The $2,000 Hoist We Couldn't Sell — and the Build Kit That Took Its Place

BLUF

We built a freestanding rooftop-tent hoist in 2023. Adventure Built filmed it at Overland Expo West. The product never shipped — a 300-lb welded frame ships freight at $500 a pallet, raw materials alone cost $1,000+, and the math forced a $2,000 retail price the average tent owner can't justify. So we killed the welded version and started over as a Build Kit.

What the hoist solves

You install your own rooftop tent. By yourself. Without throwing out your back, getting a hernia, or putting a dent in the truck. No bribing friends with beer and pizza to come over and bear-hug 200 lb of canvas onto a roof rack at 9pm on a Friday.

Standalone-frame design has another use: move the tent from one vehicle to another, or from vehicle to trailer. Clip in. Lift. Drive away. Pull the trailer forward. Reinstall.

Why a freestanding frame instead of a garage hoist

Garage hoists work for stock vehicles. They don't work for the trucks people actually overland with. Most garage doors are 7 feet tall. Lift a stock 4Runner on 35-inch tires and you're already too tall for the door. Add a roof rack and a tent and you're not parking that thing inside.

The standalone frame ignores garages. Drive up to it anywhere. Use it.

Why the welded version didn't ship

Honest math:

• Frame system weighs ~300 lbs welded.
• Uprights are 9 feet long.
• Anything that big and heavy ships freight on a pallet — about $500 each.
• Raw materials alone: more than $1,000.
• After cutting, welding, paint, and markup, retail floor lands at $2,000+.

That's not a price the average rooftop-tent owner pays for a hoist. We could have shipped it anyway and watched it not move. Instead we put the project on hold in 2023 and rethought it from the ground.

The Build Kit pivot

December 2023, project restarted. The new idea: ship the hard parts only. Gussets. Mounting brackets. Pulley brackets. Pulleys. Hardware. The customer sources steel tubing from a local hardware store and cuts it to lengths the kit instructions specify.

Two things that came out of the original-prototype postmortem:

• Common raw materials. Standard steel tube available at any local supplier. No oversized freight.
• Collapsible storage. Almost 100 overlanders gave us feedback. The system has to break down when not in use. That changes the design.

The bolt-together model brings the price into reach for a customer who's willing to do their own cutting. The freight problem disappears entirely.

Where this is now

The garage ceiling hoist version is shipping today: Roof Top Tent Garage Ceiling Hoist. The freestanding Build Kit is still in active redesign. We'll publish when it's ready, not before.