Hot-Swap Bike Hitch Rack Dolly

Hitch racks can be bulky to store when off the vehicle, and loading bikes onto them requires multiple lifts and steps. There are rolling dolly products that allow you to store your hitch rack mounted to the dolly so you can store bikes on it in your garage and move them around on wheels. This can be an efficient storage solution. However, unless you can tag-team it, or Superman lift the whole thing, you have to unload all the bikes, swap the rack, then reload all the bikes. Then do it all again when you want to reverse the operation.

My Hot-Swap design saves work by incorporating a height-adjustable jack that facilitates the hand-off at hitch height. Now you can put the rack on or take it off while the bikes remain loaded on the rack.

For a round trip with two bikes, this saves four extra bike load/unload operations on the home front (compared to starting and ending with bikes on the ground or some other rack). And it saves two extra rack lifts compared to no dolly. For four bikes, it’s eight lifts saved.

So far just a design idea from a garage design job for a client who stores and transports bikes frequently. It’s an efficient solution for the right application conditions:

• you’ve got room to store bikes on the dolly-mounted rack
• you load and unload multiple bikes frequently for transport
• maybe you’re getting more into ‘work smarter not harder’ territory… (investing more in saving lifts and maybe saving some back pain;)

It’s a straightforward fabrication solution: steel base, casters, a trailer crank lift jack, and a receiver grab & release mount sized to the rack.

If you’d use one, let’s talk! I’d enjoy building it for you.