I was thinking along the same lines as little jeff. The material cost of these carriers is $30 at most. The rest is profit and labor, so it really is not an issue of getting what you are paying for. When dealing with a chain like Farm and Fleet or Walmart they force the manuf to lower the costs in order to sell 1000's of units. Kind of like spark plugs, have you priced spark plugs at an auto parts or Walmart and compared to what the dealer charges? The local dealer does not buy enough to get a decent discount so they can't compete with the National Chains.
We have bought the carrier from Farm and Fleet and the construction is very good, no problems with the welds or quality like some are posting here. I will have to make a tire track and bolt it in to keep the wheels in place. All in all, I will have less than $80 in this carrier versus $200 plus for these others. One other thing I am noticing, since this carrier is 20" by 60" it seems to have less movement in it than these bike carriers do, more mass I guess. Plus a square will always be stronger than a single track.
So far so good, I'll let you guys know that are trying to decide how this works after we use it a few times.