I carried this on my bicycle

[Kim]

Cargo cycles tend to have the right tyres for the job, too, which isn't always the case for a bike towing a trailer.  The last thing you need when trying to control a heavy trailer on a hill are skinny tyres that don't react well to crap road surfaces, or indeed knobblies that get vague in corners.

That said, I had an interesting moment on a roundabout this winter where the trailer wanted to take the first exit, while the bike (with studded tyres) carried on round.

[cycleman]

which got home first ?

[Kim]

Unsurprisingly, the bike.   

Today's experiment in getting lots of road space and enthusiastic patience from skip lorry drivers(!):



Carry Freedom: 1  Dead mattress: 0

Then did a second trip with a huge box of WEEE, on the basis that I needed to clear out some dead CD drives, there's really no point in stockpiling Socket-A motherboards with faulty capacitors and that non-Intel network cards belong in the bin.

Oddly, the house is now more untidy than it was before.  And I'm dying of hayfever.

[Palinurus]

A table (kicked to pieces before loading, later found the crowbar in the bedroom where I'd been removing carpet grippers)
Some laminate flooring
Bedroom carpet



Just before I got the the dump I cut through a gate at the back of Travis Perkin's yard and caught the rear wheel on the gatepost at low speed. Stopped and toppled over in comical manner.

[Valiant]

I was curious what the maximum recommended capacity for pedal powered transportation is.  The Carry Freedom Large-Y is rated for 90kg, the old Brox for 250kg, the Yuba Mundo somewhat amazingly for 300kg, and the Madsen kg271 two wheeler not surprisingly for 271kg.

I'm not sure what's actually practical.  My Large-Y with two cats and their carriers is probably around 25kg, and is a noticeable effort to get up a hill with a single speed bike towing, so I'd imagine two or three times that with a geared bike isn't completely unreasonable, although 90kg is certainly going to be challenging.  300kg would be a hell of a task with the two wheeled Mundo, even balancing the bike when stationary would be an effort, and presumably much the same argument would apply to the less common kg271.

The maximum rated weight with the Carry Freedoms was due to a bit of legislation saying that if it was anything over that it'd have to be braked. I've had over 250kg on mine.

Kim, how does the handling change with the longer tow arm?

[rafletcher]

Not mine, but I saw this today:




Never seen anything like it. Seems to be a cargo bike, twice the normal length, with a child/person carrier on the front, steered from the middle.

Similar designs are commonly seen in Belgium and the Netherlands (and probably elsewhere in Europe too, but I've seen them in the two countries mentioned  )

[Kim]

The maximum rated weight with the Carry Freedoms was due to a bit of legislation saying that if it was anything over that it'd have to be braked. I've had over 250kg on mine.

In London, I presume?  I'd be much happier about overloading it without proper hills to contend with.  I don't doubt that the trailer will happily take that sort of weight - it's delightfully sturdy.

Kim, how does the handling change with the longer tow arm?

Good question.  In general, the handling improves.  An empty trailer feels like it isn't there (other than the weight), and is much less rattly, even over speed bumps and the like.  Obviously loads can change things, as you wouldn't be using the longer hitch unless the load was an awkward shape, but if it's a Long Piece Of Wood or something that you could fit diagonally on the regular hitch, or much less diagonally with the longer one, it will handle much better with the longer hitch.  The mattress was fine, other than starting to rub against the wheel a bit.

Of course the real issue with the longer hitch is that you have a significant articulated vehicle factor to think about when cornering.  Don't expect other road users to have a clue when you go wide for tight corners, though the WTF factor of a trailer with an interesting load can play to your advantage.

[Kim]

Four wheels good, five wheels better:



~50kg load.

Observations:

When it's empty, you don't feel the trailer is there.  Trikes are rattlier than bikes, so it's lost in the (literal) noise.

The trailer's track width is a good match for the trike's, so pothole-dodging is easier than with a bike.

The trailer box occludes the view of directly behind in the mirrors.  You have to wiggle about or sit forward to look over your shoulder in order to see distant cars or cyclists in the blind spot.  I expect this would be more severe with handlebar-mounted mirrors.

With a 12.5" gear to play with, 100kg or more would be no problem on real hills, assuming that you don't get run over out of sheer boredom by the following traffic.  At no point did I actually *need* the granny ring.

I've ridden various silly bikes, but this configuration gets truly awesome amounts of room / patience on the road.

Braking is much better and more predictable than when using a bike, but tyres become the limiting factor.  Even with three disc brakes you have to allow for the greatly increased stopping distance, especially if you're used to an unloaded tadpole trike.

The low-speed oscillation you get with a bike while starting off is barely detectable.  This may be a function of it being a recumbent (and associated lower gears and pedalling style) rather than a trike, though.

I maintained an impeccable 30.0mph past the temporary speed camera 

I may be appearing on YouTube, courtesy of front-seat passenger of a minibus.

[Arellcat]

I've ridden various silly bikes, but this configuration gets truly awesome amounts of room / patience on the road.

Having recently become the owner of an ancient original Radical Cyclone, complete with slightly wobbly drawbar, I can confirm that I get more room on the road with that than when piloting my Quest.

