My old top loader finally gave up, so one year Santa brought me a new side loader. I hate it. In my opinion the top loader is much better. You can load the whole rack and set it down in the smoker instead of having ot load each shelf seperately. Also for doing cheese, the top loader works better, cause you can put the rack on top of the smoker and cover it with the box, so it doesn't melt the cheese. My $.02 cool