If your roof rack's full or you skipped one altogether, the Basic Hitch adds room for more gear. It's a hitch-mounted base rack that's outfitted with two enclosed cargo boxes, so bulky items ride outside your car, not crammed inside.
Yes. The Benton Basic Hitch gives your 2" receiver the same open mounting space you'd normally rely on a roof rack for. This system comes with two Benton ShellRaiser boxes mounted behind your vehicle. With the boxes mounted at hitch height, you load and unload from the ground instead of lifting everything onto the roof. You can open the lids, sort through your gear, and grab what you need without climbing up or reaching overhead. And if you already have a roof rack, you can still use it to carry longer items like a kayak or a canoe.
When you take one or both boxes off, the platform works with bike racks, ski carriers, and other accessories from major brands like Thule, Yakima, and Kuat. Accessories mount using the built-in top and bottom channels or clamp directly around the bars, just like they would on a roof rack.
Each Benton ShellRaiser gives you 8 cubic feet of enclosed storage, for a total of 16 cubic feet with both boxes installed. They hold duffel bags, camping gear, muddy boots, and other bulky or dirty items. On many trips, that gear can take over your backseat or roll around on the floor, leaving less room for the people riding with you. When you load all that loose stuff into the boxes, you get your backseat back.
The ShellRaisers mount with cable clamps that secure them to the crossbars. When you want to change the rack layout, loosen the clamps and remove the boxes. Both boxes open from either side, so you can load where you have room behind your vehicle or safely grab something if you're parked on the side of the road.
Most hitch cargo carriers are fixed platforms or baskets. What you see is what you get, and the shape limits what you can carry. The Basic Hitch uses a four-bar layout that lets you change the spacing of the top bars as needed, so the rack adjusts to your gear instead of the other way around.
The top bars slide side to side, giving you flexibility in how you space them. They'll be positioned close together with both ShellRaiser cargo boxes installed, but you can spread them apart for mounting multiple bike or ski racks. If you want a different layout, the bars lift off easily. In most setups, sliding the bars creates the spacing needed for cargo boxes, bike racks, ski carriers, or a mix of gear.
Each bar has built-in mounting channels along the top and sides, so accessories bolt directly in when you're using something other than the ShellRaisers. There are also channels on the bottom for mounting fishing rod holders and other accessories vertically when the rack is folded up. The crossbar shape also works with clamp-on mounts, so gear that wraps around the bar instead of sliding into a track still fits. For everything else, you can strap items directly to the bars using the anchor points at each end.
The rack tilts down even with both boxes loaded, so you can reach a cooler or other items inside your vehicle without unloading the boxes.
When you're not using the rack, or if you're using it to carry smaller items like skis or snowboards, it folds up against your vehicle. This keeps the footprint smaller for parking in a garage or tight spaces. If you choose to remove the rack entirely, the compact folded position also makes it easier to store in your garage.
Mounting a hitch accessory can be more of a chore than you'd like. You slide in the shank, wiggle it around, and end up on your hands and knees trying to see daylight through a pin hole. The Basic Hitch uses an alignment collar that centers the shank in the receiver so the pin holes line up without crawling around to find them. Set the alignment once, and you won't have to touch it again unless you're moving the rack to another vehicle.
The Basic Hitch uses an anti-rattle hitch pin that tightens the connection inside your receiver, reducing movement and the metal clanking that can happen while you drive.
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Hi everyone. I'm Evangeline right here at etrailer. Today, we're talking about how the Benton basic hitch with the two Benton shell razors loaded onto it fits specifically on a 2011 Toyota Sienna. Now this is a kit available here at etrailer if you want two enclosed cargo carriers on your hitch receiver, but the fit is gonna be different depending on your vehicle. So we're focusing on some specific things for the Sienna, mainly ground clearance, weight capacities, and other things you might be interested in to see if this will fit on your vehicle. You do have a 300 pound weight capacity with the basic hitch and with the shell raisers being very lightweight, you now have a lot of weight capacity within each of these boxes.
