Why heavy roof tents are the biggest practical hurdle to peer-to-peer rental, and the British-built kit that’s quietly sorting it out.
The problem with roof tents
If you’ve ever tried to get a roof tent on or off a car by yourself, you’ll know the issue straight away.
A roof box is light. Somewhere around 15-20kg, so one person can lift it onto the bars without much drama. Hand it over, take a deposit, done.
A hard-shell roof tent is a different beast entirely. They typically weigh 65-90kg, they’re roughly the size of a single mattress, and the weight isn’t evenly balanced, it’s heavier towards the ladder end. Lifting one of these on or off a car safely really does need two people. Without that, you’re looking at dropped tents, scratched roofs, and a fair few strained backs.
That’s the barrier that’s kept roof tents largely out of the peer-to-peer rental world, even though they’re exactly the kind of big-ticket item that makes sense to share. The good news is that someone has already built the kit to solve it, most owners just don’t know it exists yet.
Two different jobs: storage and handover
It helps to separate these out, because they’re easy to conflate and the most popular product on the market only really solves one of them.
- Storage is about getting the tent off the car and out of the way between trips.
- Handover is about getting the tent on and off the car safely, repeatedly, and ideally without needing a second pair of hands.
The Thule MultiLift: good for storage, not for handover
The Thule MultiLift (572004) costs £149.99 and is the product most people think of first. It’s a ceiling-mounted winch that lifts your roof box up out of the way when you’re not using it. For roof boxes, it does exactly what it says on the tin.
For roof tents, it’s a harder sell:
- It’s rated to 100kg, which doesn’t leave much margin against a 75-90kg tent
- Thule’s own compatibility list is roof boxes, kayaks and surfboards (Vector, Motion 3, Force XT, Flow, Touring, Pacific, Ocean), not roof tents
- It only helps once the car is parked underneath it, in a garage tall enough to clear the lifted tent. It does nothing for the moment you’re handing the tent over to a renter who’s just turned up to collect it
Some owners on r/rooftoptents do use it with lighter tents, but always with extra precautions: anchoring into ceiling joists, backup straps, staying well under the rated limit. It can work for a lightweight soft-shell tent and a tall garage. It’s not the answer for the heavier hard-shell tents that make up most of the P2P market.
The Adventure Equipped lifting system
Adventure Equipped, an independent Bristol-based outfit, have put together a roof tent lifting system that’s UK Intellectual Property Office registered (Design No. 6457824). It’s three pieces of kit working together:
Component | Price (ex-VAT) | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 2 Ton Hydraulic Folding Crane | £216.67 | Full-size engine crane rated to 2,000kg, folds away for storage, six heavy-duty casters, lifts from 25mm to 2,450mm |
| Roof Tent Lifting Arm | £175.00 | A cranked arm with two 1-tonne rated slings that lands the tent level every time |
| TentBox StorageTrolley | £162.50 | Padded, wheeled, brake-locking trolley to receive the tent off the car. Fits all roof tents |
Bought separately that’s £554.17 ex-VAT. As the Roof Tent Storage and Installation Bundle it’s currently £541.67 ex-VAT (down from £595.83).
What matters for hosts is that none of this depends on a tall garage or ceiling joists. One person can wheel the crane out, lift the tent off, lower it onto the trolley, and have it stowed in a few minutes.
Does the cost stack up?
Here’s the maths that matters if you’re listing your tent on Rent My Roof Box or considering doing so.
A decent hard-shell roof tent costs £1,800-£2,500 new, and on P2P platforms they’re typically renting for £55-£85 a night. At an average £65/night, the £541.67 bundle pays for itself in around 9 nights of rental.
After that, it’s straightforward. Every handover is easier, and every drop or scrape you avoid is saving you money on repairs, insurance excess, or simply the tent’s resale value down the line.
There’s a softer side to this too. The handover is a big part of how a renter experiences your listing. Wheeling out a crane and lowering the tent gently onto their roof bars in a few minutes looks a lot better than four people wrestling it across a driveway, and that’s the sort of thing that shows up in reviews.
What about security?
Once you’ve solved handling, the obvious next question for a high-value item left with a stranger overnight is theft. Adventure Equipped’s Roof Tent Security Bundle (£108.33 ex-VAT) covers three sensible bases:
- Anti-theft replacement security nuts/bolts (£33.33)
- A Datatag forensic marking and registration kit (£41.67), registered to the national database and useful if police recovery is ever needed
- A battery-powered tamper alarm (£25)
For a £2,000 asset out on rental, this feels like sensible cover rather than an optional extra.
They run their own hire too
Adventure Equipped aren’t just selling kit, they also run a roof tent hire operation from North Bristol, hiring TentBox Lite 2.0 units at £132.50 for 3 nights, £166.67 for 4 nights, or £250 for 7 nights, with fitting included.
The weekly rate works out at roughly £35.71 a night with fitting done for you, which is genuinely competitive, especially for someone renting a roof tent for the first time who’d appreciate the hand-holding. The catch is it’s collection-only from Bristol, with no live availability calendar and a 3-night minimum, so it suits planned trips from the South West and South Wales rather than a spontaneous weekend elsewhere in the UK.
If they’re in the area, worth a look. If you’re not, that’s exactly the gap platforms like ours exist to fill.
A few smaller items worth knowing about
A handful of other Adventure Equipped products solve some of the smaller niggles that come up with roof tent rentals:
- Professional Roof Tent Installation Service (£104.17) for hosts who’d rather have it fitted properly the first time, available at their Bristol or Chester locations
- Ladder standoffs (£62.50–£70.83) push the ladder away from the car body, which helps with awkward access and stops the ladder marking your doors
- VentLuxe Roof Tent Extractor Fan (£82.50) tackles condensation, one of the most common complaints in wetter weather
- Summit Dehumidifier Bag (£10) for keeping things dry between rentals, particularly over winter
All prices above ex-VAT, so add 20%.
So what would I do?
If your roof tent stays on the drive and you’ve got a tall garage, the Thule MultiLift will do a job for storage, just keep an eye on that weight limit.
But if you’re renting your tent out, or thinking about it, the Adventure Equipped bundle looks like the real answer. It’s the only purpose-built, IPO-registered system I’ve come across that’s actually designed for the weight and shape of a roof tent, and for how often a host needs to lift one. Tellingly, it’s the same kit they use in their own hire business.
For peer-to-peer sharing more broadly, this is exactly the sort of unglamorous bit of kit that quietly opens up a whole new category. Roof boxes already work well as a shared resource. Roof tents, bigger, more valuable, with longer rentals and better margins for owners, have mostly been waiting for someone to solve this one problem.
Have you used either system?
We’d love to hear how it has gone — drop us a line or share your setup with the community.