For my upcoming birthday, my wife purchased a trailer hitch for the rear of my van and this hitch-mounted cargo carrier. Birthday gifts get more practical, the older you get.
On our recent trip to West Virginia, the van was so full of clothes and luggage and stuff that it was impossible to move around inside without shuffling things or, more often, pulling things out of the van so that I could get to other things inside the van. This happened the last time we took a long road trip in the van, too. On that trip, my wife wanted to bring her tent and our camping chairs and pie irons and… look, we’re talking about roughly 60 square feet of space that already has a bed, desk, storage unit, refrigerator, and microwave inside. It doesn’t take adding too many things to make the space unusable.
I’ve wanted a trailer hitch added to the van for a while now. My dad has a trailer and it’s convenient to have a vehicle or two around that can pull it. My 3/4 ton Ford E250 certainly fits the bill. Like the previous one, we purchased the hitch at and had it installed by U-Haul. I don’t know if they are the cheapest place in town but they may be the most convenient. There’s a U-Haul location five miles from our house and the entire process took about three hours, which included both installing the hitch and adding all the wiring for a four-wire hookup. The last hitch I had installed was in 2006 on my Avalanche and it cost $100. 19 years later, it cost $400 with a 2″ ball and a hitch. Inflation, yo.
I’ve been wanting one of those hitch-mounted cargo racks for a while now, and that last trip to West Virginia pushed me over the edge. The one I picked out was about $140 and I bought it from Amazon. There seemed to be a ton of options and accessories to choose from. You could get the rack by itself or with a bag, or with some tie-down straps, or with a stabilizer, or any number of other accessories, in any combination containing some, none, or all of those items. I picked the one with the carrier and the weatherproof bag. I have tie-downs and most of those other things already.
The carrier I purchased is 60″x20″x6″ and the box it came in was about half that size, so I knew some assembly would be required. You can see the entire process in the video at the top of this post but I can tell you it was simple. The carrier came in three pieces — two for the basket and then the hitch mount. The cage is held together with four sets of nuts, bolts, and washers and the hitch is attached with another three. All seven nuts and bolts are the same, so it would be tough to do anything wrong. It also came with a few reflective stickers. It took me about an hour to assemble and that’s with moving a camera around between shots. At worst I think it would take half an hour to assemble, and someone with more zest than I and an energy drink in hand could do it even more quickly.
The carrier supports up to 500 pounds, which should be plenty for a generator or anything else a person might want to put back there. The bag that came with it is weatherproof and gigantic, stretching nearly the entire width of the cage. It would have been a great place to store dirty clothes and other non-valuable stuff on my last trip. I haven’t quite figured out how to make things theft-proof on the carrier — a bicycle lock, perhaps?
One interesting thing about this particular carrier is that the hitch has an upward bend and so the rack is slighly higher than the hitch mount. I don’t think it really matters for bigger vans, but on something like a minivan it would give you a bit more ground clearance. It might help if you’re off roading or something, too. Even with the slightly raised angle I can open the rear doors of my van with no problem.
The whole thing weighs less than 40lbs and I didn’t have any problem picking it up and sticking it into the hitch receiver. With one person I simply put one end of the cage on the ground and tilted the other end down until the hitch lined up and then I just picked up the side that was on the ground and it slid right in. In the video I discuss building a tiny wooden support so that I could easily slide the rack in and out but to be honest I’m not sure it’s worth the effort. It really wasn’t that hard to do.
There are hundreds of these hitch-mounted carriers out there and this is just the one I bought. I saw others with foldable sides and some other features I didn’t need, but you might. This carrier with the water/weatherproof bag was $140, which was right in my birthday price range and look as good as any.
Arksen 60x20x6″ Cargo Rack Carrier: https://amzn.to/3HCpUbQ