The main thing you do have to think about, though, is your hitch receiver weight capacity. So if you do not yet have a hitch on your Sienna, you can find a custom fit one for your vehicle right here at etrailer. Something interesting I've noticed with the Sienna is with the hitch receiver we have here today, it sits really low to the ground. So actually when we tilt this away, it tilts down pretty far, but it doesn't bottom out. The good news is you might not actually have to tilt away.
So with the boxes fully loaded up with the hitch in the ready to drive function, we can also notice the front of the boxes are facing the front of the vehicle. When I open this up, our hatch actually clears the boxes and I have full access into the back of the van. This is awesome. This way, I'm able to load things into the boxes, load things into the van and not have to maneuver or tilt the hitch down. So something to be mindful of though is you do have to be creative when you do load these boxes up.
To achieve this kit, I push the two top bars of the basic hitch together in the middle, and then I loaded each shell razor on the far end of the basic hitch. Now something that you gotta be mindful of is you can't fully open the lid of both boxes at the same time. It will have to be one or the other because of how close they are to each other. Since these boxes are dual access, the trick around that is you could open both of the boxes from the center if you want both of them open at the same time. So this could be something helpful if you have all of your gear in one box, then all of your tools in the other box.
If you have helmets and shoes and things for snowboarding, you can just mix and match which location you load them all up to. From box to box, you can open them on both sides, open them at the same time, and both of them fit on your basic hitch. So now it's much lower to the ground, much more achievable. Now the basic hitch is definitely a versatile platform that you can put all kinds of things on. So focusing back on the Toyota Sienna, I'm gonna take these boxes off real quick so we can talk about numbers. The first thing a lot of people notice is the length of the basic hitch. So when you install it into your hitch receiver, I like to measure it from the bumper to the end of the basic hitch, and we have it at 48 inches or four feet. So that is something to be mindful of when you are driving around that this is gonna add a lot of length to the back of your already long car. However, if you're not using it, but you wanna keep it on your vehicle, it's a very simple process of just pressing the button and lifting it up, and now you have it folded up against the vehicle, taking up much less length. In fact, measuring from the bumper to the end of this platform, or the hitch shank, is now 14 inches. So that's gonna be a big difference, compared to the down position. So if you need to use it for a road trip, it's ready to go. If you're just driving around town, this is much easier to use. A lot of the magic happens with this button at the end, so you just press on the button and then you can move your basic hitch into the different positions. For example, maybe I just had a grocery run and I needed to put the groceries away in the back. We're gonna move this to the angled position and then you can see here how I'm able to open up even our large hatch door, and now we have had access again to all the space in the back of our Sienna. So that's definitely something helpful for when need to grab things, put things away. You can just move the basic hitch to this position. Now let's bring this back down and load things up. Once you have your rooftop mounted accessories now mounted to your basic hitch, you do have to think about the space those accessories now take up. If it's a bike, how long is it Will it add more length or more width to the basic hitch, as well as how tall is it Will you still be able to open up your hatch door In the case of our Benton shell razor cargo box and our Toyota Sienna here, we actually have perfect clearance to still open up our door without having it tilt away. But what if I had a taller box or a larger item Well, remember that button we pressed earlier If you press it again, even with gear loaded, you can tilt the basic hitch down to get better access. Now, something you notice specifically for the Sienna is looking at how close the hitch receiver is to the ground. You can still tilt everything away and you won't touch the ground unless you're on an incline or something like that. So this does sit really low, but that just means you have more chances at hatch clearance. Now, I do want you to be mindful of your ground clearance when you're going up steep inclines over some extreme potholes, up steep driveways, things like that because the bottom of your shank to the ground, that's only about seven and a quarter inches that I can measure here from the bottom of the basic hitch to the ground. Let's go measure, here at this bar, you have 19 and a half inches. So that's a good rise to give you a better clearance. And you even have this protector stopper here at the bottom just in case you do bottom out to help protect the rest of the system. So this does give your gear a little bit more height, but still something to be mindful of, since it sits so far out. But today, this was a look specifically at how the Benton basic hitch with the two Benton shell razors loaded onto it fits specifically on the 2011 Toyota Sienna.
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