AMC Outdoors, November 2003

By Michael Lanza

It wasn’t until some years after completing my formal education that I came to appreciate how wonderfully relevant physics is to everyday life.

It happened the summer when my girlfriend (now wife), Penny, and I lived out of a Honda Civic while traveling the West for three months. We judiciously stuffed every cubic centimeter of space between the roof, windows, and front seats with our camping, backpacking, climbing, and biking gear, clothing duffels, food box, dirty laundry, and cooler; not even the passenger-side floor was exempt from serving as storage space. Our Beverly Hillbillies vehicle-packing method inspired one futile drug search by an overzealous (and perhaps bored) Utah state trooper, occasional fits of reorganizing where we’d heave everything from the car and repack it, and the illumination of an all-but-forgotten law of physics: Even when it seems all hope is lost, you can always cram more in.

Years later, we’ve moved up to the decadence of a larger car outfitted with a cavernous roof box — and discovered another law of physics: No matter how much space you have, you’ll fill it.

As we learned through years of hard research, when the volume occupied by your adventure toys approaches the interior volume of your vehicle, it’s time to move stuff outside — onto a vehicle rack.

Yes, you can find a carrying system for your sport that fits your car, truck, van, or SUV. The options are innumerable, and there’s a system for every combination of vehicle and recreational interests. Manufacturers Thule and Yakima have online guides to finding the right rack for your vehicle, including letting you know which accessories you may need, as do some retailers like REI and L.L. Bean. (I refer to Thule and Yakima products below because they’re the major manufacturers, but there are others.) There’s a huge range in price, and a versatile system can be expanded as you need or can afford to do it. You can install most racks in 30 minutes or less.

The Big Picture
There are four basic types of racks, one or more of which will work with most vehicles:

Rooftop racks attach to a vehicle’s roof or factory-installed rack. If your car lacks gutters, the attaching devices — called towers or feet — clamp into the seam between the door and the car’s frame. Atop those sit the load bars, or crossbars, which support the load. Attached to those bars are the mounts, or carriers, which are the sport-specific accessories for bikes, kayaks, skis, etc.; a roof box also sits on load bars. You can add carriers to the rack and remove them as needed; all are sold separately. Know the weight limits of your vehicle’s roof (check the owner’s manual) and the box or rack, whether it’s one you’re installing yourself or that was on your car when it rolled off the factory floor. Many rooftop boxes, for instance, handle a maximum load of 100 to 150 pounds, and the box itself can weigh 50 pounds.

Trunk or deck mounts — they’re not technically racks — employ straps and hooks to attach to a hatchback or trunk. They are inexpensive, ranging from about $50 to $140; easy to install and remove; and popular for transporting bikes.

Hitch racks attach to a car’s or truck’s standard hitch, which can be purchased and installed separately if one does not come with the vehicle. (U-Haul dealers sell and install hitches.) Hitch racks can swing away for easy access to the rear of the vehicle, and the arms can fold down for storage when not in use. You can get boxes and bike carriers that attach to a hitch rack.

Spare tire racks attach to the spare tire on the back of the vehicle or to the mechanism holding the tire to the vehicle. They usually have attachment options for carrying bikes, skis, or snowboards.

Rooftop and hitch racks are the most versatile because they’re modular, meaning you can customize your rack and modify it daily depending on which toys you’re carrying. They also tend to be more expensive, although the cost varies with the components you choose (see prices below).

Be aware that a roof box or rack could create clearance problems in a garage. Measure your vehicle’s height before buying. With a tall vehicle like an SUV, a hitch carrier is often the best choice for bikes, both to alleviate any problem with clearance and because it’s easier to load and unload than a roof rack.

Of course, anything added to a vehicle’s exterior affects its aerodynamics and compromises fuel efficiency — I’ve heard up to 20 percent at highway speeds.

What Do You Need?
I can’t cover the myriad options in vehicle racks in this column. But I will touch on a few common situations.

Bike racks come in all four rack types listed above. Rooftop mounts — which attach directly to load bars — range from Yakima’s simple Boa Bike Mount ($60), composed of two small, separate mounts for the front fork and rear tire, to Thule’s V2 Bike Mount ($125), a full tray that fits all disc brake/suspension fork combinations and fits square and round cross bars. There are mounts for tandem and recumbent bikes, and full kits containing everything needed to put a bike on a factory rack. Hitch racks are numerous and varied; examples are Thule’s Hitching Post Pro 4-Bike ($170) and 2-Bike ($140), and the Yakima Bighorn 5 Hitch Rack ($200), which hauls five bikes.

For hauling a kayak, canoe, or surfboard, a rooftop system is your only choice. Inexpensive solutions come in the form of kits containing straps, hooks, and foam blocks, and generally cost from $32 to $66. Simple padded brackets sold as accessories to many rooftop racks will hold a boat in place with straps. Specialized systems include: the Thule Hang 2 Surf Carrier ($39) with polypropylene cradles for carrying a surfboard, Thule Hydro Glide Kayak Saddles ($60 a pair) for cradling a kayak, and Yakima’s DryDock Boat Hitch Mount ($150), a Y-frame set-up that, combined with a pair of towers and crossbars, creates a boat platform for trucks (even with camper shells), SUVs, and vans.

A roof box provides the most space and best protection for your gear, making it ideal for carting everything but bikes and boats. Boxes generally come with a simple, secure locking system. The biggest drawback is expense: They start around $250 and go way up from there, not including the rack parts.

Think about the size of box you need, both length and width. A big box like the Yakima LoadRanger 20 ($450), with 20 cubic feet of space; or Thule Evolution 1600 ($419), with 16-cubic-foot capacity, will hold a mountain of gear. But on many cars, those boxes leave no space for carrying a bike or boat beside the box.

When fitting skis is the primary concern or you want to carry a bike or boat beside the box, get a smaller, narrow box like the Thule Cascade 1100 ($249), which is 88 inches long and fits five to six pairs of skis; or the almost identically sized Yakima SpaceBooster 11 ($230).

For a small car, look at a smaller (also narrow and inexpensive) model like the Thule Sidekick ($169), which has eight cubic feet, but at 54 inches isn’t long enough for most adult skis.

Roof baskets and bags are lighter and less expensive than boxes, come in a variety of sizes and types, have nearly the capacity of a big box, and offer the convenient ability to be removed and stored away compactly when not needed. Some bags are nearly waterproof. Baskets, which begin at just over $100 when you include the stretch cargo netting to hold contents in place, are certainly not waterproof. But some, like the Yakima Load Warrior ($280) and Thule Playpen Cargo Carrier ($265), have integrated load bars you can mount bike, ski, and boat carrier accessories onto. Baskets and bags are generally rectangular and not long enough for skis.

One last word of advice: Don’t drain your retirement account to buy a rack. Start with only what you absolutely need for your activities. But if you expect to expand your rack later, get a versatile system so you can add accessories.

—Michael Lanza is author of The Ultimate Guide to Backcountry Travel, from AMC Books.