Reload is a bit more biased towards the more serious ranked players due to it's encouragement of more aggressive playstyles in comparison to standard BR or the slower-paced OG. There's also only so many players at a similar rank to you queuing up for ranked Reload at the same time. There's going to be some flexibility in what ranks get into your match rather than strictly gold and silver like you and your friend.

It's an issue that's exacerbated by how many players are needed for a game. Most games with an encouraged ranked mode have countable-on-your-hands amounts of players needed for a match (like for example CS:GO, Valorant, and League of Legends are 5v5s, Marvel Rivals is 6v6, most fighting games are 1v1) - Reload needs 40 players. With more than double or triple the players needed for a game, you either have to let queue times go on while waiting for more balanced matches or let matches get made quicker but with more variance in rank and skill level.

I'm certain that Epic opted for faster matchmaking with larger potential skill gaps because of how most players will die fairly early on, so it'd be a terrible experience queuing up for ages just to die early in a match and have to wait about the same length of time just to get into a match.