Overlanding’s Past, Present, and Future: How Racks, RTTs, and Gear Took Over the Trails
Where It Came From
Overlanding didn’t start with hashtags or rooftop tents. It started with people who wanted to get somewhere and live to tell the story.
In Australia, they used the word “overlanding” long before anyone here knew it. Back then, it meant herding cattle across the Outback. Weeks at a time. Heat that could cook you. Tracks so rough you carried your own planks to get across riverbeds. By the 1960s the cows were mostly gone from the equation, but the word stayed. Now it was about trucks, often a weathered Land Cruiser or a dented Nissan Patrol, carrying jerry cans, tools, and whatever it took to keep you alive in a place where nothing grew except spinifex and stories.
The gear wasn’t designed to match your camp chair color. It was designed to survive the Canning Stock Route. Anthony Ronald Brown learned that the hard way in the mid-1970s on a Cape York run. The equipment he trusted let him down. He went home, hit the garage, and started making better gear. ARB was born.
Africa wrote a different chapter. Safari operators in the 1960s and ’70s were building rolling survival kits out of basic trucks. Roof racks carried tents, fuel, water, and spares. Sleeping off the ground wasn’t about romance; it was about staying out of the food chain. South African companies like Howling Moon and Eezi-Awn turned those canvas boxes into shelters you could trust in the wind and rain.
Meanwhile, in the States, the Baja 1000 was chewing up anything that wasn’t built tough. The first race was in 1967. KC HiLiTES followed in 1970, bolting aircraft landing lights to steel housings so drivers could outrun the dark. If a light could survive Baja, it could survive the Mojave, the Rockies, or a washed-out logging road in Oregon.
Even the humble roof rack has a backstory. In 1962, Thule in Sweden gave everyday drivers a way to haul skis and boats on top of their cars. Yakima ran with it in the U.S. by the late ’70s. A kayak rack might not sound like a revolution, but it planted the idea that the roof was more than dead space. It was storage, staging, even sleeping space.
In those early years, nobody cared about “systems.” Drawers were plywood, hammered together in a shed. Racks were welded by hand, lights repurposed from some other job entirely. The goal was simple: get there, stay there, get back.
Where We Are Now
Somewhere along the way, the utility turned into culture. And then into a business.
Now, the racks are powder-coated, laser-cut, and engineered to hold a rooftop tent, solar panel, shower enclosure, traction boards, and your neighbor’s envy. A flat platform rack from Front Runner or Rhino-Rack is a badge of intent. An Autohome on a Tacoma parked at Whole Foods tells you exactly where that person’s weekends go. ARB drawers are the wink that says, “Yeah, I’ve done this before.” Lighting? It’s a science. KC HiLiTES Gravity Pro6 light bars, Baja Designs amber floods, Rigid Industries scene lights so bright you could find your keys from orbit.
The media is a force all its own. It used to be you learned by asking the old guy at the trailhead or lurking in a forum thread. Now you’ve got front-row seats to every kind of overland story.
Expedition Overland made it cinematic. Tight edits, drone sweeps, gear polished to a shine, and long arcs from Alaska to the bottom of South America. It told us overlanding could be a story worth producing like a film.
The Story Till Now went the other direction. Raw and unfiltered. Muddy boots on the floorboards. Camps set up in the rain. It showed that breakdowns make for good episodes too.
Revere Overland reminded everyone you don’t need deserts or mountain passes. The Appalachian trails, the wet forest roads, the sleepy towns along the way — all just as worthy of the name.
Then there’s Ronny Dahl carrying the Australian touring gospel to anyone who will listen. Lifestyle Overland showing that you can have kids in tow and still see the horizon. Primal Outdoors, Matt’s Off Road Recovery — each telling their own version of the same addiction.
It’s a buffet. Cinematic epics, minimalist solo treks, gear reviews, recovery missions. Choose your plate. Somewhere in there, the “overland build” became a kind of uniform, but the range of voices has kept it from becoming boring.
The industry noticed. Dometic bought Front Runner. Clarus, the folks who own Black Diamond, scooped up Rhino-Rack and MAXTRAX. Rigid Industries joined a bigger lighting group. The dusty brochure is gone, replaced with influencer reels and hashtags that can move inventory in a weekend.
Where We’re Headed
The future of overlanding isn’t about who’s got the fanciest rack or the brightest lights. It’s about how you use them, and whether you get out there at all.
The gear is the best it’s ever been. A rooftop tent that once took two people and some colorful language to set up now pops open in half a minute. Lithium batteries the size of a lunchbox will run your fridge, charge your camera, and still have enough left for camp lights. Modular racks, drawers, and mounts let you build in layers instead of maxing your credit card on day one.
The best part? You don’t need any of it to start. Some people roll out with a brand-new truck and a build list they could have printed straight from an expo catalog. Others head for the hills in a twenty-year-old SUV with a cooler and a borrowed tent. Both end up staring at the same sky. Both tell their own stories around the same fire.
We’ve seen it ourselves at Side Quest Overland. Over the past few years, we’ve explored more than 23 countries. Jungle tracks in South East Asia, forest roads in the Pacific Northwest, and braided rivers on New Zealand’s South Island. And we’ve met travelers in every kind of rig you can imagine. Bone-stock wagons. Rally-bred beasts. Minivans with dreams bigger than their ground clearance. The common thread is that nobody waits until they have the perfect build. They go with what they’ve got, and the stories are richer for it.
The industry will keep moving. More factory partnerships are coming, with trucks and SUVs rolling out ready to camp. Racks will get lighter and smarter, tents more compact and better insulated, fridges more efficient. Rally and racing tech will keep trickling down, giving us suspension, lighting, and navigation systems that are proven in the dust and sand before they ever see a trailhead.
Sustainability will stop being a buzzword and start being baked into design. Recycled materials, longer product lifespans, energy efficiency. The best trips leave nothing behind, and the gear will catch up to that standard.
The gut check is simple. Don’t let the search for the “perfect” build keep you in the driveway. Gear is a tool, not a ticket. Whether your rig rolled out of a catalog or a Facebook Marketplace ad, the only thing that matters is whether it gets you to the places you want to be.
And years from now, when you tell the story of that night in the desert or that morning in the mountains, no one is going to care what brand your drawer system was. They’ll want to know what you saw, who you met, and how it felt to be there.
