[WARNING: This is a long post, and a review of a product you may not be
interested in.]
March 24, 2006 was a dark day for me. When I came out of work to
unlock my Burley D'Lite cargo trailer from the gas pipe where I'd left it
"secured," nothing was there but the cheap Master padlock I'd foolishly
trusted it to, effortlessly snipped with bolt cutters. The police didn't
even come out; they just took a report over the phone. The only hope they
offered for ever recovering my trailer, despite its uniqueness, was the
fact that I'd engraved my driver license number, UT56..., into the frame.
{I will still gladly pay a reward to anyone who finds my trailer, and I'll
pay more if they provide information that leads to the arrest of the
thief.}
It wasn't long before I had to admit to myself that I wasn't likely to
see the D'Lite again anytime soon. It wasn't much longer before I
determined that I wasn't going to let some petty thief decide how I'm
going to live. I rode across town to REI to buy a new Burley.
To my amazement, I found that REI does not stock cargo trailers.
What's with that, the largest recreational equipment retailer on the
planet and its best trailer maker can't get together to stock such a
unique, useful item? REI did have kid haulers, though, and one of those
was a Burley. I went to the customer service desk and asked if I could
special order Burley's latest model cargo trailer, the Nomad. They were
happy to take my order, provided that I paid for the item up-front, AND
paid for shipping, AND paid sales tax, AND didn't mind waiting six weeks
for the trailer to arrive. I'd seen equal/better prices on the Web. I
decided to go ahead with the REI purchase mostly out of loyalty.
It took six weeks for my trailer to get to REI. I asked them why so
long, and they said there's a high demand for Nomads these days. With
gasoline above three bucks a gallon, I could have predicted that. I
wonder why Burley didn't?
When the Nomad finally arrived I rode eagerly over to pick it up. I
had to wait while their techs assembled the trailer, as the box insists
they must. They did it wrong! They switched the right and left sides.
Maybe they'd never assembled a Nomad before, maybe they were in a hurry,
maybe the instructions need to be clearer--or maybe all three. (Unwilling
to wait my turn again with the REI techs, I took the trailer home as-was
and switched the sides to the right positions myself, but thanks to REI
there are holes in the fabric where I had to remove the now-front-facing
rear reflectors.)
When the REI folks wheeled the misassembled Nomad out of the shop, I
nearly cried. Not only was it assembled wrong, but Burley had shipped it
without a top! It took about ten minutes to convince the employee at the
service desk that it should have one. Fortunately there was a computer
handy, and at length I persuaded her to look on http://www.burley.com,
where there was a picture of a properly assembled, complete Nomad. She
called Burley and asked for the missing top, but Burley refused to ship
the part to me, so REI had to receive it and then put it right back in the
mail to me, which delayed my having a complete trailer by another ten
days. That's a quality control failure, followed by a needless delay, and
it adds up to mediocre customer service from Burley.
But now I finally have my Nomad, and I'm out trailering again. I'm not
100% happy with it, though. It's an excellent trailer, to be sure--Burley
trailers are the best on the market. But why be excellent when you can be
stupendous, as Burley well could and should?
The Nomad is my third bicycle trailer. Sixteen years ago I bought an
Equinox kid hauler. When my kids got too big for it, I sold it. After a
while I began to miss the ability to haul cargo, so I bought the Burley
D'Lite, which I immediately saw was designed and built better than the
Equinox. The Nomad represents a few improvements over the D'Lite.
They've improved the hitch. There's a bit more very welcome reflective
material, and adding a loop for a "blinkie" taillight was a very good
idea.
But there are things I like less than the D'Lite too. For starters,
the color: I know that black is inexplicably popular right now, but did
they have to play monkey-see-monkey-do with visibility? Red and yellow
are bright, eyecatching, safe colors. Black is anything but. A red and
yellow trailer is cheerful-looking; with a black and yellow one I look
like I'm being chased by a giant bumblebee. Black absorbs heat, too--not
good when you're hauling groceries.
I liked the aluminum rail that went all around the D'Lite. It was like
having a bumper to ward off the odd unnoticed road obstacle. It made the
trailer easy to pick up and carry into my cramped garage. Best of all,
the rail provided a good place for a lock. My D'Lite was stolen because
of an inadequate lock[1], not because of the lack of a place to attach it.
It took some hard looking to find a cable thick enough to lock the Nomad
up securely and still slim enough to fit through the tiny spaces between
frame and fabric.
The D'Lite had folding sides; the Nomad's are removable. I don't think
that's much of an improvement: they make incorrect assembly and part loss
a possibility, and make it harder to secure the trailer. The Nomad comes
with pockets, which I suppose some users will find useful, and the center
divider may be a good thing--but why anchor it in place with Velcro? That
stuff wears out fast. Why couldn't they have used snaps or buckles? And
the top is held on by rubber rings!?! I think I know which will be the
first parts of the trailer to fail!
One more thing while I'm griping. I logged onto Burley's web page
several times while I had the D'Lite trying to figure out why I couldn't
mount the flag on it. I finally saw a picture of a D'Lite for sale on
eBay and realized that I was missing a mounting bracket, but repeated
e-mails to Burley asking about the availability of a replacement part went
unanswered. Why have a Web page and a "Contact Us" link if you're not
going to respond to your e-mail?
So it has to be a mixed review. I'm thrilled to have a trailer again,
and wouldn't settle for anything but a Burley. As much as I like the
Nomad, though, there are things that would have made me like it better.
Why be merely excellent when you can be utterly stupendous?
Bill in Utah
__o | When gas hit $3 a gallon,
[ ]___`\(,_ | People stopped asking why,
(_) (_)/ (_) | And asked, "Where can I get one?"
[1] I mentioned the failure of my Master padlock to a trucker friend, and
he told me that most Master locks, their "bullet-proof" reputation
notwithstanding, will succumb not only to bolt cutters, but to a smart
hammer blow on the opening side of the shackle.