Sport Trailers: Are they worth the money?

Occasionally we hear comments regarding Sport Trailers along the lines of “Those things are so expensive and excessive, who would ever blow their money on one of those” We realize that on the surface they may indeed seem a bit excessive, however when you start to break down the reasons someone may purchase a Sport Trailer over a traditional roof rack to transport water sports equipment and other gear it starts to make a lot more sense. We’ll dive into the three most common reasons Sport Trailers make sense for more people than you might think.

This is one of the most obvious reasons many consider a sport trailer in the first place. Cars produced in the last 5 years have only gotten bigger and taller, for many of our elderly or previously injured customers it is unfortunately just not doable for them anymore. The sport trailer provides a more comfortable loading height, oftentimes kayaks and canoes can be slid right onto the trailer with minimal lifting at all. This alone is the reason many of our customers make the jump to trailers from transporting their gear on the roof.

The average retail price of our best-selling sport trailers ranges from around $1,200 - $1,500. The average roof rack setup from a reputable brand such as Yakima or Thule ready to transport kayaks will run you somewhere in the $700 - $800 range factoring in the cost of both the crossbars and the kayak carrier attachments. As mentioned previously, this setup may not even be of use to some of our customer base. There are rooftop systems on the market such as the Thule Hullavator or Yakima ShowDown, designed to assist with loading kayaks onto the roof. When comparing the cost of a two kayak system utilizing these load assist kayak modules for the roof, and factoring in the specific crossbars needed for the system to work appropriately. You are right in the same ballpark as a quality sport trailer from one of our best selling sport trailer brands, Malone.

One final major selling point to sport trailers is just how much you can load up onto them. Not only do most of the kayak trailers we sell have wide load bars to allow for a ton of gear to be transported on them, but they have significantly higher weight ratings than roof racks in order to support it. Roof rack systems have an average dynamic weight rating of 165 lbs in most cases, sometimes less. The sport trailers from the brands we carry boast weight ratings between 500 - 800 lbs.  This is great for rooftop tents, heavy fishing kayaks, and whatever else you want to bring along with you.