XLR Industries Next-Gen Long-Range and Hunting Chassis

XLR Industries is pioneering the rifle chassis space for both lightweight hunting and long-range PRS builds. Take a look at their company with an interview with XLR Marketing and Sales Director Matthew Means.

November 02, 2023 By Firearms News Staff

You’d be surprised by how many firearms companies got their start in a garage to the point it’s almost a requisite. Well, XLR Industries checks that box and was indeed founded in a garage by James Cox and Kyle Miller in 2010. It was about that time that chassis rifles started gaining traction, and Cox and Miller saw a unique opportunity to build tactical and competition chassis while setting the stage for hunting chassis in the future. Well, they called it exactly as chassis-style rifles continue to become one of the most popular options for hunting and long-range shooting.

“XLR started out with tactical and competition rifle applications at its core,” said Matthew Means, national sales and marketing director for XLR. He continued, “The chassis have evolved immensely to modern competition demands, chassis that are more versatile allowing consumers to easily change the chassis system to meet different needs, and most importantly lightweight options for hunting. XLR’s product catalog has continued to grow with more accessories allowing the core chassis to also be fine-tuned for each individual’s preference.”

XLR Unique Chassis Features

XLR Chassis use their multi-point radial inlet bedding system, which they claim to be far superior to the V-Block bedding system used by most chassis designs. The multi-point radial inlet is designed for maximum consistency when bolting a barreled action into an XLR chassis, which increases accuracy. As expected in a chassis design, XLR chassis are highly modular, and they’re designed to easily modify weight, shooter body type, use-case and more. They feature a lot of integrated features including an integrated bubble level, ARCA Swiss rail, sling provisions, weight provisions, and plenty of M-LOK accessory slots. XLR chassis are compatible with many of the popular rifle actions including the Remington 700, Savage, Tikka, Howa/Weatherby, and .22LR rimfire actions. The chassis are ambidextrous, and they’re built to accommodate many different clones of these popular actions.

This modularity and “universal” design extends to accommodate all the different bolt handle designs, oversized and different designed bolts stops, trigger hangers and oversized tang designs. For factory actions like Savage, the inlet will accept different models and generations of these actions. These will have different action screw spacing and bolt releases. Here is what Means had to say about the modularity of the XLR products.

“Most of your other chassis are a complete system. What you buy is what you get. Some options have a few areas of the system where you can choose or change out parts. XLR systems are all 100% plug and play between all the different models and options. Changing buttstocks and grips leads to thousands of options available due to accepting AR style buttstocks and grips. The majority of all the improvements on chassis over the years are backwards compatible allowing older models to stay relevant to a certain degree.”

XLR Manufacturing

The manufacturing process is pretty standard for modern chassis builds. There are no great surprises here, but XLR sets themselves apart with their quality control and determination to only use U.S.-made materials. Most of what they use comes from local shops in Colorado with some accessories like grips and carbon fiber coming from California, Utah or Arizona. American aluminum, magnesium, steel and brass go into CNC mills run by a largely veteran workforce. The team that runs the CNC mills, and the company as a whole, are end-users of their own product. They live for the outdoors and are passionate hunters and long-range enthusiasts. XLR is proud to have an American workforce building truly made-in-the-USA products. While most of the XLR manufacturing is built around custom work and direct-to-consumer and retail markets, they’ve also built an impressive OEM network. They work behind the scenes on many big-name manufacturers that you probably already know and use. When asked about what the future of the hunting and shooting industry will look like for XLR Industries, Means has high expectations for a successful future.

“The precision rifle market within the shooting/hunting industry has continued to explode over the past decade. We are seeing some off the largest AR and handgun manufactures branching off into the bolt gun market, and although there are a few different factors to these moves, one of them is rapid growth of the precision bolt action rifle. XLR will continue to cater to the high-end aftermarket chassis market and plans on continuing to be the tip of the spear in modern hunting rifle applications.”

Based on their wait times, it’s safe say that demand is continuing to grow. They have many preconfigured options in stock with dealers and their online store, but wait times for a custom build are looking around 15 to 20 weeks. However, XLR is well-positioned to expand and grow, and they are continuously innovating with several projects in the works that will get long-range shooters and hunters excited. Unfortunately, we can’t share the details yet, but we can safely say that XLR Industries is a company to watch. Whether you’re looking to build and ultra-light hunting chassis rifle or a precision-long-range build, XLR Industries definitely needs to be your first stop when looking to build a chassis rifle.

If you have any thoughts or comments on this article, we’d love to hear them. Email us at FirearmsNews@Outdoorsg.com.