Originally Posted by tandempower

My concern with hauling heavy loads has become the wheel rims and spokes. I used to bike-camp a lot on a tandem when my son was younger, but I noticed as he grew, the wheels began wobbling and spokes would break. It got to the point where I felt uncomfortable that we would get stuck somewhere far from home and would have to depend on who-knows-who to bring replacement parts, and at what price? I started looking into heavier-duty wheels but tandem parts can get very pricey very fast. It makes me wonder how fast I'd be going through wheels if I had a really heavy-duty trailer like this set up.

On the one hand, I think it's awesome that it's possible to pull such huge loads by human power alone, but on the other it irritates me that bicycle parts can turn out to be so weak when you really push them to the limits of human power.