Bushings

Bushings are the soft, rubbery, often colorful bits in a skateboard truck that control the resistance in your truck’s articulation.

There are several significant design variables when choosing bushings (in roughly cascading order of practical importance):

• Hardness
• Height
• Shape
• Formula
• Weight & Application

Hardness

Bushing hardness in longboarding is measured on the Shore A scale.

Colloquially, skaters have metonymically come to refer to bushing hardness as “durometer,” despite the durometer being the measuring instrument rather than the hardness scale itself.

In the context of commercially available skateboard bushings, we consider 70A to be very soft, and 100A to be quite hard. A pencil eraser would be about 40A, a skate shoe sole tends to be about 70A, and skate hard wheels are generally 101A.

You may have heard bushings referred to in a context such as “run 73A in the front”. This is a skater describing the hardness of a bushing they will install in the front truck of their longboard.

Yes, the hardness of a bushing matters. Cranking down the kingpin nut on your stock bushings does not make them harder. It simply pre-compresses them. Initially this increases rebound and makes the truck feel “tighter.” As compression increases, however, you deprive the bushing of space to deform. This restricts articulation and can create a harsh, unpredictable feel. Over-tightening is not a substitute for proper bushing selection.

If your truck feels too loose or too tight, the correct solution is to replace the bushings with a different hardness, shape, or formula.

Height

Bushings usually come in pairs of two. They are installed on either side of the truck hanger, one “roadside” (facing the road), and one “boardside” (facing the board).
Bushings generally come in three heights:

• Short bushings are usually 0.5″ tall and often used in street skateboarding trucks.
• Medium bushings are usually 0.6″ tall and fit into standard bushing trucks such as Caliber V2s, Paris V3s, Randal RIIIs.
• Tall bushings are usually 0.75″ tall and fit into tall bushing trucks such as Gold Rogues, cast Ronins, and most racing-specific downhill trucks.

The height of a bushing decides how much it can be compressed via articulation of the truck before it “bottoms out”. This affects how much a truck can articulate before the bushings are fully loaded. Be sure to check what height of bushing your truck is compatible with before you purchase bushings.

Note: Most trucks take only one height of bushing. The few that are variable usually make use of shims or different baseplates. Be aware of these, as the wrong height of bushing in the wrong truck throws off the intended geometry of the truck.

Shape

There are also many shapes of bushings, ranging from barrels to cones to eliminators.

Bushings come in multiple shapes: barrels, cones, eliminators, and hybrids, to name a few.

• Barrels offer consistent, supportive resistance through the turn and are the dominant choice in downhill and freeride.
• Cones allow more initial turn and less resistance at the beginning of articulation. Slalom riders sometimes use a cone roadside in the front truck to increase steering responsiveness.
• Eliminators and stepped shapes restrict lateral deformation and increase stability, often used in high-speed rear setups.

Shape and washer configuration meaningfully alter how a given durometer behaves.

Shape has a big hand in deciding how a bushing behaves, so experiment if you’d like. If you skate downhill or freeride, most would strongly recommend sticking to simple double barrels.

As an aside, washer choice further modifies behavior. Cup washers restrict lateral expansion and effectively increase resistance by 2A or so. Flat washers allow more expansion and more freedom of movement.

Most skilled downhill skaters end up skating common barrels roadside and boardside. Sometimes, beginners will install a fatcone or an eliminator bushing boardside to restrict lean, “make the trucks more stable”, or “make the trucks more drifty”, but I think these are crutches. It is best to continue skating regular barrels unless you have a truly good reason.
Often times, a good bushing setup is really boring.

Formula

There are many manufacturers of skateboard bushings. Venom, Riptide, Seismic, Ronin, Riot, Blood Orange, and Orangatang are popular bushing brands in the longboarding space.

Each manufacturer of bushings have their own urethane formulations, sometimes multiple. They all feel a little bit different. The most standard bushing in 2026 is Venom HPF, but Venom SHR, Riptide APS, Riptide WFB, and Seismic are all popular choices today.

Formula changes rebound and damping.

Weight & Application

It has been well-agreed upon for a while that the hardness of the bushings you choose depends on your weight. I have my qualms about this theory and there are certainly exceptions. Therefore, I use a new, more complex model for bushing prediction.

Use the calculator here.

For most riders skating symmetrical, approximately 47° reverse-kingpin longboards for general freeride or cruising, 87A double barrels is a very defensible baseline.

With time, ankle stability improves. As technique develops, many riders converge toward a similar articulation profile, regardless of modest weight differences. An 87A double barrel setup tends to sit near the center of usable articulation for a wide range of riders.

One strong case against weights as a predictor for bushing hardness is the Venom “Hotboi” combo: a bushing combination of 73A/75A front, 95A/97A rear for the Rogue line of downhill racing trucks. Most skaters agree that this is an evergreen, extremely good bushing setup for these trucks regardless of weight or height. It must stand to reason that weight is mostly irrelevant to choosing bushing hardness.

Extra Notes:

• Often times, a good skater will recommend a good bushing setup for a certain set of trucks. It may be wise to listen.
• Start with manufacturer weight charts if you are unsure.
• Experimentation can be useful, but it’s easy to get lost in bushings. If things start to feel unclear, go back to a basic double barrel setup and re-visit your baseline.
• It is possible and somewhat common for novice bushing setups to be objectively bad after a period of intense experimentation. It’s best to be conservative.