Although your application is completely different, you could take an expansion of
TrailGranny's solution. We use an aluminum rack in the rear class V receiver hitch. They do make them in a fold up design; they are very light weight and with a couple turnbuckles with short chains and hooks you can loose the rack wobble. Years ago I searched around trying to find CARB compatible fuel plastic container (yellow for diesel) and found a couple low boys that would fit in the low space we had available under the overhang of the camper. Here is the unloaded rack under the overhang with turnbuckles;
and with 2 boxes firewood; 2- 5 gallon containers of diesel fuel:
I load the rack with the turnbuckles loose and turnbuckle the rack up to traveling position. If you had something like this, you could unload the cargo in camp and remove the now light weigh rack altogether. It's narrow enough for a CRV.
However, with the high MPG the CRV gets, you may want to just keep one leak-proof 5 gallon container inside the vehicle. The key word here is leak-proof.
My experience has been that modern rigs (of whatever stripe) have enough range to get to where you are going and back without extra fuel cans. I took the two in the pic above to Death Valley one year as we were planning on staying way out there for a while. The Cummins gets such great MPG while you are traveling slowly without the mileage killing wind resistance, that I found I did not need extra fuel but simply poured the cans into the tank along the way to AVOID the high cost of fuel in Furnace Creek. I"ve been along the Cassiar Hwy. in B.C. and found our 450 mile range with the stock tank was sufficient without extra cans. With the cans the range could be extended to 575 miles between petrol stations.
Do they make a larger, aftermarket tank for the CRV? This was a solution on many 4x4's I've had in the past.
On our 1970 Chevy powered Toyota FJ-55, I had a 53 gallon replacement tank installed. With 2-5 gallon cans on the tailgate, and 4-5 gallon cans on the sides of the Toyota jeep trailer, we had quite a range. The only time we ever used or needed 850 miles of range was in Baja CA (1965-1976). It was very primitive during that time period. I remember our first time in Baja in 1965 when we just missed the doubling of the price of diesel fuel by PEMEX. Of course, we had a gas engine and NOVA cost about $0.24US a gallon, but the diesel had just doubled from $0.08US per gallon to $0.16US per. The rest of the time the cans were just empty window dressing, us hoping they would not explode in a fiery wreck. The cost of carrying extra fuel is not just the fuel itself by the extra weight penalty you rig takes on.
jefe
