How to Pack a Car for Road Trips- Our Set Up for a Family of 5

We often get asked questions about how we pack a car for road trips so we though we’d share with you our set up for our family of five. Be sure to watch the video of how to pack a car for a road trip so you can see how it all comes together! If you have something that you’ve discovered works well for your family, we’d love to hear about it so we can try it! Drop a comment below to tell us your ingenious idea!

Table of Contents

About Our Road Trips

Our road trips typically last anywhere from 2 to 8 hours. Whether we’re packing for the Florida Springs, a theme park, or our annual trip to Jellystone, how we pack a car for road trips is pretty much same. Our video (below) shows how we set up the car when we bring along our dogs, LB and Parker, as well.

When we take family road trips, we typically take our Ford Explorer. Every once in awhile, we’ll take our Jeep Gladiator. On longer trips, we use our cargo trailer, which you’ll see in the video.

How We Pack a Car for Road Trips

When we purchased our car we made sure it had three things: third row seating, a hitch, and captain seats (to easily access the third row). These three features are key components on how we pack a car for road trips. Our twins are still in car seats, so they sit in the captains seats. Our oldest kiddo has the back two seats all to herself (unless we are traveling with the dogs). The captain seats also helps to ensure all of the kids have their own space so there’s less arguing.

In front of each of their seats, the kids have a hook to hang up their backpack. This backpack is full of things to keep them occupied during the car ride (see our list of ideas in the “Great Ways to Keep Your Kids Entertained” section below). They also have access to a snack box that lasts them for both legs of the trip.

The hitch comes in handy so that we can use a cargo trailer to store our larger items. This helps create more room in the vehicle when we’re traveling with our pups. In the video, you’ll see we used a suitcase to store all of our belongings on this particular trip…but that isn’t always the case. We often leave the suitcases at home and pack into storage containers with lids, instead. We’ve found that these fit better on our cargo trailer. Each family member has a different color packing cube set. We fill our cubes for our outfits for the trip and toss them into the tote. It couldn’t be any easier!

Our Road Trip Essentials

You’ll find items like these every time we pack a car for road trips. They help keep our items tidy, organized, and most importantly- accessible. Some things that we have found that work for us include lap desks, hooks, storage totes, tablet holders, and snack boxes.

Cargo Trailer
Bungee Cords
Lap Desks- these were in the video but we really love this one!
Backpack Hooks
Tablet Holder- we use these ones so we can adjust them to see from the third row. If you don’t need that flexibility, these are great too!
Snack Boxes– we recently started using these snack boxes on road trips and our kids love them! Some of the things we pack into them are: trail mix, peanut butter crackers, apple chips, dried fruit (bananas, coconut, strawberries, etc.), granola bars, Nutrigrain Bars, rice cakes, fruit snacks, etc. We used these snack boxes on our last road trip (which was about 8 hours each way) and we found that it was enough snacks for driving up and back! Only the Nutrigrain Bars needed to be replaced. If your kid is a big snacker, you may need to replenish it before your return trip.
Collapsible Cooler

Great Ways to Keep Your Kids Entertained!

The key to a successful family road trip is keeping the kids entertained on the ride! When we travel, each of our kids has a backpack full of things to keep them busy while we travel. Believe it or not, we’ve actually managed to do a few 8 hour car rides without ever turning a tablet on! Here are some of the things you might find in their bags: