School of Rack | Thule Racks Small Car Cargo Carrier Information Article

Drive a smaller car and add a Thule rack system to increase cargo space and still save money on gas!

Thule Racks has researched and released the results of some very promising information regarding the benefits of using a car rack system in this new era of high fuel costs. Combining a car rack system for carrying all your gear on a smaller, more fuel efficient car still dramatically increases gas mileage and saves you a lot of money over time. Just check out the image above which provides some excellent examples of how much more economical and fuel efficient it is to use a smaller car and a car rack cargo carrier system instead of carrying all your gear inside a minivan, SUV and other larger cars. Pretty interesting, huh?

Just drive down the highway these days and you will notice a visible shift in types and sizes of vehicles people are driving. Gone are the days of the bigger-is-better, large minivans and super-sized SUV's. The buzz words now are CUV's, sport wagons and gas-sipping compact cars. However, any active person still has the same ton of sports gear and equipment to haul around. On any given day you are transporting around bike helmets, shoes, tents, sleeping bags, backpacks, hiking boots, kayak and canoe paddles, skis, snowboards, baby joggers, groceries, lumber and more. Just because you may have down-sized your vehicle doesn’t mean this stuff is going to be able to transport itself.

With the addition of a car rack system you can safely and easily carry the same amount of stuff (if not more) than you did with a gas-chugging SUV. Thule roof boxes have an available capacity up to 21 cubic feet so you can have the carrying capacity of a Ford Escape on a Toyota Prius. Other excellent options are Thule roof bags and Thule roof baskets. And all these cargo carrier options quickly mount to both factory racks and Thule multi-purpose base roof rack systems. The rear of the car also offers excellent rack options such as a Thule hitch bike rack or Thule hitch cargo box. Hitches are easy to install, fit all styles of smaller cars, not just large gas-guzzling vehicles, and allow you to carry bikes, skis and even luggage, shopping bags and groceries inside a hitch mount cargo box off the back of your car. Thule car trunk racks are another excellent option if you need to transport bikes.

High gas prices may be a shock for North Americans, but they are old news for the rest of the world. Many of the new smaller cars seen on the road in North America have been available in Europe for years. As a global company, Thule Racks has been seamlessly racking these fuel economy cars and can offer first-to-market fit solutions, available through ORS Racks Direct. The North American driving public is learning what the rest of the world has already learned: drive a smaller car and add a Thule rack system to increase cargo space and still save money on gas!

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