Originally Posted by
bragi
It's fine for riding straight or when seated, but if you're leaning hard into turns or up out of your seat on a steep hill with lots of car traffic, it gets a bit unnerving when the back of the bike starts to fishtail heavily.
IME, there's no fishtailing going on. If the weight is only in the rear, and you exceed the bike's design spec weight, the front becomes *very* easy to move. Even a tiny weight shift causes oversteer in the front. The rear *feels* like it's moving a lot when I ride... just if I walk the bike, the rear ignores most steering input, and the front responds to everything. The easy way to walk a bike when it's rear heavy is to almost not steer with the handlebars, and provide most of the steering input via the saddle.
If I can weight the front, the steering calms down. This is easier said than done when you're female :-/. A front rack or front basket should help me a lot. It doesn't need to have a ton of capacity to mitigate the effects of a 40-50lb rear load.