Tag Archives: tandem bicycle

Carrying Heavy Loads, Sans Car

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If you sell your car, you’ll need to devise a method to carry heavy loads. Even minor loads can become troublesome when you’re not prepared. If you eat at home frequently, expect to carry at least 50lbs. of groceries each week. If you have children, you’ll need to shuttle your little ones to school, to church, and to sports practice. And when you buy furniture or appliances, you’ll need to transport them into your house. So how, exactly, do you haul a refrigerator into the kitchen if you don’t own a car?

I’ve been living without a car for about two years now. During that time, I’ve experimented with dozens of unconventional methods for carrying heavy loads over long distances. I hope this article inspires you to customize these set-ups to fit your own needs. Trust me: with a ingenuity and elbow-grease, you can move practically anything sans car (1).

Here’s a list of my favorite tactics:

Stop Shopping

Buying too much stuff clutters your house, wastes your money, and hurts the environment. I have stopped shopping altogether for half a year now (except for food, of course).

Order it online

Many brick-and-mortar shops now offer online ordering and home-delivery. Take advantage of it! Walmart, Home Depot, Target, Sears, Macy’s, Kohl’s, Dell, and Apple now deliver directly to your home. Sam’s Club and Costco seem to only deliver to business districts, but perhaps you can negotiate with the local store manager. Here’s a massive compilation of online grocery chains that offer home delivery. You should consider Safeway, AmazonFresh, FreshDirect, and Peapod. Most chains only offer delivery in limited locations, so ask around. Sometimes, as with the case of Albertsons, home-delivery is offered only in select areas so it’s not widely advertised.

You can definitely get home-delivered organic food. There are large organic chains like Diamond Organics as well as small-scale, local farms. Local Harvest, Eat Wild, and the Eat Well Guide are have enormous listings of local farms that deliver. I used to be part of a CSA program that offered home delivery. Currently, I’m getting free-range chicken eggs delivered to my apartment from a farm in Miaoli.

Home delivery can be expensive (expect a 50-100% markup). However, it can save you a lot of time, which you can use for relaxation or for work (to earn more money). At one point, I even hired a personal assistant to shop for me (via Care.com). It was cheaper to hire a personal grocery shopper at $15/hr than it was to pay for insurance and gas. In the process, I freed up a lot of time.

Rent a car

Don’t own a car just to move large furniture; renting is much cheaper. You can even use frequent flyer miles or credit cards rewards points to pay for rentals.

For about a year, I was a member of ZipCar. I used it every other week for grocery shopping. It cost about $30 for 3 hours, which was enough time to round up all the groceries I needed for two weeks. I didn’t have to take out a car loan, nor did I have to pay for gas, insurance, or campus parking. I later experimented with renting a car for church on Sundays. This tactic is extremely convenient if you have kids.

Recently, I discovered I overpaid for car rentals. Experienced travelers can get full-day rentals for less than $30. With rewards points, you can rent a car for less than $15 per day.

Transform your bicycle into a workhorse

I upgraded my tandem and my road bike so each one can easily handle over 75lbs. of groceries. My favorite method is to attach a grocery basket
to the handlebars, then mount a rack
on the rear frame and attach baskets to the side. Here’s a photo of my set-up for the tandem bike.

(Left) Set up of our own tandem bike. (Right) Tandem bike with a trailer.

Most of my groceries fit in the front and side baskets, but when I need extra capacity, I can tie boxes onto the bike rack using a bungee cord. Even when fully loaded, the bikes still give a comfortable ride. Bike shops are extremely helpful for installing these custom parts.

If you do a lot of shopping, you can invest in a grocery trailer. Trailers attach to the bike frame and let you haul over 200lbs. on a single trip. You might even be able to haul a refrigerator with just a single bicycle.

Carrying children is trickier. If you have an infant, you can carry him with a child seat attached to your bike frame. When he grows older, he can ride with you in tandem with a special bike trailer attachment. The tandem bolts onto your existing bike seat. The kids won’t be able to steer, but they’ll still get some exercise.

If you have a big family, you’ll definitely want to invest in a child’s trailer. The bonus of having a child’s trailer is that you can use it as a grocery cart when you go shopping.

Hsinya and I don’t have any kids (yet), so we’ve never tested this out ourselves. However, we have experimented with tandem bikes. I recommend either a collapsible tandem or a detachable trailer. Don’t buy a full-sized tandem: they’re too bulky to pack up into a van or a bus.

