No tools needed anymore.

Nice. Since I have three touring bikes, if I do a tour on a bike different from the last tour, I am having to re-adjust heel clearance all over again in back. And I have a different front rack for each of those bikes, so that means adjusting the front too.

That said, the time spent is so minimal that it is not worth the cost to replace my existing hardware.

I think most people that do bike touring do two or three tours, and then do something else. Most of those people are working age, have limited vacations, and if they start a family then the family is less likely to do bike touring as a group. There have been a handful of families that have done lengthy bike touring that have posted on this forum, but they are a small minority.

I live in a smaller city with a large university campus. I see many more Ortliebs being used by students and commuters than I see on the bike trails that pass through my community by those that are touring. I really think that the commuter market is the primary Ortlieb purchaser, not bike touring folks. At least that is what it looks like in my community.

My first tour was with a pair of Backrollers and a pair of cheap Nashbar panniers. The Nashbar ones were only used once. I also have some Axiom nylon panniers that were used for one tour. For someone doing their first tour, some cheap ones might be the sensible option as most people like that only do a few tours. The pair of Axiom that I have, I bought those at a garage sale. I had some others that I do not even remember the brand, donated those to a bike charity years ago.

Quite possible but still a set of Ortliebs can be toured or commuted with for a long time or if I decide for whatever reason touring or cycling in general is not for me I can resell them easily and recoup decent money. Certainly I sell most of my Ortlieb stuff towards commuters but I don't run a bike touring specific shop as I know our market and it would take a lot to keep it going if it were primarily focused on that though one day maybe down the road if I moved I might like to open more of my dream shop and sell purely what I want to sell and avoid some of the stuff I could care less about.

Depends on the commute of course, but for my needs I had to get a different type of pannier, which is also an Ortlieb.
Carrying computers, keyboards, papers and all that sort of stuff with the regular back roller is, while possible, a bit of a faff. For that I have the Office bag, which is wider and has plastic reinforcements to deal with the sharp corners of today's aluminum laptops.

My commuting setup is all of my work stuff in the office bag and my spare clothes, tools, other stuff in a back roller. So I guess the back rollers are still more than valid for commuting. Just not great for laptops.

And then I occasionally see people riding with one front roller. Mounted at the front lowrider. Those people are a menace, have no regard for societal order or well being of others, and frankly should be sent on an island somewhere.

I used to assume that I had to have the same weight in each Frontroller to make sure handling is good. Then did a group tour with a bit over a dozen other riders. Overslept one morning, many people had their tents down before I even woke up. I knew that was a short day, less than 40 miles (<60km), so I just shoved stuff into may panniers without trying to organize what I was doing since I was doing it as fast as I could.

Bike handled just fine that day with panniers not carefully packed for weight distribution.

At the end of that day, was curious about my loading. Used my luggage scale to weigh my panniers. Left front pannier, 14.5 pounds. Right front pannier, 8.9 pounds. Thus one front pannier was over 4.5 pounds (>2kg) heavier than the other.

I am sure some bikes could not handle that big a difference in front pannier weights, but in my case there was no impairment to handling. Used my Thorn Sherpa on that trip.

My gym bag is a single pannier I bought maybe a decade ago for cheap, it was a factory reject. Not Ortlieb. I often ride with that single pannier on back. Front rack can make it hard to stow my bike in some bike racks. Thus, when I am not touring I remove my front rack so the single pannier has to go on back.

As to Ortlieb selling more to students and commuters than bike tourers- would this perhaps be bc students and commuters are perhaps 50x more numerous than us?

Of course.

Frequently when food shopping I'll have a large lateral imbalance, due to volumetric-priority packing, not mass. The bike handles fine, and it's a 20" wheel folder. The key is that imbalance is not that much of a distance off bike center, so not a long moment arm, and a small mass in relation to my body mass, and, is in low panniers due to the small wheels (even without lowrider rack, I'm hanging the panniers off the rack top deck in front); That doesn't change the lateral moment arm, but does mean that my ultra-long handlepost and seatpost, have greater leverage against that mass. Same for the rear panniers, which are hung on a 700c rack, but on a lower tier, just high enough for plenty of curb clearance.

I’ve toured cross country and along both coasts and also lived car-free for decades, shopping and whatnot on bike. Ortlieb are the best I’ve had, the only things coming close being Ortlieb knock-offs.

This makes me wonder how Wayne, formerly of thetouringstore.com, is doing. Bought my Ortliebs from him. Great guy.

eggzactly, At one time I had three bikes and five racks to put bags on and it sure was easy to move bags around.

He was great to deal with, and you got candy with your order. Hope he is well.

It’s been 15 years since I bought from him. Had forgotten about the candy.

What I really liked is that he took the time to speak with me to help me adjust the bags to fit my racks.

Then a cinch strap came unstitched early on. (He told me Ortlieb had a short-lived quality control issue.). Thing was, I was leaving for a trip very soon. He shipped me a new bag without first getting the defective one back first.

I do remember talking with him on the phone. He took the time to help you. We need people like him again.

I was attempting to be hyperbolic in order to be funny. But my sentiment does have its roots in the one attempt I made with one front pannier. I rode maybe 10 meters and decided that it was too unstable to be safe.

Granted, it wasn't a light pannier.

I wonder how much of a stabilizing effect even a little bit of counter weight on the other side makes.

I was not sure if that was in jest or not.

I expect it is very specific to the bike, flex in the tubing, fork rake and trail, exactly where the pannier sits on the rack (fore or aft), how high the rack is on the fork, etc. A heavier spinning wheel has more gyroscopic effect once moving with speed, etc.

But after my experience of getting one side off by roughly the weight of two liters of water that did not impair handling on that bike at all, I quit trying to make sure both sides on the front matched in weight. Since I remove the front racks when my tour is done, the only time I have the rack on the bike is when I am using all four panniers. Thus, have never tried only putting a pannier on one side in the front.

I use a fairly heavy handlebar bag, that does impair handling at slow speed, but the convenience of having it outweighs the impairment in handling.

There are times when I'm really thankful for Orliebs

I love my Ortliebs, but I had some misfortune with my Ultimate 6 (6.5L) handlebar bag.
My bike fell over on an abandoned lot type of terrain and this was the result :



It wasn't carrying anything close to the rated maximum of 5kg, maybe half that.
The frame is all plastic and mostly hollow at that.
I repaired the bag with a lot of epoxy (to fill the hollowness), 1mm aluminum sheet and a lot of screws. Now stronger, but heavier.





It's a nice bag and is always on my bike, just don't let your bike fall over...

Doubt it'd do much to that end. Splitting the weight carried on one side so it's more even side to side would be better.

Center of gravity's more important, where the weight sits relative to where gravity affects how it stays upright. Put more weight higher up, once it begins to go south the harder it will be to control.