Joshua Cohan did not set out to reinvent trail building. He was trying to keep a bike park open.
Cohan is one of the owners of Jarrod’s Place, a riding destination in Dalton, Ga., where jump lines take a beating from weather and traffic. Maintaining exposed dirt features was becoming a costly loop of repairs, closures and resurfacing.
Trail Armor emerged from that reality, a product born from the stubborn needs of a working bike park and a crew that was tired of rebuilding the same lips, landings and berms over and over.
“It’s a proprietary carpet that’s designed for mountain bike or BMX trails that mitigate trail erosion and maintenance while keeping rolling resistance the same, if not better,” Cohan said.
The goal was simple: keep trails consistent, durable and rideable longer, without making them feel slow or strange.
Testing everything in the Home Depot aisle
Trail Armor did not arrive fully formed. Cohan says the team tried basically everything they could get their hands on, then watched how it behaved under braking, skidding and heavy use.
“We’ve tested everything from your standard house carpet to marine grade carpet to synthetic style backing carpet to astroturf,” he said. “You name it, we’ve tested it.”
Those early prototypes were not pretty. They were practical.
The crew laid samples in key wear zones, staked them down and tracked what happened over weeks and months. They even tested a white piece that turned black down the centre from riders landing on the brakes.
Thankfully, Dalton, Georgia is the “Carpet Capital of the World,” with numerous major carpet manufacturers. So the boys started developing their own carpet.
What it is and what it is not
Trail Armor is not just a roll of house carpet. Cohan says the backing is proprietary and nonporous. That matters for erosion.
“We always recommend that it needs to hang over the edge of the trail at least about six inches,” he said. “They shingle it like roofing tile so that way no water can seep underneath of it.”
The material is 100 per cent polypropylene and, Cohan says, has been tested for use in places with strict requirements.
“It’s passed in all of their test labs for the basic breakdown of the material,” he said, including reviews tied to state park use in Florida and California.
The test that changed everything
The strongest argument for Trail Armor is not the spec sheet. It is the maintenance bill.
Cohan points to Senior Discount; a signature…
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