I tentatively wrapped up work on my far-too-long delayed trailer project at the beginning of the month. Since then I have had a couple of opportunities to put it to work.
It was clear to me that it would be able to handle light grocery trips and that sort of thing - the canvas covering that it originally came with was up to that, as is used it for that purpose many times back in the days of $4 gasoline. But I was curious as to how things would work, all told, with somewhat heavier items. I’ve had a couple of opportunities to test that out over the past few weeks.
The first was a trip to the general store near my post office box. MLW was out of Coca-Cola, so I offered to pick some up on one of my mailbox rides (these have been frequent occurrences in our time of sheltering at home). One of the first thing I noticed was that the trailer adds enough length to the entire kit that the trike no longer looks ridiculous occupying a parking space:
For this run I brought along rubber bungees as well as ratchet straps as I was unsure what exactly would be the ideal method of securing my treasure. The bungees turned out to be all I needed:
And they arrived home much as I strapped them down initially. I had actually considered picking up a case of beer as well, but I was concerned about the additional weight for this first run. As it stands, a 12-pack of coke (or pop, soda, sugar-fizz - whatever you call it where you are from) comes in at about 10 pounds. Here, as you can see in the picture, I was carrying four of them, so that would come out to 40lbs for the trip.
The second test was yesterday. It was time to mow, and we were going to need gas for the mowing machine. I could have just tossed the gas cans into the mobile trike garage - and I certainly considered that - but this seemed like a good opportunity to try out the trailer with a heavier weight. I have two five-gallon gas cans, and I wanted to fill them both. How much does 10 gallons of gas weigh? Turns out that Siri can tell you that:
I don’t know why Siri knows the answer to that - I actually expected her to send me to a website - but there you have it. I also thought it would be heavier. Long ago I learned "a pint’s a pound the world around" - so, you know, 8 pints to a gallon would be 8 pounds per, thus I assumed it would be 80 lbs. But because of science, it turns out that water is denser, and thus heavier, than gasoline. It also turns out that a 10 gallons of water is actually 83.45 lbs, according to Siri, so I am generally starting to question a lot of things I learned long ago...
But I digress. Even if the gas was not as heavy as I thought it would be, I figured it would still be a good test. In addition to being heavier than the load on the previous run, the gas cans are taller and more awkward. Plus I knew it would give me an opportunity to take this picture:
(I sort of delighted in the special irony of that moment)
This approach also had the bonus of letting me not put gasoline containers in my car. The weather is nice enough now that I could have windows open and such, but I don’t love putting fuel containers in a space that also has carpeting and leather upon which I could quite possibly spill petrol.
So how did it all work out? Pretty well, in both cases. Unloaded the trailer, while almost certainly heavier than it was with its original canvas covering, is not much effort to pull. It probably has some impact on my speed overall - it must, since it would be providing both additional weight and rolling resistance - but it’s not subjectively detectable. It’s a little bouncy unloaded, but not in a way that seems problematic for riding.
Loaded up the weight is certainly detectable. On the 40lb ride I could feel it, but it wasn’t bad and, according to Cyclemeter, it didn’t slow me down. However, I had a tailwind on much of the way back to the tune of 17mph, so that may have had an impact on the return speed.
The additional 20lbs on the gas trip was more work, and definitely slowed me down. On a couple of hills I had to drop into the small ring, which I very rarely need to do on our roads (we do have hills, but they aren’t usually granny-gear level). That isn’t a bad thing, I don’t think - it’s just the reality of physics - and both trike and trailer appeared to handle it just fine.
One thing that did happen in both cases is that the hitch mount on the trike, which I set at parallel to the ground, worked it’s way down at an angle by the time I got back. This seems likely to be an artifact both of the weight, and perhaps also the connector on the hitch, which is a thick piece of nylon:
It works, but it may contribute to the bounciness of trailer, and that may be part of what worked it down. The hitch came with a smaller diameter nylon hookup surrounded by a steel spring, but the spring was too big for the existing tube. I may need to investigate getting a different hitch or modifying this one.
Either way though, it was up to the tasks. I don’t think I’ll often need to carry quite so much weight, but if and when I do, it seems like she’ll manage. And thank goodness she was up to it this time, because it really was time to mow the lawn:
