Bike Trailer Blog

Probably the most common question here at the shop begins with, “so, I bought a used trailer on eBay.”  Our follow up question is always, “what brand is the trailer?”  The answer will invariably come from this list:  Kidarooz, Rhode Gear, Bell, Kool-Stop, Winchester Original, JD Razor, Cannondale, Tanjor, Yakima, Norco USA, or Trek, those trailers abandoned, orphaned, and kicked to the side of the bike path in the name of progress.  Did they deserve this sort of treatment.  Some, yes, but all old trailers have some usefulness.  But can they be revived without looking too hillbilly?

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Bicycle trailers are fast becoming a viable transportation option in the face of the changing energy scheme. With that, many calls are received at the Bike Trailer Shop headquarters about the basics of trailer design. One of the more frequent considerations when selecting a trailer is the wheel count. Are you better off with a one wheel bike trailer or two wheel bike trailers? The choice is dependent on the use. If you intend to have children in-tow, two wheels is the only option. If you need more utility & versatility, your options open to a wide variety of designs. [Read more →]

We’d like to introduce our newest blog author and Bike Trailer Shop Sales Manager, Dave Herbold aka Gnome of OneSpeeder.com fame.  Dave’s first post is kicking off our 4th of July Burley Child Trailer Sale with a review of the Burley Encore that he’s been testing out with his son.  So here’s Dave:

I’m both the proud  father of a 13 month old boy, and a new member to the Bike Trailer Shop company. Since fatherhood arrived along with the inevitable rise in the cost of fuel, bicycle trailers have become an essential tool for everyday day living. Since I’ve started working here, I’ve also had the opportunity to learn quite a bit about trailers, and more specifically, child trailers.
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For some reason, we answer a lot of bike trailer questions at the shop.  “Can I carry an accordion in a dog trailer?”, for instance.  Or, “Do you have a trailer I can pull behind my car, to carry an upright bass, so my bike can ride inside?”  One we get frequently is, “Which trailer will work best with my scooter?”

This is a difficult one to answer, given that it usually comes from people who cobbled their scooter together from old bike, car, and chainsaw parts.  Our hats are off to these intrepid engineers of the two-wheeled, fuel-efficient revolution.  Unfortunately, there are no easy answers here.  We do have some general advice for the motor-assisted, though.

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What kind of bicycle diplomat (cyclomat?) are you?  If you’re an Obama biker, you probably make eye contact with drivers, signal your turns, and yield the right-of-way when appropriate.  If you’re a McCain biker, you have a window punch in your left hand, some Halt in the right, and greet drivers with a wry, Cheney-esque smirk that says, “go ahead, punk, make my commute.”

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I’m a year-round bike commuter, usually riding four or five days per week, every week of the year. Every week but Bike to Work Week, that is. Year after year something happens, without fail, usually forcing me to drive the whole week, or a good chunk of it. This year, I drove twice. One day it was because of “white out” conditions on the interstate highway I ride into Flag. I didn’t miss a day this winter due to snow. That had to wait until May.

That said, I did get in three days of BTWW this year, and have a few observations to share.

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With National Bike-to-Work-Week kicking off, the Flagstaff Biking Organization kicked things off here with there Bike Bazaar in Downtown Flagstaff. It’s a great event for all the Bike Heads to come out and sell off all the miscellaneous bike parts that have been building up in their garage. We were cleaning house as well.

We used Jeff’s Bikes-At-Work trailer not only to get everything to the Bike Bazaar but also a perfect way to sort and arrange the used stuff we had for sale. With six bins we had the $1, $2, $3, $5, $10 and $15 bins. It made it nice and easy to sell stuff with very little bartering. If something wasn’t moving we just shifted it down to the next cheaper bin. By the end of the day the bins were empty and I had a nice wad of cash in my pocket. Not only is this trailer great for bargain bins it is also an excellent Earth Day Recycling Machine.

We had the bike trailer bin sale up front and on the table in back we had information about all of our trailers at the BikeTrailershop.com along with a sample Burley Nomad, BOB Ibex and Xtracycle to catch there attention.

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Coming from the land of two-wheeled trailers, I’ve long held some reservations about the single-wheeled variety. Most two-wheeled models behave in, more or less, the same way. One wheel has always seemed, well, weird. I guess it’s time for me to slay a couple myths about BOB Trailers.

Myth number one: The Hitch

Two-wheeled trailers carry their load squarely on, well, their own two wheels, and only a small portion of the load is transferred to the hitch. Conversely, BOB trailers shift a good portion of their load-carrying capability forward, to the hitch. Not only that, the hitch must also resist the additional torsional force inherent in single-wheeled designs.

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I’ve been discussing the fusion between bike trailers and tents. In a past post, I looked at the tent shelter bike trailer by Tony of Tony’s Trailers.

This next trailer, the SpeedLobster, seems like it may have been a German Engineering student’s thesis project. It is very impressive in its design and application, but seems to miss the boat a little bit when it comes to real world application.

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Sorry, I just couldn’t resist that headline, but this is actually a serious story about an interesting new concept in Nicaragua. From the Triple Pundit story:

Here in the US, we’re used to the near ubiquitous access to cell phones, with the possibility of thousands, if not unlimited minutes. But what if every phone in the US was prepaid? Such is the case in Nicaragua. There, people use their phones mainly to receive phone calls, or as address books to make calls at one of the numerous, more affordable “call shops” in the country. Brian Forde looked around, saw the prevalence of three wheeled bikes, carrying cargo, people, ice cream, and had an idea: create a pedal powered mobile version of the call shop, able to go wherever the people are.

The company, Llamadas Pedaleadas, makes the trailers using common parts for easy repair and maintenance. The electronics run off of a car battery that is charged through the pedal power of the bicycle (with a kick stand to raise the tire for stationary charging). Check out the video below to see it in action.

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