Cargo Catastrophe

Traveling across country in a Honda Fit with a dog and a child is going to be cramped at best. Bringing full camping gear was going to be very difficult. So we bought a Rightline cargo saddlebag for more cargo space. It is a brilliant idea: haul cargo at the back of your car. This avoids reduced fuel efficiency that comes from the drag of putting things on top of your car.

You can do this now with a hitch-mounted cargo carrier. However, this is expensive since it requires installing a hitch, a hitch-mounted cargo carrier, and a cargo carrier. The Honda Fit is not rated for towing additional weight, and these things also add additional weight.

So the saddlebag seemed like an option to safely and cheaply carry some additional cargo.

However, our trip proved it wasn't a safe option. When nearing Salt Lake City on interstate 80, we went over a bump. Our saddlebag came loose on one side and dragged along the highway until we pulled over.

In the above picture you can see the bottom metal rails started disintegrating by getting dragged on the highway. Thankfully, we didn't emit any debris on the road beyond a little bit of disintegrated fabric. We had a crash pad in the bottom of the saddle bag that shielded everything else from harm. It started disintegrating as well but only a relatively small hole developed with a proportional amount of foam lost.

When I first received the bag, my immediate thought is that most of it was well constructed but that there was a critical point that relied on a plastic clip to hold the bag. Indeed this turned out to be our problem.

The plastic clip is used to allow for the strap to be adjustable. But this is possible as well with something made out of metal, it would just be a little more expensive and perhaps take a little longer to setup.

This put us in a bad position of being on the side of the highway in 100 degree heat. We were already behind in our travels and this was going to add a huge delay (it ended up being over an hour). Our car was already completely packed, so had to just leave some things by the side of the road that we decided we could part with. We were able to repair the bag enough to have confidence to fewer things in it with much less weight. This was possible to do without worrying about things falling out of the hole because the crash pad covered the hole and we only put large items in.

The saddlebag states a 100 pound weight limit. We were careful to weigh what we put into it ahead of time to stay at 100 pounds. Due to a lack of 100% consistency in re-packing it is possible we may have been a few pounds above the stated limit. However, we think the design should have a much greater margin for safety and wouldn't recommend anyone put in more than 50 pounds of weight in the bag without taking extra precautions.

I think it is possible to protect against failure of the clips. We had parachord on hand and attached it on the strap from above and below so that if the plastic clip broke the parachord would still hold it. This doesn't allow for re-positioning the strap, but once you get your positioning figured out you shouldn't have much need for changing it. A better approach might be to replace the clip with a carabiner.

The other precaution that can be taken with the materials given is to tie the bag to the underside of the car. This is listed as optional in the instructions (you can instead run a tie across the bag). However, I think a tie on the underside would be much more effective at reducing vertical movement from bumps. This makes taking the bag on and off the car much more inconvenient and they should design a strap for this that has a quick release rather than having to untie knots in the straps given. You might be able to achieve that with a carabiner as well.