Darren Ratcliffe's Colleagues at Loaded Boards
Darren Ratcliffe's Contact Details
(310) 839-1800
Loaded Boards
Darren Ratcliffe's Company Details
Beginning in early 1995, trying to mimic the rush of snowboarding on pavement, our shortboards got less and less playtime while we experimented with more stable wheelbases, any funky truck we could get our hands on, and pretty much any material we could put trucks on. All sorts of shapes of Baltic birch plies, solid wood, modified shortboards, and various other objects became projectiles to careen down local hills with. Looking for a lively and precisely tuned and responsive ride, old snowboards soon found themselves reincarnated with trucks and wheels attached—awaiting more brutal methods of destruction. We played (and continue to play) with almost every board and truck available and took courses in composite and material technologies, continuing on with our quest to build a lively board capable of skating bigger hills with enhanced control. September 2000 through June 2002 were dedicated to developing these boards. It was challenging. We enlisted and ended up frustrating many of the greatest minds in skateboarding and snowboarding. Determining and testing the materials was a full-time job. Trying to get the wood and fiberglass to conform to compound contours was an affront to physics and we got sick of hearing that it couldn’t be done with curvatures as pronounced as we wanted. But done it was and the first ride made it clear that it should be done. Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/loadedboards/ Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LoadedBoards