Bikes in a box trailer

briantrumpet

Does anyone have experience of packing road bikes in a box trailer (8' x 4' x 6' l-w-h)? After looking at various possibilities for getting 4 people and bikes down to southern France in June, this seems to be the solution. (4-bike racks cost a fortune, MPVs cost a fortune to hire, vans are cheap to hire but you can only get three people up front). This way we can comfortably get four people and luggage in the car.

Anyway, long story short, a trailer costs about £85 for a week, so seems the cheapest and simplest answer. But two questions - can you see any enormous and obvious pitfalls (obviously it will affect fuel economy and ferry costs)? And has anyone experience of packing them safely inside? It's not impossible we might take another car down with more riders, so might look to put 6 bikes in the trailer. However many we take, I guess it's going to be a question of strapping them together with adequate packing material in between, and not letting them fly around inside the trailer.

smidsy

As you say really. Use ratchet straps to tie down the bikes to the floor (box trailers normally have d-rings in the floor).

Basically lean them against each other with foam or something in between to prevent damage.

Just be carefull to avoid metal to metal contact and do not overtighten the strapping.

pyro_maniac

use pipe foam lagging from B&Q/wickes, its cheap and easy to put over the frames to help stop any damage, also dont forget to make sure the driver has the B+E entitlement on their licence

DF33

Hire a van with a crew cab.
3 seats front, 3 or 4 seats behind depending on model, bikes go in the back without dismantling along with luggage, no trailer parking / extra ferry / fuel costs etc.
That is all.

Trickyh

The problem with trailers is they have next to no suspension or more accurately dampers... It will be like taking the dampers off your car then bouncing over speed bumps repeatedly... If I was even thinking of putting bikes in one then leave the wheels on, cross the bars and take the pedals off. Go and chat up your lbs and see if you can get a cardboard transit box for each bike and do the trick with the pipe lagging for good measure.

HTH!

Rich

Trickyh

Oh yeah, ferries also charge the same for small trailers as they do for hulking great caravans eg: P&O quoted me £55 for just the car or £170 for car plus small trailer! In the end I binned the idea of taking the trailer and bought a top box... and put the (2) bikes on a rack

briantrumpet

Cheers all. Lots of useful thoughts there.

EDIT - just checked ferries, and looks like the trailer will add about £100 to the cost, so still cheaper than hiring a van with crew cab (but still looking to see if there are any good deals out there for that possibility).

rpd_steve

but surely for the extra £100 you would be better off spending it on a 4 bike car rack and then you will have it in future and its cost you no more overall?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B001P8243W/r ... B001P8243W

briantrumpet

RPD Steve wrote:

but surely for the extra £100 you would be better off spending it on a 4 bike car rack and then you will have it in future and its cost you no more overall?

Thanks, but I don't think I want to hang four carbon road bikes by their top tubes for a 1600-mile journey - we're talking something like £8,000-£10,000 of bikes, so spending a bit extra on doing it well is worth it. Anyway, at the moment it looks like we might be taking a fifth person & bike, so the trailer option still looks the most practical as it stands.