The biggest constraint with living/traveling/camping in an SUV is where do you keep everything you need/want? You can take minimalism only so far. I met a guy back in ’92 on the Rio Dulce in Guatemala who was an extremist like that. He was a pretty famous multi-hull designer. You know catamarans and trimarans. They attribute a lot of their speed to keeping weight low. To that end Peter kept his interiors bare. He used bean bag furniture to reduce weight. He was so dedicated to keeping everything light that used to remove the covers of his paperback books. He even cut his toothbrush handles down to stubs! Keeping weight down in an SUV isn’t that extreme but the more payload in the vehicle the more fuel it takes to lug it around. And volume of gear is important.
My bed frame is 14″ off the deck in most places and another 4″ to that in the forward part of the bed. So there’s plenty of room to stuff stuff under there. That’s where the tent will live, for one. Clothes, food stuffs and the like will also fit in containers beneath the bed. But there are other things that need additional storage space…like the 11 lb. propane tank for one.
There are several ways of gaining extra storage space. One is to drag along a small trailer. I’m not going to do that. Trailers restrict where you can go to park overnight or longer. The next alternative is a rooftop carrier. We’ve all seen them.
Some of them can cost over $1,500! Price and the fact that my Mitsubishi doesn’t have roof rails on which to mount such a thing save me from going that route. There are some real downsides to these things, too. They can restrict where you can go because of the added height. You’d hit certain drive-thru signs in many cases and have problems with multi-storied parking garages. People who have them admit they do have “drag” through the air which has a negative effect on gas mileage. In some cases rather significant, and with petrol prices on the rise this summer that certainly has to be considered.
Since the Mitsubishi has a trailer hitch I decided to get a hitch-mounted cargo carrier. I bought a MaxxHaul 49″ x 22.5″ Hitch Mount Aluminum Cargo Carrier With High Side Rails. I went with aluminum for the no-rust feature. I saw similar, and less expensive at Harbor Freight, but the one they had at the store nearby was just a floor model and I would have to have one delivered. Looking at YouTube vids the assembly of those is a piece of cake.
This thing, on the other hand, should have said “Some Assembly Required.” It didn’t, but I got up and at ’em before it started to get hot here deep in the swamp off the Saint Johns River in DeBary, central Florida.
This thing came in a ton of parts.
Putting it together was really simple. Overall it took me about an hour to put the frame together.
A few more nuts and bolts secured the frame to the tongue and this is how it looks attached to the SUV…
These kinds of carriers don’t have any air drag to mess with mileage.
Tomorrow, Monday, I’ll go to Lowes to buy a bin to fit in the carrier. The one I ordered from Amazon
was handed over to morons at the USPS and after days and days of them screwing around I just cancelled the order and asked for a refund. Amazon customer service said I’ll have it in about three days.
It has been a total cluster coitus since the end of the week. It was delivered to the post office in Orange City. That facility is 3.6 miles from my shipping address. They didn’t get there before 5 p.m. when the maildrop closes for the day but instead of returning it to Orange City they sent it to effin’ Stuart! Over 160 miles away! Well, next it went to Orlando and, again the driver didn’t get there while the store was open so they sent this box to effin’ Jacksonville! Next it went to Lady Lake and who the hell knows where it is now? Oh, well. I can get something similar to this at Lowes and for about a third the price, too.
One More Good Adventure 