The whole point of an RV is that you take your home with you. The problem with taking your home with you is that once you've parked it, levelled it and hooked it up, you don't really want to unhook the entire thing every time you need milk.
So you bring something else. Some people tow a car. Some bring bicycles. And a growing number bring a motorcycle, or a scooter, or a quad, hanging off the back on a hitch-mounted carrier.
It's a good solution and it's got better over the years. A carrier doesn't need a base plate, doesn't need supplemental braking, doesn't need wiring, and doesn't add a second set of tyres to worry about. It bolts into your receiver and it carries the thing.
But there's a catch, and it catches people badly. A carrier puts a substantial load a long way behind your rear axle, and that leverage does things to your suspension and your handling that a lot of owners don't anticipate until they're already out on the road with a nose-light coach.
So this roundup is about matching the carrier to what you're actually carrying, and being honest about what your rig can take.
Best for: A single motorcycle, and the sensible starting point for most people
The VersaHaul VH-SPORT RO is the one I'd point most people towards first. Single motorcycle carrier, steel construction, ramp included.
The ramp matters more than the price difference suggests. Loading a motorcycle without one means lifting it, or riding it up something improvised, and neither is a good plan on gravel in the dark. VersaHaul sell most of their carriers in two versions, with the ramp and without, and the ramp-less version exists for people who already own one — not as an economy option.
What you're paying for with VersaHaul is steel and engineering. These are heavy, substantial pieces of kit, and they're built to take a full-size road bike rather than a scooter. If you're carrying a proper motorcycle, this is the class of carrier you want.
Buy VersaHaul VH-SPORT RO Sport Bike Carrier with Ramp
Best for: Dirt bikes and lighter machines, at a fraction of the money
The Ultra-Fab Ultra MX Hauler is a completely different proposition, and I've included it because it answers a question the VersaHauls don't.
Not everybody is carrying a Harley. If you've got a dirt bike, a lightweight trail machine or a small commuter, a heavy steel sport-bike carrier is a lot of hardware — and a lot of dead weight hanging off your receiver — for a job that doesn't need it.
The MX Hauler costs a small fraction of what the VersaHauls do, and for a lighter machine it does the job. The trade-off is honest: it's a simpler, lighter piece of equipment, and it isn't the carrier for a full-size road bike.
This is the one to look at if the VersaHaul prices made you close the tab. The right carrier is the one matched to what you're carrying, and over-buying is just weight you're paying to drag around.
Buy Ultra-Fab Ultra MX Hauler Motorcycle Carrier
Best for: Anybody who needs to keep towing something behind the carrier
The B-Dawg Aluminium Motorcycle Carrier with Towing solves a problem the others don't even attempt.
A conventional carrier occupies your receiver. That's the end of the conversation — whatever else you were planning to tow, you now can't. The B-Dawg has a pass-through, so you can carry a bike and still pull a trailer behind it.
The other difference is the aluminium construction. Aluminium means less dead weight on the receiver before you've loaded anything at all, which matters when you're working close to your tongue weight limit — and on a carrier, you often are.
If you're carrying a motorcycle and towing a small utility trailer, or a boat, this is effectively the only way to do it without a second vehicle. It's a specialised answer, but for the people who need it there isn't an alternative.
Buy B-Dawg Aluminium Motorcycle Carrier with Towing
Best for: Two bikes — but read the weight limit before you get excited
The VersaHaul VH-55 DMRO carries two motorcycles, measures 71.5 inches, is rated to 600 lbs, and includes the ramp.
Let me be very direct about that 600 lb rating, because two bikes eat it up faster than people expect. A pair of mid-size motorcycles will comfortably exceed six hundred pounds between them. This carrier is designed for two smaller machines — scooters, dirt bikes, lightweight commuters — and not for two full-size road bikes.
The 71.5 inch width is worth measuring against your rig. It's wide, necessarily so, and on a narrower coach it will sit proud of the bodywork. That affects your departure angle and it affects what you can reverse up to.
If you're carrying two heavy bikes and the numbers don't work, they don't work. There's no strapping technique that fixes an overloaded carrier.
Buy VersaHaul VH-55 DMRO Double Motorcycle Carrier with Ramp
Best for: Quads and go-karts, complete with the loading ramp
The VersaHaul VH-90 RO mounts to the same Class III or IV two-inch receiver and takes a quad or a go-kart, ramp included.
Quads change the calculation in one important way: they're wide. Where a motorcycle sits in a narrow track and can be positioned centrally, an ATV occupies a footprint that may well be wider than the carrier is designed to handle. Measure the machine before you buy the carrier. This is the most common mistake in the whole category and it's entirely avoidable.
Rolling a quad up a ramp is straightforward. Lifting one isn't — they're heavy, they're awkward, and the weight sits high. If you're carrying an ATV, buy the version with the ramp. I don't think there's a serious argument the other way.
Strap it at four points, not two. A quad that shifts on a carrier at speed will change the handling of your rig instantly and unpleasantly.
Buy VersaHaul VH-90 RO ATV and Go-Kart Carrier with Ramp
Before you buy anything, it's worth asking whether a carrier is the right answer at all, because for some people it isn't.
A carrier wins on simplicity. Nothing to register, nothing to insure separately, no extra tyres to check, no extra brakes to maintain, and nothing to park when you arrive. It goes in the receiver and it comes out of the receiver. For one bike and one person, it's hard to argue with.
A trailer wins on weight. Everything a trailer carries is supported on its own axle, so nothing hangs off your rear overhang and nothing lifts your steering axle. If you're carrying two full-size motorcycles, a trailer is very probably the honest answer, and the double carriers are not the loophole people want them to be.
A trailer also wins on loading. A low trailer deck is a gentle ramp angle. A carrier sitting at receiver height is a steep one.
