Originally Posted by
bobbycorno
In my experience, quite the opposite. For example, on my old commuter/tourer, carrying a commuting load in front mounted panniers made the handling solid as a rock. Putting the same load (in the same bags, even) on a rear rack made it shimmy like a hula dancer. In 30+ years of riding, I have yet to ride a bike that handled better with a rear load than with a front load. (Many have handled better with NO load, but that's a different story.)
I've only ever tried front panniers on my old Trek 520, and I found there that the bike was definitely more 'solid' then when I had rear panniers on, but I never encountered shimmying Twith either front or rear by themselves.
The main thing that I disliked about front panniers was a tendency to make the fork shift, and thus throw off the balance of the bike if I was rummaging around while stopped. That became less of a concern after added a kickstand to the bike.