[Closed] Not owning a car

So those of you who like me don’t own a car – what ridiculous loads have you carried on your bike?  Bonus points for pictures!

I have a shared car hire scheme outside my building and a full rental firm within 10 mins walk, so probably my card and license to those places 🙂

We own a car but try hard not to use it, particularly for any short journeys.

Recently exchanged 2 bbq gas bottles at homebase which took the guy 2 trips to fetch them for me. He looked bemused when I said I was cycling home with them.  Sorry, no photos, but it was easy to load them up in a carryfreedom trailer with large box bolted to it.

Last summer we had a wedding in a field.  The fridge trailer for booze was ~1km away near the farm buildings.  When ever the "help yourself bar" ran low, a suitable cylist guest was selected to ride across the farm to fill up.  I reckon that was 50kgs loads off road.

Oh I hire cars when needed but being a cheapskate it wasn't needed for these things 😉

I have some good friends in NZ who go to great lengths to carry stuff on their bikes, I think they've done a delivery of a washing machine on bike before.

The also own a car though!

Customarily use the bike for most grocery shopping.  Often carry 2 bags of shopping and water/beer, or some pieces of wood lashed to the bike but rarely purchase anything outsize that would be carryable by cargo/utility bike.  Last sizeable purchase when car-less was over 20 sheets of aluminium composite panels, each over a metre in size. 101 mile round trip if going by motorway.  Much longer by smaller roads.  I called a friend with an estate car!

A couple of years ago a friend of ours travelled from Cornwall to Portugal on his ex GF's knackered old Dutch bike.  He stopped off at mine en route and I demanded he get a lift from me to his next overnight stay (Oxford) as it was January and the fog was thick that morning.

Anyway, he made it to Portugal on his 3spd knacker, no fuss at all (discounting my rightly fearing for his life that one morning).   In January.  On this:

Yes that's a surfboard, and a guitar, and a weighty pop up tent, steel delivery rack upfront, handmade wooden tablet-holder...etc, etc.   We had to dismantle a lot of the bike to get it in our small car.   But let it sink in.  Cornwall to Portugal

We own a car but try hard not to use it, particularly for any short journeys.

Ditto

I've done several dump runs before with 3x full size Bike Boxes strapped to the (BOB) trailer, each filled with 'dump stuff', with another two panniers on the rack on the back of the trailer, and 4 full panniers on the bike, it was fine once moving but dear god it was a handful to get moving!

Another terrible load I've had to carry that didn't look big but was effin hard work was hauling 3x truck batteries at ~25kg each up the biggest hill in town. Did. Not. Enjoy.

I find the hardest thing to carry on a bike is other bikes, partially dismantled and strapped into the trailer works but they're just such awkward shapes. Hard to secure vertically and too wide if on their side. Keep thinking about some kind of adaption using a car roof rack in/on the trailer, or a 'hanging axle' behind the bike to clamp the towed bikes forks onto, but haven;t got round to making anything suitable yet.

We have a cargo bike on the way in the next few weeks for moving the little one around and that should open up options too, looking forward to the first big run with a loaded trailer on the back of a loaded cargo bike...might even put the other trailer on the back of the trailer just for giggles, Road Traaaaaaain!

I own a car but my wife uses if for work. I carried 3x25Kg of heat logs back from the garage 1/2 mile away. Now being a skinny fit that's a lot of weight. Never again I'll stick with using the car.

amedia - carrying a bike is easy peasy!  Tow it!  Forks bungied to frame and rack, rear wheel on the ground.  Front wheel bungied to bike being towed!
[url= https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1925/30156127967_455c46e7d2_h.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1925/30156127967_455c46e7d2_h.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/MWN3dP ]1015277_10151479908918388_519760564_o[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/25846484@N04/ ]TandemJeremy[/url], on Flickr

As a youngster I used to make model planes, regularly cycling about with long sheets of balsa wood strapped to the bike.

I managed to pick up a set of weights using a trailer too.

Most I've carried is 1 child and overnight things for me plus 2 children camping. No pics to hand and I can never get images to work anyway...

Oh and I do own a car but it's just for long journeys. Edit - and moderate sized journeys with kids or really heavy things. I think it would've been pushing it to get the old garage roof to the tip 5-6 miles away by bike. I have a picture somewhere of the car loaded up for one of the runs I did, fairly full, must have been approaching its maximum weight capacity.

@amedias. Careful with another articulation, the tail can get very waggy.

When I did archery I used to velcro my longbow to the top tube!

Careful with another articulation, the tail can get very waggy.

I've done it once before, BOB->BOB->normal bike, only for about a mile or so along an offroad path and at low speed, was fun but I certainly wouldn't want to do any distance like that or take it on road!

amedias – carrying a bike is easy peasy!

Yes it is like that, I've towed single bike similar* to that before, now try it with 2 bikes to tow, and with a couple of panniers or a trailer full of stuff as well, not so easy... 😉

* actually had the forks clamped to a spare hub that was bolted to the top of the rack, allowed some vertical articulation of the towed bike, at the expense of higher COG.

