Bull Bar Buyer’s Guide

Whether you drive your Toyota Tundra through the urban jungle, the high plains, or along narrow, forested roads, you might have thought about picking something up to protect the front end of your truck. When you consider how much there is at stake not only under the hood, but also the expensive-to-repair bodywork and lighting, it’s clear that you should take whatever steps you can to prevent your truck from falling victim to a careless touch-parker or stray deer.

Here’s a 2007 Toyota Tundra with a Westin Bull Bar. It has the optional skid plate and driving lights. Westin offers this bull bar in either chrome or matte black finish.

Bull bars, cow catchers, deer killers, brush guards – these are all names for essentially the same product: A protective steel framework that extends out in front of your vehicle. Needless to say, there are many different types and styles of grille-guards on the market, ranging from hardcore to pure accessory. How can you decide which brand and style is right for your needs?

The first thing you should consider is the environment in which you operate your truck, and what you spend most of your time doing with it. If you live in the city, chances are the type of protection you are looking for is fairly simple – a bar that extends up from underneath the bumper to ward off other cars in parking lots and on the street. Given your truck’s ride-height advantage, you probably don’t have to worry too much about having your headlights or side markers damaged by an impact. In this case, you can choose a simple U-shaped bar that uses 3-inch steel tubing to rise up to just underneath the chin of your truck’s grille.

Romik makes a bull bar like this which even comes with an integrated skid plate, making it a decent option for trail use as well, and giving you a good spot to mount off-road lights. Not only that, but it will add a much more aggressive look to your truck.

Here’s a photo of a Romik bull bar mounted on a Tundra. It has an integrated skid plate, and it costs less than a similar Westin bull bar.

If you find yourself driving down heavily wooded roads that aren’t always properly trimmed back, you might be cringing every time you hear a branch slap into one of your headlights or turn signals. In a situation like this, you probably need more than a standard bull bar. You should be looking at a more comprehensive option like the Sportsman 1-Piece offered by Westin. This brush guard offers side wings which provide a lattice of steel protection to cover your headlights, along with 4 very solid pieces of steel that connect across the front of your truck at various heights for maximum strength. These types of full protection bars are great for keeping your truck safe during accidental wildlife impact.

The Sportsman Grille Guard from Westin is available in black, chrome, and either modular or one-piece configurations.

For the ultimate in brush guard utility, you should consider the Aries Retriever Winch Mount Grill Guard. Offering the same level of protect as the Westin Sportsman, the Aries Retriever adds an extra cross member which is designed to permit the mounting of a winch. A good winch out on the trail means never getting stuck again – and it can also mean the difference between turning your Tundra around and going home versus pulling debris out of the road and making it to your destination.

On the left, Aries new grille guard for the 07-08 Tundra. On the right, the Westin “Classic”.

Bull bars and brush guards are ultimately a mixture of personal taste and practicality. Maybe you love the look of the full front-end treatment on your city-dwelling truck, or maybe you don’t feel you need more than a standard, low-mount Westin bull bar on the ranch. Take some time to check out pictures of the products you are interested in mounted on a vehicle like yours before you take the plunge, and you’ll be confident when you lay your money down that you have made the right decision. Also, when it’s time to buy a grille guard, keep in mind that shipping costs can be pretty high. Some grille guards are one-piece, heavy, and can only be shipped by truck. So, if a company offers free shipping (like AutoAnything.com), make sure to consider the total cost (including shipping) before you buy.