Originally Posted by
Veloria
I have read more about this issue at this point than I care to for a long time! Well, no, I exaggerate. But it's just that opinions on this tend to be highly partisan, with Bicycle Quarterly doing the majority of "low trail" promotion.
It is interesting to me, that most people I know in the real world who have ridden low trail bicycles, report disliking the handling - often, intensely so. This is a sharp contrast to how much this feature is praised in BQ.
The lowest trail bike I own has 54.5mm trail, which is really neutral. It handles splendidly loaded and unloaded, as does my Rivendell with (I think) 56mm trail. The Rivendell I have ridden with close to 20lb on the front, and it acted indifferent to the weight. But I am curious to try lower and compare.
It's not so much loaded vs. unloaded but where the load is located - low trail, at least per Jan Heine, works particularly well with a front load. It also works better at low speeds, and in situations calling for the kind of maneuverability it requires to do things like skirt potholes in urban streets. With low trail, steering occurs more with the bars: with higher trail, steering occurs more via weight transfer and bike lean, which is why higher trail tends to come into its own as speeds increase. There was a period in bike design in pre-WWII Great Britain where bikes were built with zero trail - the thought being (erroneously) that any trail at all would make handling "sluggish."