We Love a Janky, Dilapidated Roof Box

Whenever I spot a minivan cruising down the road with a discolored, duct-taped roof box on top, I can almost hear the sound of my family’s white Sears Xcargo car-top carrier rattling on the roof of our Toyota Previa while blasting down I-95 en route to our grandparents’ house when I was a kid.

Over the years, that thing got janky, with rotting straps tied in sketchy knots to hold the box down and bent nails latching the shell closed. It was ugly, cumbersome, and on more than one occasion flew open on the highway, but whenever it came out of the garage, even the dog knew it was time to go somewhere fun.

When I was in high school, we upgraded to a silver Thule Evolution 1800 on top of our Ford Expedition, which was big enough to carry skis and snowboards and soiled roadtrip clothing (don’t ask). After two accidental garage door mishaps, we replaced that one with the deluxe Thule Evolution 2100, which I managed to commandeer after college for a five-month cross-country road trip in a minivan with a girlfriend, two dogs, a bicycle, and lots of art supplies.

The storage space allowed us to sleep in the van (this was before fancy #vanlife build-outs) and the box collected our collage of stickers from every national park, brewery, art collective, ski shop, and political activist we encountered. It sustained cracks, repairs, a burglary, and a near miss with a low-clearance parking garage. That one met its demise, along with the relationship, in an alleyway in Los Angeles from which it was stolen.

I eventually became a truck guy and didn’t have the means or need to mount a roof box atop my camper shell. But my new girlfriend’s Rav4 was a junk show of gear, so for her birthday, I found a used Yakima Rocketbox on Craigslist that had seen its days but was holding strong with several Bondo patch jobs and jerry-rigged fastenings.

We cruised all over Colorado during the pandemic, social distancing with a library of skis and snowboards on the roof. It essentially turned her SUV into a truck, which I thought was brilliant, until the cracked shell opened up and blew off the roof on the way back from a desert climbing trip.

With a lifetime of used cartop carrier lessons learned, I wanted to do it right this year when upgrading my girlfriend’s VW Tiguan to a spacious adventure mobile by way of a sturdy roof box that would go the distance with us. Her car has better gas mileage than my 2002 Tacoma, but its limitations on capacity and organization became a point of stressful contention, so I began a hunt for the ultimate solution.

Current-day roof box options have come a long way since my family’s first Sears version. Newer boxes can be installed in minutes with much more secure mounting systems and reliable locking mechanisms than past iterations. Some are aerodynamic, felt-lined, LED-lit, and even come with solar panels.

But the durability of the hard plastic is the most confidence-inspiring when you’re shoving the majority of cargo up top to make things like the emergency snack bag more accessible in the car, so we went with Yakima’s most durable option: the SkyBox NX 18. This one won us over after proving big enough to sneak in a few extra pairs of skis, including skate skis that usually don’t make the cut, for a pow-chasing mission to Utah last winter. It was quiet at speed, even on the interstate, without so much of a hint of those anxiety-inducing rattling noises I’d become so accustomed to.

The downside to this fancy carrier: So far, we haven’t made any new memories over roof box catastrophes to laugh about years later. But that’s just fine by me. At this point in my life, I’ll take the satisfaction of stability while relishing the freedom of space and vehicular versatility. But I can’t help but keep an ear out for loose parts rattling around up above.

More Odes

When the Snow Is Absolute Garbage, Ski It Anyway
A Telemark Skier Takes a Long Look in the Mirror 
Long Live Waterskiing, the Sport of Purists