What a carrier wins on, in the end, is that it doesn't change what your rig is. Once you're towing a trailer you're a longer vehicle with different rules in some places, a different reversing problem, and somewhere to put it when you get there. That's the trade, and it's worth making deliberately.
Every carrier here mounts to a Class III or Class IV two-inch hitch receiver. That's the easy bit, and it's where most people stop reading.
The number you need is your receiver's tongue weight rating, and specifically its rating with the load hanging where a carrier puts it — well behind the mounting point.
Here's why. A receiver rated to carry five hundred pounds of tongue weight is rated for a load applied close to the receiver. Hang that same weight two or three feet further back and the leverage multiplies the effective load on the receiver and on the rear suspension. Physics doesn't negotiate.
Every one of these listings says the same thing in different words: check your vehicle's suspension carrying capabilities. That isn't legal boilerplate. It's the most important sentence on the page.
If you're loading four or five hundred pounds onto the back of a motorhome, look at what happens to the front axle. In extreme cases people have taken enough weight off the steering axle that the handling changes character entirely. That's genuinely dangerous, and it creeps up on you.
You'll have noticed the pattern. Most of these carriers come in two versions, and the only difference is the ramp.
The ramp-less versions exist for one reason: people replacing a carrier who already own a perfectly good ramp. That's the whole use case. They are not a way of saving money on a first purchase.
If this is your first carrier, buy the ramped version. Loading a motorcycle by lifting it is how people damage bikes, damage carriers and damage themselves. The ramp turns the whole operation into something one person can do on a slope in the rain.
I want to come back to this, because it's what turns a good purchase into a bad experience.
These carriers are rated between 600 and 700 lbs, and the rating refers to what the carrier can hold. It says nothing whatsoever about what your vehicle can carry.
Find your receiver's rating. Find your rear axle rating and your gross vehicle weight rating. Then weigh what you're planning to load — actually weigh it, don't estimate, because motorcycles are heavier than people think and quads are heavier still.
Then look at where that weight sits. A carrier positions the load well behind the rear axle, and that overhang acts as a lever. It presses down at the back and lifts at the front, and the further back the weight sits, the more pronounced the effect.
On a motorhome that means weight coming off the steering axle. On a truck or SUV it means the same thing with a shorter wheelbase to absorb it. In both cases the symptom is the same: the steering goes light, the rig feels vague, and it gets worse in crosswinds.
If that's happening, you're overloaded, and no amount of careful driving fixes it.
Worth spelling out, because the classes get quoted a lot and understood rarely.
A Class III receiver is the common two-inch hitch on most SUVs, trucks and motorhomes, and it's typically rated somewhere around five hundred pounds of tongue weight. A Class IV is a heavier version of the same two-inch opening, and it will usually take more.
But — and this is the part that catches people — the class describes the receiver, not your vehicle. A Class III receiver bolted to a light chassis is limited by the chassis, not by the receiver. The rating you must obey is the lowest one in the chain, and it is frequently not the one printed on the hitch.
So find three numbers before you buy. What the receiver is rated for. What the vehicle manufacturer says the hitch can carry. And what your rear axle rating allows once the rig is loaded for a trip, with water, with propane, with everything you actually travel with.
Then take the smallest of the three, subtract the weight of the carrier itself, and what's left is what you can put on it. That last step is the one people skip, and a steel carrier is not light.
Get the ramp angle right. A steep ramp on soft ground is how bikes get dropped.
Use four tie-down points, not two, and compress the suspension of the machine you're carrying so it can't bounce. A bike strapped down loosely will work its straps loose over a hundred miles of interstate.
Check the straps at every fuel stop for the first few hundred miles. Everything settles, and straps that were tight when you left will not be tight after two hours of vibration.
And walk round the back before you set off. A carrier changes your departure angle, and the first steep driveway you meet will find that out for you if you haven't.
You'll have noticed both on this list, and it's a real choice rather than a marketing one.
Steel is stronger for the money and it's what most carriers are built from. The VersaHauls are steel, and they're heavy — which is fine, until you remember that the carrier's own weight comes off your tongue weight allowance before you've loaded anything at all.
Aluminium costs more per pound of strength, but the carrier itself weighs less, and every pound the carrier doesn't weigh is a pound you can put into the machine you're carrying. When you're working close to your receiver's limit — and on a carrier you frequently are — that's not a small consideration.
The practical version: if you've got headroom in your ratings, steel is the sensible, durable, cost-effective choice. If you're close to the limit, aluminium buys you back some capacity, and the B-Dawg is there for exactly that reason.
Also worth saying: aluminium doesn't rust. If you're on salted winter roads or near the coast, that stops being a philosophical point fairly quickly.
A carrier is the simplest way to bring a second vehicle, and for a lot of people it's the right answer. No base plate, no braking system, no wiring, no second set of tyres, nothing to park when you get there.
The two decisions that matter are both made before you buy. What exactly are you carrying — because a dirt bike, a full-size road bike, two scooters and a quad want four different carriers, not the same one with different straps. And what can your rig actually take once you account for the leverage of a load hanging that far behind the axle.
Get those two right and a carrier will serve you for years without you thinking about it again. Get them wrong and you'll feel it in the steering within the first ten miles.
Buy the ramp. Weigh the machine. Check your ratings. Then go and enjoy having something to ride when the coach is parked.
I’m Bill Rowell, the founder of RVupgrades.com. In 2002, I launched the business to help fellow RV enthusiasts find unique and hard-to-find products. Over the years, it’s grown to offer more than 15,000 items, with a warehouse in Eastlake, Ohio. Having owned and repaired nearly every type of RV, I bring over two decades of hands-on experience to the table. For me, this isn’t just a business – it’s a passion and a way of life that I love sharing with the RV community.
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