Quick-swap handles for heavy-duty trailbuilding.

Trail Boss has been building packable trail tools since 2011. In those past 13 years, collapsible handles have been the company's calling card. We took a deep dive with Trail Boss founder Bill Hasenjaeger a few years ago, and discussed the roots of the brand, as well as the "how" and "why" of building tools locally. This spring, Trail Boss flipped the script, with a line of rigid-handle tools designed for trail crews and “frontcountry” digging under the name Crew Tools. They’re still made in Bellingham, Washington, and they’re still designed with the needs of trailbuilders as a top priority, but their target audience and trail has shifted.

I’ve been grubbing around in the woods for the past couple of months with the brand’s new solid-handle Hoe Rake, so we’ll dive into how it compares to other solid-handle tools, as well as where and why it makes sense over a segmented traditional Trail Boss tool.

Trail Boss Crew Hoe Rake Details

• Weight: 5.56 lbs / 2.54 kg
• Handle: Pultruded structural fiberglass tube with epoxy bonded grip
• Core and Guard: 6061 aluminum 
• Head: 1/4” Hardox 450 powdercoated steel
• MSRP: $130

To start, the Crew Tools line is available with three heads: a Hard Rake, a Hoe Mattock, and the Hoe Rake I’ve been using. There is potential down the road for more heads and other options that bolt into the Crew head interface.

What Makes a Trail Boss a Trail Boss?

When I first showed up to dig with my Crew Tools Hoe Rake, my buddies' immediate reaction was “but that defeats the entire point of a Trail Boss?!” And they’re right, sorta. Trail Boss has built a name on tools that break down and are easy to pack deep into the woods; The best part is that they’re not rigid handled tools. Trail Boss’s collapsible tools are built for backcountry digging, in areas that you can’t just drive or hike quickly to. It's a value proposition based on access—they let you bring tools to hard-to-access places.

The new design means Trail Boss is taking a step into uncharted territory. This directly relates to why the brand is making the “Crew Tools” distinction. Trail Boss will continue making the packable tools we all know and love, but it also saw a hole in the market for high-quality, repairable tools for professional crews, volunteer days, and any other situation where durability takes precedence over packability.

While there are plenty of good long-handled tools on the market, when they inevitably break, they’re not easily-repairable. You’ve got to either burn or drill out the old shaft from the socket, and then find a new shaft that fits, or turn down a generic wood shaft. That’s time-consuming and frustrating work.

Every trail organization I’ve worked with has a stack of broken tools that need their handles replaced. Too often, it’s simpler to just buy a whole new tool than relegate the resources to source and install a new handle. So Crew Tools use a new handle-head interface that’s designed to be more durable than other options, and also can be swapped in just a minute or two with readily-available tools.

Swappable Handle and Head System

While Trail Boss's packable tools allow for tool-free head swaps, you’ll need a bike multitool or Allen set to break down Crew Tools. There are three main parts to this system: the core, which goes up inside the fiberglass shaft, the guard, which slides over the shaft, and, of course, the head. The head bolts to the core, which slides into the shaft, which is sandwiched by the guard, and then two more bolts lock the whole thing together.

The system sounds complicated, but in practice it’s very quick and straightforward. Unbolt the bottom bolt from the head, undo the two bolts holding the head, guard, and core together, and pull them all off and out. If need be, you can pop the bottom bolt into the core to give you some purchase to slide it out. All the tolerances are satisfyingly tight, and it would take some trying to mess up the swap. You can either put on a whole new handle, which Trail Boss will supply, or you can cut off the damaged portion of the handle, drill new holes, and bolt it all back together with a shorter handle.

The guard does a good job of shielding the most common impact zone of the handle from rocks and roots, so that you should be able to abuse Crew Tools more than other options before the handle is compromised. That said, fiberglass is very good at handling flexing and levering forces, but as soon as you compromise the integrity of the fibers with a jagged edge rock strike, it loses a lot of its integrity. So the Crew system gets you more durability, but don’t use it as an excuse to be a meathead.

Performance and Comparisons

If I could only dig with one tool for the rest of my life, it would be a Crew Hoe Rake. This isn’t a unique or inventive head shape, there are plenty of variations on it available from a variety of brands, but this one is particularly well-executed. The cutting surfaces are sharp and hold their edge well, even after plenty of rock bashing and root cutting. The tool has enough heft to chop through bigger obstacles, but not so much that it wears me out too fast. And the flat top is excellent for tamping and packing. It’s a great jack-of-all-trades tool.

I initially used a pre-production Crew Tool for a few months of winter digging. Because I am a meathead, I whacked enough rocky outcroppings with it that eventually I compromised the fiberglass handle just above the guard. This is a known issue for my digging style, I’ve gone through four handles on my Rogue Hoe in the last two years, all from similar impacts. It’s not the tool’s fault, it’s mine.

But, when I break a Rogue Hoe handle, it’s a prolonged, frustrating process to repair or replace. Generally it takes me a few weeks to get around to cleaning the broken handle splinters out the head socket, and then sourcing and installing a new handle. With the Crew Tool, that process gets cut down to a few minutes. Undo three bolts, slide it apart, slide it back together, cinch everything back up, and get back to moving dirt.

Compared to Trail Boss’s collapsible tools, I really appreciate the rigid-handled Crew Tool experience. It feels more solid, and more confidence-inspiring. I especially noticed the difference when using the top of the head to pack down dirt. Usually that tamping impact loosens up the head from the shaft of my collapsible tool, and the resulting play forces me to be more gentle and careful. The Crew Tool stays solid, and encourages a more burly digging style.

The Crew Tool Clientele

Whether the Crew Tool line is right for you is best answered via a process of elimination: If you do all of your digging deep in the woods, accessed via bike or motorcycle, you’ll still be best-served by a collapsible Trail Boss. If you’re happy with your current rigid-handled tools, and you’ve never broken a handle, then you probably won’t reap the benefits of Crew’s quick-swap heads. But, if you, or the trail organization you represent, are tired of dealing with broken handles and heads that are out of commission for weeks or months on end, Crew Tools present an attractive alternative to the current paradigm.

No, they’re not cheap, but at $130 per tool they’re just a little more expensive than the $100-ish price point that most established players who don’t have easily-swappable heads hit. If you factor in the labor cost of swapping out broken handles, that price becomes even more attractive. Finally, if you value tools made by passionate riders and builders in the U.S., who are spending their free time burning in singletrack, these fit that bill.

For Now

While at first glance Trail Boss’s new Crew Tool line feels like a departure from the brand’s long-standing ethos, it’s actually a logical continuation of it. If you like Trail Boss’s packable tools, but want something designed to hold up to the rigors of day-in-day-out frontcountry trailbuilding, Crew Tools have you covered.

Learn more: Trailboss Crew Tools