Roof Top Tent Weight Limits

If you are just looking for a roof tent, but you don’t have a massive SUV or 4×4, you surely wonder if the new roof tent fits you small estate car for example? So the first question without further looking into any specs of the roof tent of your dream is that if it is a roof tent that your car can carry? Luckily, most roof top tent manufacturers make lightweight roof tents, so there is a roof tent out there for cars, there are roof tents for pickups, roof tents for vans etc.

The limiting factor – most of the time – is the space on the roof (minimum distance between the crossbars), and the weight of the roof tent. To be specific, it is not the weight of the tent, but car roof’s dynamic load capacity. So if you’d like to find out which roof top tent is (not) too heavy for your car, you must find out what the dynamic load capacity of your car is.

What is Dynamic Load Capacity?

The dynamic load capacity tells you how much weight your car can carry when transporting equipment on the roof. It represents the maximum permissible load that the rack / brackets can withstand when repeatedly in motion over a long period of time.

A distinction must be made between dynamic and static load capacity. The latter describes the permissible load when the transport equipment is stationary.

All you need to be conscious of is that the actual weight of the tent and the weight of the people who are going to inhabit tent must be within the capacity of the roof bars. As long as you have a pair of decent roof bars, this should not be an issue. Despite whatever ‘Load Capacity’ you read in the product info (most often 150 lbs or 75 kgs), just ignore that. That is the dynamic load capacity.

What’s Your Car’s Dynamic Load Capacity?

Now that’s the most important question. While your car will have no issues holding the weight of a roof top tent and 1-2-4 people inside, when stationary, the dynamic load capacity is much less.

You should always check the Manual of your car to get the exact figure! The Dynamic load capacity can vary from model to model even between different years of the same model!

Having said that, as a quick overview, I have put together this table for you have a glance at what you can expect. Most roof top tents will fit on a car that has at least 165lbs / 75kg roof load capacity. So the really interesting ones are those that have slightly less…

The below table is regularly updated and new models added!

Dynamic Load Capacity - Find Out Which Roof Tent Fits Your Car