Roof tent installation is harder than it looks
If you’ve ended up down a rabbit hole at midnight searching for tips on getting a roof tent onto your car, you’re in very good company. Roof tent installation catches a lot of new owners off guard, and scrolling through any TentBox community group confirms it. You’ll find threads full of people who’ve recruited their partner, a friend, a neighbour, and still found it a struggle. One post I spotted recently had someone asking for help because, even with three people on the job, it was still a battle.
That’s not a sign of doing something wrong. Hard-shell roof tents are genuinely, seriously heavy. A TentBox Classic 2.0, for instance, weighs 67kg — and that’s before you add the telescopic ladder, which brings the total to around 74kg. The weight isn’t evenly distributed either; it’s heavier towards the hinge and ladder end, which makes the lift awkward as well as heavy. Add in the height of a roofline, the need to keep the tent level, and the fact that most driveways don’t offer much room to manoeuvre, and you’ve got a task that catches a lot of people off guard the first time.
The good news is the rooftop tent community has come up with some genuinely clever workarounds — and there’s a proper solution too, for anyone doing this regularly.
If you haven’t bought yet: the weight itself is negotiable
Before getting into lifting techniques, it’s worth raising something that often gets overlooked in the excitement of buying a roof tent.
Not all roof tents weigh the same. The hard-shell models that dominate TentBox community discussions, and that cause most of the lifting headaches, typically sit between 60kg and 90kg. But soft-shell tents are a genuinely different proposition. The TentBox Lite 2.0, for instance, comes in at 50kg. Some other soft-shell models weigh 40kg or less. That’s still a meaningful lift, but the difference between 40kg and 75kg is the difference between two people managing it fairly comfortably and four people still finding it a struggle.
If you’re drawn to a hard-shell specifically for the convenience of not having to pack it away each time, that’s a completely fair trade-off. But if you’re undecided, and the lifting question is part of what’s holding you back, a lighter soft-shell tent might solve the problem without needing any kit at all. Worth factoring in alongside the price, the setup time, and everything else you’re weighing up.
The DIY methods: what people actually use
The ladder trick
One of the most popular community fixes is to use a ladder as a ramp. The tent slides up the rungs rather than being lifted straight overhead, which spreads the effort and keeps the load lower for longer. It works best if you can brace the base of the ladder against something solid so it doesn’t slip, and you’ll want a second pair of hands to guide the tent at the top while someone pushes from below.
The obvious downside is the risk of scratching your roof bars, your car’s paintwork, or the tent itself if it catches. A couple of old towels or moving blankets laid over the rungs helps here. It’s also worth making sure your ladder is rated for the load — engine hoists are tested to specific ratings, ladders often aren’t.
Wheely bins as staging posts
This one sounds daft but it turns up in community discussions surprisingly often. The idea is to line two wheely bins up at the back of the car, roughly a metre apart, and use them as a raised platform — lift the tent to the top of the bins, rest it there, then get underneath and drive it upwards onto the roof bars from a better position.
It’s genuinely clever for the right setup. Getting underneath a 65kg tent and bench-pressing it upwards isn’t easy, but it’s a shorter lift from bin height than from the ground. The catch is that wheely bins aren’t designed to take this kind of load on their lids, and they’re not stable platforms. If you’re trying this, have someone steadying each bin and go carefully.
Cordless ratchet
This one doesn’t help with the lift itself but it does come up repeatedly as a time-saver once the tent is on the bars — getting roof tent mounting bolts tight by hand is a miserable job, and a cordless ratchet (or impact driver with the right attachment) makes short work of it. If you’ve ever stood on a stepladder in a car park trying to tighten bolts with a spanner, you’ll understand why this gets recommended so enthusiastically.
Ceiling hoist (garage owners only)
If you have a garage with decent ceiling joists and enough headroom to park the car inside with the tent on, a basic electric hoist is one of the most cost-effective setups going. The idea is to rig a hoist to the ceiling with pulleys positioned so you can lift the tent cleanly off the roof bars, swing it to one side, and lower it onto a trolley or padded surface for storage.
A hoist capable of handling the load costs somewhere between £80 and £150 from Machine Mart, Amazon, or similar. Add a pair of 1,000kg flat webbing slings to support the tent at two points and you’ve got most of what you need. The main watch-outs: the ceiling joists need to be solid enough to take the load (ask a builder if you’re not sure), and this only helps with the storage side of the problem — it does nothing for handover if a renter is collecting from your driveway. But for someone who just wants an easy way to get the tent off and on for their own trips, it’s a genuinely tidy solution.
When the DIY approach has its limits
Most of the improvised methods above work well enough for occasional use, and there’s something satisfying about solving a practical problem with what you’ve got to hand. But they have real limits.
The ladder and wheely bin approaches both involve handling a very heavy, unbalanced object at height, with improvised equipment that wasn’t designed for it. Do that a dozen times a year and the risk of a slip or a pulled back starts to compound. Do it as part of a rental handover — handing the tent to a stranger who doesn’t know the drill — and the stakes go up further.
For anyone who’s lifting their roof tent on and off more than a handful of times a year, or anyone thinking about renting their tent out, there’s a purpose-built option that changes the equation entirely. I’ve written up the Adventure Equipped lifting system in detail here, including the numbers on whether it’s worth the investment. The short version: it’s a proper hydraulic crane and receiving trolley designed specifically for roof tents, and one person can manage the whole job safely.
The option most people overlook
There’s a third path worth mentioning, particularly if the main reason you’re wrestling with a roof tent is that you want to try one out before committing to buying.
When you rent a roof tent through a platform like ours, you turn up and the tent is already fitted by the owner. You drive away, camp, come home, and hand it back. The lifting is the owner’s job, not yours — and a good owner will have the right kit to do it properly. You get the full experience without any of the driveway gymnastics.
For someone who camps three or four times a year and isn’t sure they’d use a roof tent enough to justify the £1,500-£2,500 outlay (or the twice-yearly battle to get it on and off), this is worth thinking about. The tent goes on a car that’s ready for it, with bars already fitted, and you can work out whether it’s genuinely for you before spending the money.
A few things that make the whole process easier regardless
Whether you’re using a DIY method or proper kit, a few basics make a consistent difference:
Two people makes the maths much simpler. Even with a crane, a second pair of hands to guide the tent onto the bars and check it’s centred saves time and avoids the small shuffles that scratch things.
Clear the space first. You need room to approach the car from behind and both sides. Moving the car onto the drive rather than the street, or pulling it forward in the garage, gives you working room you’ll be glad of.
Know your roof bar spacing before you start. Most hard-shell roof tents specify a minimum and maximum bar spread. Get it wrong and you’ll need to move the bars with the tent already on, which is nobody’s idea of fun.
Check the load limit on your roof bars, not just your car. The car’s roof load rating and the roof bar’s own rated capacity are two different numbers. Both matter.
How do you manage it?
We’d genuinely love to know what works for you — whether it’s a bit of kit, a technique, or just a very patient partner. Drop us a note or share it with the community in the comments below.
Looking for more on roof tent handling? Read our in-depth guide to the Adventure Equipped lifting system — the purpose-built, IPO-registered kit that turns a two-person job into one.