Originally Posted by
RomansFiveEight
To have enough 'stuff' to get them through a long ride. Especially if it's a tour that ends up taking several days or weeks with overnight stops!
You will find that folks here have a pretty wide range of what they want to carry, but "Several days or weeks with overnight stops!" does not make much difference in how much I find I need to carry. I have gone coast to coast camping and cooking with a little more than half of the weight quoted in this thread for the
empty trailer (is it really 22 pounds? I thought the BoB was 13 pounds or so).
I can see where a trailer might work well for some folks in some situations. A few of those are:
- Someone who wants to take a race bike and insists on carrying a medium heavy to heavy load.
- Someone who is going into an area with no food or water restock available for longer periods.
- Someone riding off road (MTB) and wants to be able to quickly detach the trailer to go off single tracking on technical trails unladen.
- Someone doing some kind of very unusual tour that required some special and unusual gear, like the guy who carried his gear to climb Everest, or the one who carried a WW kayak and paddling gear and went from WW river to WW river.
- Someone who takes a large dog on tour.
- Someone who wants to haul heavy stuff around home rather than use a car.
Just my opinion, but for me none of the first five apply very well for most touring, regardless of tour length, and are kind of special cases that I'd usually be inclined to avoid.
The 6th one doesn't really have much to do with touring.