@tjagain - I've been looking for a solution to towing a bike (DJ bike is too much of a pain to ride it to the jumps). Do you find that solution ok over bumps etc without having a pivot allowing the towed bike to move up and down?

Someone fly-tipped* this portable duck pond** by the side of the road on my commute. I saw it on the way in in the morning and thought 'I'm having that'.

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Nabbed it on my way home that evening. No way of attaching it to the bike so I had to carry it by my side with one hand. It weighed a ton, and it was a pretty windy day. Interesting ride.

*sadly a common occurrence since the local skips had a height barrier put in. Short sighted policy that.

**this may not have been the original design intent, but that's how I'm using it!

An oar. About 4m long they are. But not all that heavy, I just carried it in one hand while steering (and braking) with the other.

A wife. But on a tandem that's not really too hard.

Sam - it was pretty crap really.  the bungies added a bit of up and down articulation but it really was only OK for a short one off ride.  A fork mount / old hub on a rack would be a better solution.

Amedias - you win.  I am a mere amateur.  I bow to your silly things on a bike prowess!

My brother has constructed/converted a kind of old ice cream trike so he can transport his wife sat upfront in her wheelchair now that her MS has got do bad and they can no longer ride their tandem 😞

Mine is rated for a 350lb payload. I’ve not had it long enough to have tested it fully though.

I did a few miles with my wife and three year old on board, plus his balance bike, picnic stuff and bags etc.stopped at the shops on the way home and added a couple of bags of shopping to the load.

Having a bike that’s designed for it does make it slightly less fun though. No bungees used.

what trailer is that TJ? I'd really like one.

I have to make do with lashing stuff to my back (20kg of tile adhesive, boxed frame and forks, boxed bike wheels, television) or to the bike (lengths of wood, piping). When buying lengths of wood / pipe I take a saw with me to chop it into manageable pieces in the car park - you get some funny looks. Once tried to carry a piece of plasterboard but gave up as it was like having a sail on my back.

Back when my wife and i were first together we had no car and lived in Cambridge. For those that know the city we strapped a (small) dining room table and 2 chairs across the back of 2 bikes and cycled side by side back from 2nd hand shop in Mill Rd to Stoubridge common where we were living.

Not having a car is more about a function of time as well as logistics. There are many things you can do as an alternative to driving including cycling with a surfboard and guitar to Portugal but they mostly, take much longer than driving......just something as simple as cycling to and from from work for me is difficult, not because I don't want to cycle the 17 miles each way of lovely c roads and SDW but because it takes me over 3x as long and I simply don't have the luxury of that much time per day.

what trailer is that TJ? I’d really like one.

Looks like a BOB to me? It's what I use although mine is a fair bit older and scruffier than TJs by the looks of it. They're expensive new but can occasionally be found second hand for sensible money, last one I bought was £75, it does need re-powder coating though...

Amedias – you win.  I am a mere amateur.  I bow to your silly things on a bike prowess!

You just need to up your game TJ 😉 carting stupid stuff around by bike is a lot of fun, I'll admit to having gone out of my way to use the bike sometimes when it would have been far easier to use the car. I am really looking forward to the cargo bike arriving, stupidity awaits!

It is a bob  bought secondhand.  Not cheap but seemingly unbreakable.

Amedias - I have also had a few good loads on motorbikes.  5 rolls of loft insulation on a BSA Bantam, a 7 ft christmas tree with root ball on my BSA A10 and 96 small bottles of beer in the hard luggage on my BMW

It is amusing isn't it.

Winston - a table and chairs?  I really do need to up my game 🙂

I had a go at touring with my kayak, fairly successful but very heavy. Did allow me to get to some rivers where there was no car access though. I did a little blog thing on it at the time  https://boatingandbiking.wordpress.com/2015/03/02/january-2015-north-wales/

@Amedias - I thought about a hub mounted to the rack.  I kind of experimented with this using my bike work stand (fork mount jobby) to see if it was feasible.  It felt like the articulation that high up meant the whole front end of the towed bike would work like a universal joint and the towed bike would easily tuck under and and up upside down.

Fantastic!   Not sure I would have been soloing those rivers though, clearly you are a better paddler than me - how did you work the shuttle?

Sam - One of those trailgater thingies that allow you to attach a kids bike to the seatpost?  clamps on seatpost and headtube of the towed bike?

It felt like the articulation that high up meant the whole front end of the towed bike would work like a universal joint and the towed bike would easily tuck under and and up upside down

It worked fine for a short (~3 mile) tow, there was no chance of it going upside down but it wasn't ideal. What you really want is a front hub(s) suspended at hub height behind the bike to clamp towed bikes onto. There's numerous ways to achieve that but none of them are particularly light or compact, or easy to fit and remove. I want something I can just slap on when needed and that doesn't interfere with panniers.

