2006/08/20

Trailers

I got a friend to build me 12 trailers recently, and now I'm trying to sell them. Because I think more people should have bike trailers. Proceeds will go to fund bike activism in Sydney. More details on the Mozbike Mass trailers page. They're the latest incarnation of my shopping trailer, first seen in 2001 and refined over the 10 or so that I've built. These ones have laser cut hitches and dropouts, and are MIG welded then powder coated.

They're a two wheel trailer with a simple string hitch that fits over almost any bike axle - quick release or not. You need 5mm of spare axle length. Two wheels makes it stable, the low hitch means it doesn't throw you around as much when it's loaded, and the spring reduced the effect of bumps and means you don't have to worry about breaking it - you can hang the empty trailer on the handlebars while it's still attached. Load capacity is about 50kg (the wheels will fail at some point if you put too much in it, which is quite comfortably more than 50kg).

The major lesson for me is that cheap powder coat is not very good, but sand blasting would have pushed me way over budget. My "market research" (ie, asking random people how much they'd be willing to pay) plus experience selling previous models suggested that about $200 a mental block kicks in and the trailer goes from "cool idea" to "must budget and do research". Once people start looking at the market they usually end up buying a $500 trailer instead, because it's lighter and stronger... not as strong and cheap more expensive and, and ... something.

So anyway, I have 3 of these left in Sydney and four more in Melbourne. If you want one email me.

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