Ok after a summer of camping and wheeling with this basket all an all it has held up rather well. The last trip a calculated my weight for my camping gear. I've been roughly putting about 300 to 400 pounds of gear up there for every trip which I have taken about 9 trips this summer. About three or four of them have been to the beach where the basket was exposed to sea spray. The humidity hear in NC has been about 100% since may LOL. So considering the abuse I have put this budget rack threw it's been a heck of a buy so far. I do have two spots of minor surface rust that showed up on one of the welds which is no big deal 5 minuets of work and it was fixed. The mesh floor is still sitting flat and holding up strong. The home made mounts have been awesome no issues what so ever with them and they take up no floor space at all. Like I have said earlier I also hit this basket on a number of things like trees my kids basketball hoop and countless branches and leaves hanging low on the trails even bending my light mounts almost in half and the basket shows almost no wear at all. At this point I probably would recommend this basket to others looking to save money. I've also kept my XK parked outside all summer so the basket has been exposed to the humidity and rain all summer so its not like it was garage kept all though it is now. I can't say the winter will add any extra stress on it down here we really don't get any snow and we don't use salt when we do. But the salt water and sea spray from the beach is probably in some comparison to some winter months up north maybe.