I still think the solution for me is going to be bolting and hub or axle(s) into the bed of the trailer, clamp the forks there in the trailer, and then either rest the BB on the rack that sits over the rear wheel of the trailer and strap it down, or have some kind of drainpipe style appendage hanging off the side of the rack for the rear wheel to drop onto, that'll keep the weight lower down and allow two bikes, one on each side.

Using the trailer is a better solution for me too as there's no guarantee the bikes I need to transport will be in a rolling state so carry rather than tow is the better option.

When/if I do get round to it i'll post some pics up.

@tjagain - yeah, I looked at those, Towed bike needs to not have anything permanently attached. I'm hoping to be able to tow my DJ bike to the jumps, ride it and then tow it home.

I like the idea of the hub option from @Amedias, I'd love to see a picture of it in action.  Just got that nagging concern of it flipping over.

This is the proper way to do it

and this is the bodgers way for short trips at low speed

@Amedias - perfect.  Although don't show me pictures of a cargo bike!   That's going to get expensive 😉 I think there's so many options with a cargo bike for towing. Even something as simple as slotting the front wheel into a side pod or bag.  At some point in time, this will be my solution.

Is that an extracycle you are using there?

Bodging solution looks just the job for now!  What are those long green bungees doing?

Winston - I left the bike and trailer where I got on the river (hidden in a bush and locked up), paddled down the river, got changed at the bottom, hid my boat behind a wall and started hitchhiking up (took about an hour).

It wasn't until I got back to my bike and trailer that I realised I'd left the key to my lock in my boat...

The soloing part is probably the hardest bit about cycling with a kayak - no one else is stupid enough to want to do it with me! There aren't many rivers of that grade I would solo but I know the Wnion very well so it wasn't so bad.

BTW none of those are my pics, just lifted off the internet to demonstrate!

If you have a longtail then dropping a front wheel into one of the side bags is a decent solution, seen that done many times before.

If you do go for fork on top of rack then the bungees can help as if they have a bit of tension in them they can stop the towed bike flopping sideways too much and avoids the whole thing collapsing on itself like you're worried about.

The cargo bike we've got coming is a long nose type so cargo will be in front, but still gives us options for rack and trailer on the back.

Holy virtue signalling, Batman!

Not at all no beer.  Just a bit of fun and I have to say others contraptions shows just how much I need to up my game.  coming soon  - pics of double bed bungied on a bike 😉

Sometimes it get a bit tricky, sometimes it gets a bit silly, sometimes you have to get creative

Sometimes you remember that plenty of companies are willing to deliver...

🙂

My lack of organisation means sometimes I cannot wait for delivery!

and where's the fun in that!

Wasn't that heavy but made handling interesting

From an old STW thread, relatively lightly loaded because of the front seat driver:

I Don't own the Bakfiets anymore, but have a Carry Freedom trailer which is good for avoiding some car trips. It easily takes a 140 litre IKEA crate full of shopping, and I've used it to carry 3 bikes. There's a chap in Edinburgh who posted a picture of himself towing a fridge on a Carry Freedom.

^^ that looks like quite a load of plants in col. wax's sidecar.

I don't have a picture, but a decade ago my business partner and I moved office.

I had filling cabinet in the Burley kids trailer, he had phones and office shrub in the cargo trailer.

Right across Sheffield city centre to Ecclesall Sawmill.

@tjagain whilst I admire anyone who uses a bicycle to transfer shopping, your first load barely warrants a photo ; )

Saying that if more people did what you have done, you’d still have been able to go to Easter Road or Cannon Mills, not Fort Kinnaird. Getting around the roundabout by McDonalds near there with that trailer is not for the faint-hearted.

One of the most awkward things I have brought home was from that very B&Q, an 8 ft tall fig tree in a huge pot.

Gauss - well done for spotting where I was going -  the roundabout was no issue - even with the 45kg load - the bike has a motor so I can accelerate into a gap easily. did tend to lift the front wheel when stomping on the pedals tho.  Most of my route is traffic free and sneaky.

I’ve tried towing a 20” bike on the back of my cargo bike...spare hum mounted to the rack, with the forks of the towed bike in that.
Unfortunately, a kids bike is too short a wheelbase, so it’s really ‘steep’ and flops about....

I really want to make a firm bracket that mounts LOWER sot eh bike is at a more normal angle.....

Watch this space!

(it’s useful for going for rides with the lad, and when he gets tired, I can just hitch his bike to mine and he sits ont eh back..)

DrP

Some amateur efforts from me:

Looks like I'm carrying the wheel in this picture, but it's strapped to my backpack and I'm just holding my mobile to take the photo while cycling along:

Floor standing fan disassembled and attached to ruck sack:

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A few logs that happened to be blocking the trail

Carry Freedom with bikes (it managed another kid's bike as well as the two shown in the picture)

my surf kayak and gear....

Cargo bike took a little longer to arrive than expected bu turned up on Friday, already had a couple of rides on it and it's ridiculously good fun, you'd think it was just hard work and cumbersome but it's really not. Looking forward to lugging more stupid things around (including my son) now... 😀