Yakima LoadWarrior Review

Compare the LoadWarrior with a plain budget basket and the floor area is similar, the steel is similar and the price is not. The gap is the system around it.

So the decision is simple. If the basket will only ever carry cargo, buy a budget basket and spend the difference on a good bag and a net — the basket roundup ranks those. If it will also carry a bike or a boat at some point, the mount compatibility is worth more than the price gap, because the alternative is buying a second carrier.

Said plainly, because listings for this category are coy about it.

Weather. An open frame does nothing about rain, road spray, dust or sun. The fix is a waterproof bag inside the basket, not a tarp over it — a tarp flaps, chafes, fails at the corners and makes noise. Our cargo bag picks cover the bags that work; pack anything that must stay dry in a dry bag inside the bag.

Security. Everything in a basket is visible and unlocked. A net slows a hand down for a few seconds and that is the whole of it. Do not put anything in a basket you would mind losing, and do not leave it loaded overnight. What locks really stop is honest about the box case too, which is better but not absolute.

The third honest limit is noise. An open steel frame in clean air drums and whistles in a way a faired box does not. A bag in the basket actually helps — it fills the frame and breaks up the airflow. See the wind noise guide for the diagnosis order if it starts after you fit this.

A basket is more forgiving than a box about what it will hold and much less forgiving about how you secure it. There is no lid doing the work.

1. Heavy items low and centered. Over the crossbars if you can, not cantilevered over the ends of the basket.
2. Cam straps across, through the frame. Two minimum, hand tension, not ratchets over anything soft. The cam strap picks are the right tool.
3. A net over the whole load. This is what stops the small light things — a shoe, a mat, a bag of charcoal — from leaving at 60 mph. The net picks are sized for baskets.
4. Nothing above the rails unstrapped. If it stands proud of the frame it needs its own strap, not just the net.
5. Twist and tuck the strap tails. A loose tail is noise for the whole drive and a paint scratch at the end of it.
6. Re-check after twenty minutes. Loads settle once. That is when straps go slack.

The full sequence and the failure modes are in the tie-down guide.

A steel basket is heavy, and your roof’s published allowance counts it. On a vehicle rated at 150 lb total, bars plus a steel basket can be 40 lb before you load anything — and the loads baskets get bought for (fuel cans, firewood, water) are exactly the dense ones that eat the rest. Check your own figure on the fit pages and read the weight limits guide.

Fuel is worse than a box, not better. An open frame is a worse shape than a faired shell, and published testing on rooftop carriers finds a double-digit percentage penalty at highway speed before you add a bad shape to it. The figures are here.

Which raises the real question for a lot of people reading a basket review: should this load be on the roof at all? If it is heavy and awkward rather than long, a hitch carrier does the same job lower, at waist height, in the vehicle’s wake and for less fuel. It is a basket with better physics. The roof-or-hitch guide covers it, and the carrier roundup is where to go if the answer is the hitch.