Children's Bike Trailers

hmhamilton said:

Hello,

My husband and I ride mountain bikes for fitness and we just had a baby in June. We are looking for a bike trailer so we can take our little guy with us on rides. We ride mostly on bike paths and groomed trails. I don't even know what to look for or where to start. Any advice would be helpful!

Thanks!

Anything you get at a bike store will be safe and reliable - may not be the case with something you get from anywhere else.

Beyond that you want something that's easy to connect to your bike, and something that's easy to get your kid in and out of including the harness. There are a lot of different ways to do each so just try them out. I started with a trailer as soon as my daughter could hold her head up with a helmet on. I never crashed but I did clip a curb once and the trailer tipped sideways - she was scared and cried but she wasn't hurt. She always liked going places in the trailer because she could take her stuffed animals and sand toys and just play back there.

Hey! This was my 2000th post!

Today, 05:48 PM #2
DiabloScott
Registered User

Join Date: May 2003
Location: Concord, California
Posts: 2,000

I second what Diablo told you. I own and am extremely happy with the Burley Solo, which holds one child very comfortably and (IMHO) very safely. We mainly ride on bike trails, but have done a fair bit of road riding in traffic (and I mean Rome traffic!).
I would strongly recommend you consider a quality product like the Burley - it is well made, well thought out, and quite robust. Along with its ability to fold down, it makes a lot sense.

It is going strong on daughter #2 and we love it. I am also convinced I will be able to ebay when the time comes and recoup a good amount of the initial investment.

Disclaimer: I have no relationship to Burley, and had to go out of my way to buy the dog gone thing (I am an Italian and Burley no longer has a distributor here, so I had to order it off a German ebay store!).

Check it out here!

Thanks to both of you for the advice, I will definitely check out the Burley Solo!

hmhamilton said:

Hello,

My husband and I ride mountain bikes for fitness and we just had a baby in June. We are looking for a bike trailer so we can take our little guy with us on rides. We ride mostly on bike paths and groomed trails. I don't even know what to look for or where to start. Any advice would be helpful!

Thanks!

Take a look at the Chariot ones as well. We have a Yakima that is quite nice, but unfortunately Yakima has discontinued making trailers. Overall a great way for the kids to go along for a ride

Features to look for include, good over the shoulder harness, roll cage over the top, wide base to decrease risk of tipping.

A trailer is WAY better than using a bicycle mounted babyseat. You probably should wait until your baby is around 12 months of age or so, as by that time the baby's neck will be strong enough to support the weight of the helmet.

See this link to the American Academy of Pediatrics website for some tips on children as passengers on adult bikes.

http://www.aap.org/family/tippadultbike.htm

My parents used to put my younger brother in one of them burleys when he was a little kid. It seemed to have great functionality and it was alot heavier and bulkier than new burleys, like the Solo or d'lite models.

Great product!

hmhamilton said:

Hello,

My husband and I ride mountain bikes for fitness and we just had a baby in June. We are looking for a bike trailer so we can take our little guy with us on rides. We ride mostly on bike paths and groomed trails. I don't even know what to look for or where to start. Any advice would be helpful!

Thanks!

There's Burley d'Lite and there's not exactly.

Key features include a chainstay hitch that locks securely to the apex of the chainstay and seatstay. Real bicycle wheels. It flares out over the wheels so the kids get a few more inches of elbow room. It has a big trunk for "stuff" and, the smaller the kid, the more stuff they need. It's fold up feature takes maybe 1 minute even if you don't know what you are doing. In the past Burley has sold all of the fabric parts aftermarket so they're easily refurbished.

The economics are great! When I was selling them they cost around $400.00 new. So if you use it for only 1 kid you can get about 4 years use out of it or $100.00 per year. After you use it for 4 years, a $200.00 resale price is very reasonable - the demand for used Burley trailers far exceeds the supply. So now you're down to $50.00 per year and everytime that you use it you're not paying a babysitter.

Burley suggests not using a trailer until the child is able to hold their head up while wearing a helmet. That's about 1 year old. I know several people however, including my daughter, who strapped baby car seats into a Burley and used it on gentle rides with very young infants.

John M said:

Take a look at the Chariot ones as well.

Good idea. The Chariots are, apparently, excellent trailers, but were next to impossible for me to find in Europe. I assume things would be a lot simpler in the US...