Best ratchet straps for roof racks

Roof racks fail at the feet, the crossbar, the door frame, and the vehicle's published roof limit. They rarely fail because the webbing was not strong enough. Bringing a 10,000 lb tie-down onto a roof is how a careful-sounding person bends a rail.

• Read the vehicle's dynamic roof load, which is the number while moving, and the rack maker's bar rating. The lower number is the ceiling. StrapRank will not invent a universal pound figure for "a car roof."
• Loop soft loops around a crossbar if a hook would slide toward the tower. The AUGO kit includes those loops.
• Keep the metal ratchet off the cargo and off the paint of the vehicle.
• Add bow and stern lines for anything long, so braking does not rotate it into the roof.
• Recheck after the first miles. Roof loads loosen as pads compress.
• Do not feed a strap through a sunroof, a door, or a window and call it an anchor.

Fifteen feet is a comfortable length for two straps over a kayak, a ladder, or a storage box, plus the lines you may run to the ends. If you only need to cinch a small basket, a shorter cam buckle wastes less webbing in the wind. Windage is a real load. A fluttering tail is not just ugly. It abrades the webbing and can mark the roof.