Six hundred kilometres of Route 15 with a check-in case strapped to a roof rack and no cover on it. Not a stunt — a test we run twice a year, because desert highway is the most honest surface we have found.
Heat cycles are the real enemy. Forty-six degrees at noon, eleven at three in the morning. Metal expands, plastic expands faster, and any joint between the two starts to work itself loose. Most luggage fails at that seam long before it fails at the shell.
After the run, the case had eleven marks on it and one loose screw at the telescopic handle base. We changed the screw to a captive fastener the following month. That is the whole point of driving a suitcase across a desert.
The marks we kept. A shell that records where it has been is not damaged; it is being written on.
