This spring we loaded up a truck and pointed it at St. Louis for ILEETA — the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association conference and expo. It's three days of the people who train the people who do the job: defensive-tactics instructors, firearms trainers, academy staff, and working officers from agencies all over the country, all under the glass roof of Union Station.

Why We Brought the Whole Truck

The StandA.R.D. is a no-drill, built-to-order vehicle rifle mount. It anchors to OEM attachment points inside the cab, ships configured for the driver or passenger side, and holds the long gun locked, in reach, and out of sight. None of that lands when the mount is sitting on a pipe-and-drape table. An in-cab mount only makes sense when you can see it in a cab.

So the booth was a full-size truck, with the mount installed exactly the way an agency would order it. Officers could open the door, drop into the seat, reach for the rifle, and feel the deployment for themselves — the reach, the retention, the clearance around the console. That's the part that doesn't read on a spec sheet, and it's the part that decides whether a mount works at two in the morning.

Officers examining the StandA.R.D. mount through the open door of the display truck.
View from inside a truck cab looking into the glass-roofed Union Station hall at ILEETA 2026.
Two Pl8tek staff unrolling display turf from a truck bed under the ILEETA sign.
The Pl8tek booth set up with a branded table beside the display truck.
A black full-size truck displaying the StandA.R.D. vehicle rifle mount at the Pl8tek booth.
The display truck in front of the Pl8tek operate-in-comfort banner.
Overhead view of the Pl8tek truck display on the expo floor.
Pl8tek staff seated at the booth table talking with attendees.
An officer seated in the truck cab working a rifle out of the StandA.R.D. cradle while two others look on.
A conversation at the Pl8tek booth table with attendees.
A videographer filming a walkthrough at the Pl8tek booth.
Overhead view of the ILEETA expo hall floor with attendees and the Pl8tek truck booth.
HANDS-ONShowing the in-cab mount the way it actually rides.

The Intel Was the Real Takeaway

We came to show the StandA.R.D. We left with a notebook full of feedback. Officers from different agencies run different platforms — a Ford PIU here, a Tahoe PPV there, Durangos, full-size pickups, a couple of specialty rigs we'd never been asked about. Every one of those conversations is a data point: what cab they run, where the rifle has to live, what the partition and console allow, and what their last mount got wrong.

That's how a built-to-order product gets sharper. The StandA.R.D. isn't pulled off a shelf — it's configured around a specific vehicle, install side, and rifle. So the more cabs and complaints and "can you make it do this" we hear, the better the next build sheet gets. The next agency's mount is shaped partly by what an officer told us in St. Louis.

Who We Talked To

ILEETA pulls a particular crowd: the trainers and the officers who actually live in these vehicles. Rural sheriff's deputies running pickups off the state route. Metro PD officers in sedans and SUVs. School resource officers, K9 handlers fighting for cargo space, conservation officers who need bed capacity and a long gun both. Different problems, same question — how does the rifle get locked, in reach, and out of sight without drilling a vehicle the agency may not even own outright.

Those are exactly the people the StandA.R.D. is built for, and getting them in the seat for three days straight told us more than a year of emails would have.

Made in the USA, Built on Real Feedback

Everything we build is designed, machined, and assembled in Concord, North Carolina. We'd rather hear what a mount needs to do from the officer who runs the cab than guess at it from the shop. ILEETA 2026 put a few hundred of them in front of us in three days, and that feedback is already on the bench.

If you ran into us in St. Louis, thanks for stopping by. If you didn't, the truck travels — and the StandA.R.D. is ready to spec for your fleet right now.