[Mr Arch]

I carried a couple of very heavy duty rails I made for a bike frame jig to Dylan at YourSpokes in York for building his 36er bikes and choppers.

[clarion]

How not to do it:

[Adam]

A veritable overload of stuff at a local Sustrans event. At the back is the Circe Helios in cargo mode.  On the rack is a bike stand.  In the panniers are various bike tools and equipment for a Dr. Bike session.  It's pulling a trailer carrying boxes of Sustrans local information leaflets and strapped on the top is a gazebo along with weights.  The bike nearest the camera had more leaflets, a fold-up table and bags of water bottles.

[Jurek]

How not to do it:

I beg to differ.
A bag on the wrist allows one control over the brake / gear STI - as opposed to hanging the bag off the bars... which doesn't....
I hasten to add that neither is a method which I'd enthusiastically endorse.....

[Kim]

I assumed that clarion was referring to doing so on a drop barred bike.  Flat bars are de rigueur for carrier bag dangling.   

[Valiant]

So what's the biggest sturdyiest trailer you can buy? I'm looking for something that will take a load which is 1m wide, 1.5m-2m long and about a 1-1.5m tall weighing about 500kg?

Basically most of my hires these days are small house parties and talks. Everything just about fits in a large hatchback. Most are no more than 5-10miles from me. Basically something like a long wheelbase cycles maximus would be ideal but I want something that can err flatback. The box I can get specially made.

[Kim]

Surly Bill/Ted (I forget which is which, and the site isn't loading atm)?

1m wide is going to be the tricky bit.  You may need to molish something.

I also think that a 500kg load is going to need brakes on the trailer.

[Valiant]

Bill the bigger one is 1608 x 610mm, can carry 136kg and weighs near on 17kg. Dassa heavy frame. I currently have a 1.5m x 72cm bed on the CF and that weighs what 3kg? Maybe I need to speak to Nick. The other option of course is to snake a few Large Ys. I wonder how that would go around corners.

[Kim]

No wider than a large Y, then.  There's a wide load adaptor for the Y-frame that adds another 200mm.

Snaking Y-frames will probably work better for cornering (I have the extension hitch, and you really have to pay attention on corners with that), but I bet it would be a bit interesting under sharp breaking with that much weight...

[TimO]

Half a tonne, are you sure?  That's a phenomenally heavy amount to move under human power alone, and as Kim says, you're definitely going to need brakes, if for no other reason than to stop it pulling you backwards if you stop on a hill!  You realise that you're talking about the weight of about seven European adults, 5½ times the absolute maximum load of a Carry Freedom Large-Y.  That's not trivial engineering, and I'd very much doubt you'll find that as an off the shelf design (Looking around, even some small car trailers won't take that much weight).

I don't think you'd want to snake six Large-Ys, the length would be interesting, especially if you tried to go around an unusually tight corner (which would pretty much preclude any cycle paths or similar).  I guess two or three bicycles towing a pair of Large-Y's might be practical, but I'd still think carefully about how much unbraked load you'd want to pull along.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I think you would need about seven adults, not necessarily European, to move it!

[TimO]

To be fair, a Brox has a cargo capacity of quarter of a tonne, but I doubt it would be much fun to get moving with that much load on it, and it does (did?) have four drum brakes.

As I said a few posts back the Mundo has a 300kg capacity^[1], which is probably beyond the limit you'd want to carry like that.  I suspect you'd have a good chance of dropping the bike if you didn't get your foot down very solidly when you stopped, and it would probably be impossible to get back up again with that much weight.

Footnote [1]: I'm not 100% sure where I got that, but the manual does say that the carrier has a 200kg capacity and the side platforms 50kg each, so maybe it was based upon summing those numbers.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I used to have a Honda CX500 motorbike which weighed about a quarter of a ton with a full tank and luggage (Wiki says 240kg 'wet'). On a couple of occasions I dropped it for one reason or another - once at a petrol station when I'd just filled up - and I always managed to pick it up again. Bit of a struggle but I always did it, and I'm not particularly strong, so I expect that wouldn't be the biggest problem. Starting on a hill though could be really hard, or as you say, keeping it upright.

[Valiant]

Well the 500kg was an estimate of average load + box weight + loads of headroom. My average load is about 300kg.
 
Thing is, would a multi wheeled bike trailer work? You see car trailers sometimes with double axles, or are they articulated?

As for the Brox, I used to own one, was rated to 500kg, eventually went to the forrestry commission lol. It was horrible to ride, even unloaded. Rumour has it they had a 1t version too.

I can't get my leg over a Mundo without leaning it over

[Valiant]

I once tried to carry 110kg, an old coal bunker, on my Carry Freedom (max. 90kg). My problem arose a few metres from home - because the trailer and load weighed more than me and the bike, when I braked the bike's rear wheel was lifted up and I jack-knifed. I won't be doing that again!

Strange, I've never had that. Incline?

[mrcharly-YHT]

I've had that problem - you need to get a bit of weight into the bike and don't lift backside off saddle.

Max weight; I used to regularly tow 100kg + a bit. A few sacks of coal, some shopping and a propane cylinder.