How to make your own longboard carrying system for less than 5€

If you’ve read my article on the best longboard dancing setups for beginners, you’ll know that your dancing deck should ideally be at least 110cm long. Now in some cases, some of us have even longer setups. At some point in time, while enjoying this sport, you’re probably going to ask yourself the question:

How the hell should I carry around this damn longboard?

Well, dear friends, this is a fair question indeed. I mean these things are gigantic, heavy, and just awkward. Basically, when we are not riding them, they can be a huge pain in the ass to deal with. I guess you could just carry the thing in your hands, but that sucks too. You could buy a bag for it, but that is only really practical for traveling on trips and stuff, that doesn’t really work in the daily life. Lucky for you, with some handy knowledge from my background in the US Navy and my desire to not hate life when I’m carrying my longboard, I’ve developed a carrying system that you can make today, for less than five euros, with supplies that can be found everywhere in the world.

Building your own longboard carrying setup in 7 easy steps

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1. Get your supplies

Here’s a list of what you’ll need in order to build this carrying system:

1. Find some soft rope in a hardware store, there should be a good selection of rope in any hardware store, you wanna find something that won’t fray and glides nice and smooth. It shouldn’t be too thick either, as you’ll need it to be flexible enough to tie knots. Ideal length should be THREE meters. This will give you enough extra space to play around with options based on your preferences. Better to have more rope, and cut off excess when you’re done, than to not have enough, and have to go back to the store in the middle of the project.
2. Something soft to make a shoulder pad. This thing is eventually going to sit on your shoulder as a cross body setup. If you only use the rope on your shoulder, it will suck to have it on after about 2 minutes lol (trust me, I already went through all the stupidy of building this thing for you). I bought some weird insulation thing for pipes at the same hardware store, I’d get something cuttable, and start with about 40 cm. This doesn’t have to be a pipe insulation thing, I’ve had friends build this with sponges, old tshirts, etc. You can be creative here.
3. Scissors
4. Tape

2. Watch this YouTube video and learn how to tie a “hangman’s knot”

3. Create a small hangman’s knot on one side of the rope, and attach it to the top truck

This knot should attach to the trucks that will be up towards your head, behind your shoulders. Pay attention here, you want this knot to be smaller than the one below! Actually, try to get this know as small as possible, because if it is too big, it will push down your shoulder pad, and you might not be able to get the shoulder pad actually on your shoulder.

4. (Tentative) Put the other end of your rope through your shoulder pad material

This is a tentative step, because it depends what you’re using for the shoulder pad. Since I have a pipe insulation thing, the rope has to slide through it BEFORE I make the second hangman’s knot, otherwise I won’t be able to get it on. I reinforced the ends of mine with tape, because after one day of using it the rope was already starting to bust through the material on its seam.

5. Loop the open and of the rope around the bottom trucks, and “put the board on”

This step is tricky to explain, but it is important to help you gauge how much of the rope you need to tie off, before you actually tie the second knot! If you do it like I did the first time, which was just a lot of guessing, you’ll waste a lot of time getting the right length based on your height and your board size. The first ten times I tied off the second knot, the system was so long, that my board was dragging along on the ground as I was wearing it.

So just loop the open rope around the bottom trucks, hold the rope together with your hands and put it on. Hopefully the pictures below can best illustrate this:

Play around with this here a bit, and just simply pull the rope up and down to get a feel of how it fits on your body.

6. Hold the rope at the ideal length you found for yourself, take off the board while the rope is still wrapped around the bottom truck, and set it back on the floor.

But don’t lose that point on the rope your holding on to! This is where you’re going to start your second hangman’s knot, and this should give you the perfect length for you.

7. Adjust and compensate

You’re basically all done at this point. This setup is ideal because the smaller knot at the top won’t move, but the weight of the board on the bottom knot will hold it in place in case you need to adjust the length of the hangman’s knot. If you have too much excess rope, at this point you can cut it off, but I would recommend leaving a minimum of 10cm of rope at the end of each knot, in case you want to adjust anything.

In the video below, I go over the final setup, how to adjust it, how I use, etc.

Congrats on entering a world of more convenient longboard carrying!

That’s it boys and girls! I’ve been using this exact setup for over a year with both a Bastlboards Bolero (108cm) and my current Bastlboards Walzer (124cm) and it does a fine job indeed. Yes, it is not perfect, and it is not beautiful, but it is as perfect beautiful as you can get for less than 5€. For example, bending over to pick something doesn’t really work while wearing this thing, but that shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.

I walk around with this thing, I ride my bike with it, and even ride my scooter with my Walzer. Yes, I can ride a scooter with my Walzer on me with this setup.

I hope this helps you guys out, if you have any other methods you use yourself, or find ways to improve my method, do let us know in the comments!