The Bike Carrier and the Bike Carried

What is the best way to carry things on a bicycle, and what is the best way to carry a bike on a car?
Thanks so much,
Mariah

Hello Mariah,
Thanks for contributing with BikeCyclingReviews.com.

The bicycle is not only a means of recreation and transportation, it is also a means of carriage. Ever since someone rode a wooden-wheeled bicycle down a dirt road to a neighbor’s and was given a blueberry pie to take home, riders have come up with myriad ways to transport items on the slim, open frame of the bike.And ever since the first incident in which a car pulled to the side of a roadway to offer assistance to a stranded bicyclist, riders have grappled with the issues of attaching their bicycles to the body of a fast-moving car.

Carrying Items on a Bicycle

You can carry an amazing amount of goods on a bicycle.In fact, in many parts of the world, the bicycle is routinely used as the means to bring home goods from the market, and the only place where this is absolutely impossible may well be the Car Capitol of the World: Los Angeles.If you live anywhere else, you can outfit your bike to carry pretty much everything you need to carry about town or even for a lengthy bike tour through the countryside.The key is getting nice racks and panniers.

Racks can go on both the front and back of your bicycle, and companies like Blackburn have been making strong, ultra-light racks for decades already.

What makes them heavy and changes the riding experience is the weight you add to them, what you carry in the bags called panniers.Panniers, usually made of a rip, rock and water resistant fabric such as Cordura, contain a lightweight frame to protect what you put in them as well as to keep the bags from getting caught in your bike spokes.You can use as many or as few as you like, within the range of 1-4, making sure to keep your bicycle’s weight relatively balanced front/back and side to side.Before you do a long ride with full panniers, it’s an excellent idea to do some riding with an equal weight to get used to the different handling of a loaded bicycle.

There are also handlebar bags of different sizes, which is a good place to keep those items you need easy access to and even smaller bags that attach under your bike saddle or in the space between your bike’s top tube and the seat tube.The seat bag is traditionally the place to keep a small set of bike tools, along with an extra inner tube and a quick shot of compressed air for emergencies.The under-tube case has the additional bonus of softening the weight on your shoulders if you need to portage your bike over water or rocks in the wild, or road construction in the cities.

Carrying a Bicycle on a Car Safely

The issues of carrying a bike on a car are a little bigger and more complex, mostly because cars are bigger and more complex.Oh, yeh. More expensive, too.Chances are you will have to buy a system custom-fit for your make and model of car if you want a good, safe system.Some of the parts for these systems will transfer to other vehicles, but the most expensive and crucial parts, the “feet” that attach the carrier to your car top, are make to fit only specific cars.

Before you go shopping, make sure you have the data that identifies the car you’ll be driving.

You should also give some thought to what kind of carrier you want, because there are a lot of different approaches to carrying bikes on cars, and it seems like bicyclists have quite impassioned opinions about what the best system is.Professionals seem to prefer carrying their bikes on top of their vehicles, although they probably cover the front of the bikes with a Lycra shield to keep insects from dirtying delicate mechanisms.Carrying bikes on top has three noteworthy problems:

1) If you’re short, it’s hard to mount and unmount them,

2) They create a lot of drag and cut down on fuel efficiency, and

3) The biggee: I think everyone with a roof rack has driven into a low ceilinged parking space or bridge at least once and unforgettably.

For these reasons, some riders prefer the racks that attach to the back of a car.It’s a lot easier to hang your bike on these, and they are generally more adaptable among car models, but the most common car accident is still a rear-end collision, and your bike is very vulnerable to damage when hung off the back of your car.It is also harder to securely lock your bikes to this kind of bike carrier, another bonus of the roof-mounted systems.

Being able to lock your bike is just one aspect of security. Whenever you put your bike on any kind of carrier, check and double-check it.Make sure it fits nice and snug, but not so tight screws can break.Even if there’s no wind, the speed at which a car moves creates a tremendous force upon a bike, and a strong cross wind may really wreak havoc.If there is one single moment that can compete for the awful feeling of driving into a low overhang with bikes on top of your car, it’s seeing your beautiful bike go flying off your car.