What’s a Trasharoo? And why you need one.

If you are just getting into off-roading or overlanding, you may have heard of Trasharoos or seen them hanging from the spare tires on off-road vehicles. These sturdy bags strap to the spare tire mounted on the tailgate, providing a place to carry messy or smelly items you don’t want to carry inside your ride, such as firewood or trash.

In this article, we’ll explain how a Trasharoo works (it’s dead simple) and why you might want one. We’ll also share links to a few models, in case you are just looking for a quick recommendation on what to buy.

QUICK LINK

Trasharoo

If you are just looking for a quick link to purchase a Trasharoo, click the “Check Price” button to go to Amazon. For more information on the benefits of using a Trasharoo and a list of alternative products, see below.

Trasharoo Features

A Trasharoo is essentially a backpack for your vehicle. The Trasharoo main compartment will hold a standard 50 gallon trashbag and up to 50 pounds of weight. This adds additional cargo space and gives you a place to carry items that may be dirty, smell bad or just clutter up the inside of your rig.

They are made from sturdy, 900 denier canvas and water resistant. Two small rivetted holes in the bottom allow water to drain out from the main container. Several pockets on the outside offer a place to stow gear that you’d like to access quickly. A Trasharoo will fit on up to a 40 inch tire.

How to Use a Trasharoo

It has two straps that wrap around your spare tire and crisscross around the back to hold the bag in place. If you don’t have a spare tire, but have a tailgate, you can also wrap the straps around your tailgate to fix it to the back of your truck. In this case, some people put a blanket or pad under the Trasharoo to keep it from scratching the tailgate paint.

We typically use a Trasharoo for two purposes. When starting a trip, before we have any trash to stow, we’ll put firewood into the Trasharoo. Firewood is messy and awkward to stow inside our vehicle, so the Trasharoo provides a convenient alternative.

After we’ve unloaded the wood at our campsite, we then use the Trasharoo to store trash and recycle. It’s a good idea to still bring garbage bags to keep trash and recycling separated and so the inside of your Trasharoo doesn’t get nasty.

We’re also advocates for picking up some of the litter we find in the backcountry each trip. The pack it in, pack it out ethos is followed by some but not all visitors to the wilderness, unfortunately. A Trashroo gives us an opportunity to do our part to keep the backcountry clean without having to bring someone else’s trash into our vehicle.

Trasharoo Alternatives

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Trasharoo should feel flattered. There are a number of alternative spare tire and tailgate bags now on the market.

While we own a Trasharoo and they do a great job, some of these other products could conceivable better fit your situation and needs.

ARB 4×4 Track Pack Bag

The Australian Company ARB was a pioneer of off-roading and overlanding gear, and their version of a rear tire-mounted bag is a solid piece of equipment. One nice feature of these bags is the side pockets, which are roomy and snap closed, so you can safely stow items while you're on the road or trail.

The primary downside of these is the price. As we’re writing this, these run about twice the price of the Trasharoo on Amazon. The extra pockets could make them worth it. If that’s not scratching your itch, you could probably go with a Trasharoo and be just fine. The ARB bag will fit on tires as large as 35 inches, so keep that in mind when choosing. If you have a larger tire, the Trasharoo is a better choice. Waterproof Trash Storage

Sea to Summit Dry Bag

If you live in an area that’s very wet and want to keep your trash sealed in a waterproof bag, Sea to Summit makes a high-quality bag for that. The Sea to Summit Dry Trash Bag is technically designed more for backpacking or kayaking, but could just as easily be strapped to a spare tire or tailgate. You could also strap it to other racks on the outside of your vehicle, such as your roof rack. We could only find these available through REI at the time of this writing.

Some links on the site will take you to online retailers such as Amazon.com, and when you make a purchase we may receive a percentage.