laser transport costs

Good question.  On the basis of no technical knowledge at all I would guess trailing is better.  A laser & trailer is pretty light and I have always found that having something on the roof really knocks petrol consumption.  (It probably also depends on the size of car and consumption: a Laser on top of a LR Disco it would be a lower increase in total wind resistance than on top of a Fiesta, but then trailing a Laser behind a Disco would probably not add much to a heavy MPG anyway.)

Difficult to call. There's the rolling resistance from the tyres as well. One thing for sure though, if you stick to the applicable speed limits (50mph for trailer, 70mph for roof rack) I bet the trailer is cheaper!

Edited by JimC - 30 Sep 12 at 6:18pm

A couple of weeks ago I trailed one of the club 5m patrol RIB's via a mixture of A roads and country roads up to the club and averaged 39 MPG. The next day I did the same route with a windsurfer on the roof and got 37 mpg. I was surprised at the difference considering the weight of the boat I was towing.

By way of an update on this, I've recently completed two 270+ miles journeys with the laser: one on a trailer, the other on the roof.

trailer: 53 mpg
roof: 48 mpg
Readouts from trip computer on 2.0 TDI VW.

Not exactly under controlled conditions, and the VW readouts always tend towards the generous side, but they do provide relative values.

I have found trailing to hardly affect the consumption of my diesel Passat at all, but if you are starting from scratch you'd need to do a lot of miles to make the trailer, hitch and lighting board pay for a Laser.

Just done a quick sum. At those fuel consumptions (48 and 53mpg), you need to cover 42,854 miles to get payback on £600 worth of trailer (assuming fuel is £1.45 a litre).