What Are Longboard Bushings?

Longboard bushings are the rubber parts found in the middle of your longboard trucks. Although they’re only small, truck bushings are an essential part of your longboard setup and affect how sensitive longboard turns are. Your longboard will come with bushings, however, upgrading to a new set and style can enhance your experience and expand what you can do with your longboard.

Each truck should have two bushings, a roadside and a boardside. As their names suggest, the roadside bushing is placed closest to the road while the boardside bushing is closest to the deck.

There are two main bushing shapes: cone and barrel. Cone bushings offer minimal resistance and are great for turning while barrel bushings will give you more stability. Many riders choose to go for a combination of one barrel and one cone bushing, as this offers good all-round performance, but a cone-cone and barrel-barrel setup is also popular.

What Longboard Bushings Should I Get?

There’s no such thing as a “best longboard bushing” and it’s a question that largely depends on what type of riding you want to do with your longboard. The two main things to consider here are the hardness of the bushings and the style of riding you want to do.

Bushing hardness is measured on the durometer scale just like wheels. The higher the durometer then the harder the bushing will be. Using harder bushings will give you more resistance when riding. One of the biggest factors to decide on when selecting a durometer is your weight. Generally speaking, the heavier you are then the harder your bushings should be.

If you are looking to carve and cruise with your longboard, then go for softer, more conical bushings. Whereas if you prefer freeride and downhill, then go for a barrel setup.

If you are looking for another way to maximize the speeds you can reach when riding downhill, then make sure that you have a good set of Longboard Gloves and Slide Pucks.