. Add friends to the mix, and you’ve got a small fleet that doesn’t fit in the car, isn’t willing to stack on top of each other without scratching something expensive, and definitely isn’t going to hitch a ride on a rack that requires lifting bikes over your head.

Design

I’ve always seen those big bike touring companies with the vertical bike racks, but never considered needing one for myself and family. The bikes load vertically, wheels drop into baskets, upright, side by side, rather than hanging horizontally off a platform rack. This configuration changes everything about how a family or group hauls bikes. We used it for shuttling for the Monarch Crest trail and on family bike rides, and it handled both like it was built for exactly that.

Ease of Use

Loading is actually easy. You push a lever, the whole rack tilts down toward you, and you roll the bikes in like you’re parking them. No lifting frames. No threading the front wheel into a slot while holding the bike with your other hand. You don’t have to lift your husband’s massive bike above your head and hope it lands in the right spot.

Features

The TiltAssist hydraulic damper is doing the heavy lifting here. It provides resistance in both directions, so tilting the fully loaded rack is easy for anyone. Push the lever, use both hands to guide it, and the damper does the hard work. With six bikes loaded, we’re talking up to 250 lbs total capacity, and it’s still manageable solo.

Trunk access with bikes loaded? Check. Tilt the rack away from the car and you can open your truck to load snacks, or other important bikeride needs.

Bike Protection

Bikes stay separated. There’s 11 inches between each slot, so handlebars aren’t grinding into carbon frames the whole drive. Rubber-only contact points mean no scratching. After shuttling up to the Monarch Crest and a full season of family rides, our bikes looked exactly as they did before. This is most important for my husband who has an extremely expensive bike that get’s loaded next to mine, which you could lovingly call, a clunker.

Room for Improvement

This rack weighs 87 LBS without a single bike on it. Installing and removing it from the hitch is a two-person job. If you leave it on the car between trips, fine. But if you swap racks constantly, your back will have opinions. If you have younger kids on 24″ wheels, budget in for the wheel adapter.

The Final Word

If your crew rides together regularly and you’ve been cobbling together a system that mostly makes you grumpy before you even hit the trail, this is the fix. When you’re standing at the Monarch Crest trailhead with six bikes loaded and nobody arguing about logistics, you stop thinking about the price tag pretty fast.

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