A bit of a rethink of trailer uses

A new way of thinking about the trailer, not chiefly for a bike. It's all below.

Target Consumers

Meet: Charlie & Lisa

Age: 32, 31

Physical Therapist, Photographer

Married w/ one on the way

Dog owners

Hobbyist gardeners

Urban apartment dwellers

Charlie bicycle commutes

Lisa loves walking

Charlie is a happy man. He’s married to his college sweetheart Lisa and they’re soon expecting their first child. He enjoys his job as a physical therapist and is experimenting integrating their dog, Lola, into therapy. His life is a busy one filled with baby proofing, dog food, gardening supplies and groceries.

Charlie only lives a few miles from his job, grocery stores and local shops and would love to bicycle commute more often, but always finds that his old messenger bag doesn’t comfortably hold much more than his change of clothes and laptop. There always seems to be something extra he needs to bring to work with him or something to pick up on the way home, and while he would love to ditch the car and the parking meters more often, Charlie ends up using it more often than he would like.

Lisa never caught the bike commuting bug that Charlie caught, but loves to walk the 7 blocks to the grocery and shops close to their apartment. She can never pick up to many items on her trips though because she has to then carry them home and it can be a strain.

Charlie Needs: A viable alternative to his car for in town errands and commuting.

Lisa Needs: An easy way to carry items to and from local shops.

Project Brief

For my integrative project I am designing and building an urban trailer for the urban commuter. My aims for the design is a product that is stable and maneuverable, both fully loaded and empty, light weight, and versatile in use. Pivotal to the success of an urban use trailer is its versatility; both in the size and weight of cargo being carried and in the way the trailer can be utilized. My trailer is designed to be used both as a bicycle trailer, hitched and pulled behind the bicycle, and as a push cart for use when walking. I see the trailer not as two separate uses, bicycle pulling and walking pushing, but as a trailer that is adept at both situations and could be used in either form as its primary state of use.

Initial work on the trailer was primarily shaping how to carry cargo most adeptly in a bicycle trailer situation as the initial scope of the design was bike trailer first, walking cart second. A series of fits and starts struggling to overcome and move my project beyond established designs in the bike trailer market ensued and ate a considerable amount of time. Distracted by the Burley Travoy bicycle trailer, I was ignoring a potential use of my trailer, the walking side. Personal shopping carts are quite popular in Europe and large American cities, but few take advantage of bicycles. This is where I decided I wanted my trailer to reside, straddling the bicycle trailer and walking cart worlds, with out gaining usability in one area to the serious detriment to the other.

After 4 months of ideation and models on the trailer I have a clear problem statement and am quickly moving forward. The trailer is a frame and bag integrated together with two internal compartments for organizing cargo safely. In its bicycle state, the two main wheels rest on the ground and an arm folds up to attach to the bicycle seatpost. When used as a walking cart, the attachment arm folds down and it can be used either as a pull cart or with a castored third wheel folded down, as stable pushcart.