Patent Application
20060118586
The present invention relates to a cargo carrier attachable to towing frame of vehicle. More particularly, the invention relates to a cargo carrier that can adapt to a variety of carrier platforms for transporting goods such as wagons, bicycles, storage containers, wheelchair, etc.
Often it is desirable to transport a bulky and odd sized object at the same time via a single cargo carrier. Some objects are required to be placed at different level than other objects due to their heights and required space to be placed on. Some prior patents refer to such problems. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,006,973, issued to Belinkly et al, disclosed “A bike rack cargo carrier for mounting to a vehicle hitch allowing bicycles to be transported outside the vehicle. The bike carrier includes a drawbar adapted to be received within the vehicle hitch and a cargo platform adjustably attached to platform relative to the rear of the vehicle.”
Another U.S. Pat. No. 5,950,891, issued to Brungardt et al, disclosed “A bicycle rack adapted to be detachably mounted to a vehicle via a standard trailer hitch receiver with the bicycle rack having a vertical support pivotally connected at its lower end to a base assembly with a bicycle carrier assembly connected to the upper end of the vertical support.”
In spite of the advantages of these devices in prior art, there are some limitations that can not be delivered for the purpose of easy transfer of different type of objects with respect to their sizes, weights, and heights. Especially those objects that often need to be transferred frequently and loading/unloading can be cumbersome. For example carrying a wagon and a motorcycle at the same time requires two separate cargo carriers or carrying bicycles along with a wheelchair requires a bike rack carrier and a cargo carrier to transfer such items.
However, this invention overcomes the shortcomings of conventional devices and provides a single cargo carrier that utilizes an extended hitch frame with removable carrier platforms that can optionally provide multi-platforms at different level as needed to be used for transferring different objects and provide easy transfer of goods.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a single cargo carrier attachable to towing frame of vehicle that can transport different objects due to its sizes, weights, and heights at different level above the ground. Such objects can be a wagon, toolbox, bicycles, ski racks, luggage, wheelchair, and so on. This cargo carrier generally comprises an extended hitch frame, a first carrier platform and a second carrier platform. The extended hitch frame which can be tubular in cross section includes a horizontal lower base member, a vertical support member and a horizontal upper base member. The first and second carrier platforms are removably mounted onto horizontal lower or upper base members of extended hitch frame. The carrier platforms are positioned in different level depends upon the type of load and height of the transferring goods. These carrier platforms generally constructed using a tubular collar with an attached top platform to place and hold objects. Furthermore, the carrier platform's collar may also be a collar with three sides and it is shaped like an inverted “U” for easy mounting onto expanded hitch frame which is normally a rectangular tubular in cross section.
It is another object of this invention to mount carrier platforms on the bottom of a transporting object permanently. Such platforms can be mounted on the bottom portion of a wagon or on the bottom of a toolbox for means of carrying and loading onto extended hitch frame for easy loading and unloading purposes. This type of platform may be mounted to the bottom of transporting object in arrangement of two or more to secure the transporting goods. The arrangement can be in a row.
It is yet another object of present invention to provide exchangeable carrier platforms to be used at different level of extended hitch frame as needed to transport objects.
Further objects and advantages of this invention will become apparent from consideration of the drawings and description that follows.
Exemplary embodiments of the invention will now be described in conjunction with the drawings in which:
a, illustrate the second carrier platform 14 has a mounting top bracket 14b that is mounted underneath the bottom 22a of transferring object that frequently being transport such as a wagon 22. Once it is mounted underneath the wagon 22 the mounting collar 14a of the carrier platform 14 is placed onto the upper base member 12c of hitch frame 12 and secures it with a locking pin 24. One of advantages of this design is for the loading and unloading of the objects without using any other type of devices to secure the objects while transporting and quickly installs onto the towing hitch frame.
Preferably, the mounting collar 34 of carrier platform 14 may have three sides that can be placed over the extended hitch frame 12 as illustrated in
Referring to
While this invention is susceptible of embodiments in many different forms, this specification and the accompanying drawings disclose only some specific forms as examples of the invention. The invention is not intended to be limited to the embodiments so described, however, the scope of the invention is pointed out in the appended claims.