(Left) Bike trailer. (Right) Bike with a child seat.

Get a Hand Truck

It’s better than borrowing a grocery cart. Find one that can carry over 200lbs., but can collapse to the size of a textbook. Hand trucks/folding shopping carts can be combined with public transit to shorten walking distance. However, hand trucks can be difficult to use if sidewalks are in disrepair (or non-existent, like in Taiwan). In these cases, I just use my backpack and travel bags.

(Left) A hand truck. (Right) A folding shopping cart.

The particular solution doesn’t matter; just make sure you find one that works for you. It has to be cost-effective, simple, and convenient. If it’s not a solution you can live with on a weekly basis, you’ll find yourself wanting to own a car all over again.

Keep in mind that hauling heavy loads will always be a slight challenge without a car. Getting the perfect solution takes experimenting, so don’t give up quickly. Remind yourself of the millions of dollars you’re saving, as well as all the energy you’re conserving. You’re helping the environment and getting a good workout along the way.

With a little ingenuity and determination, you’d be surprised with what you can come up with.

  1. Michael Bluejay uses his bicycle to move to his new place. This article made me laugh.
  2. Photo attributions in order of photo appearance: Robert S. Donovan, CC BY; our own photo; tandemracer, CC BY; Howard N2GOT, CC BY;Mark Stosberg, CC BY-NC-SA; Hand Truck Sentry System, CC BY; ABMJG, CC BY-NC-ND; Foxtongue, CC BY.

Save Time By Walking

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Get a workout while traveling!

I haven’t owned a car for about 15 months.  During that time, Hsinya and I relied heavily on bicycling for basic errands like grocery shopping and sending packages to the post office.  We occasionally rented a car, but we’ve recently been working on completely leaving the automobile altogether.  When we go to church, we ride a tandem bicycle.  When we visit family, we take the train.  Concerned family and friends often offer us sympathy and rides because they think we’re working very hard and wasting a lot of time.  I surprise them by explaining that going green actually saves me time.

Driving a car can sometimes be slower than human-powered travel.  For short distances, cars might be slower than cycling or walking because cars can’t drive as directly.  They encounter traffic signals, they require paved roads and parking spaces, and they sometimes have traffic or speed laws that slow them down to the same speed as cyclists or pedestrians.  With some practice, you can achieve speeds of 15-25mph on your bicycle if your city provides dedicated bike lanes.  I’ve considered taking up running so I can travel on even more direct paths than bicycling.

For longer distances, human-powered travel is comparatively slower, but still worth it.  There is a definite correlation between automobile use and obesity.  Obesity used to be relatively rare in the pre-industrial world, but it now affects about 1 in 3 people in the US. (1)  With obesity comes increased rates of heart attack, cancer, and diabetes.  The cure is simple: exercise.  Unfortunately, most Americans conclude they can’t find the time to squeeze in the extra minutes for a good work-out.  Whether you walk, roller blade, skateboard, or bicycle, you’re getting a good hour-long workout as you journey to your destination.  If you skip the gym tonight, you’ll find the time-savings usually make up for the longer commute.

Let’s rethink transportation.  Instead of spending thousands of dollars on cars and medical bills, we need to realize that transportation and exercise are not two separate concepts.  Instead of commuting to work in high-stress traffic, and then skipping the gym, maybe we could benefit by turning our commute into an exercise regimen.  Commuting by human-power is incredibly cost-effective and time-efficient when you think about it.  So next time, save some time by walking.

Have you ever considered commuting by public transit or human power?  What are some of the biggest obstacles you may encounter?

  1. Wikipedia shows that almost 75% of the population of the US is overweight or obese, and about 30% is obese. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States

Save Two Million Dollars Going Car-Free

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Hsinya and I save $3,000 each year by riding a tandem bicycle together.

Why should you give up your car?  You’ve cherished the freedom of mobility since the day you first got a car.  Reasonably enough, you get agitated and emotional when people ask you to hand over the car keys.  Most of us would like to help the environment, but giving up our cars just seems too much.  Or is it?

I don’t always hate cars, but I think car ownership is really unnecessary for most people.  There are often greener and more simple solutions for getting from A to B.  There are plenty of good reasons to ditch your car, but I really want to focus on the financial issue today because it’s seldom explored.

Cars are extremely expensive.  When I decided to go green last year, my motivations were not completely altruistic.  My wife and I were both college students, so we didn’t have a lot of cash.  Bicycle commuting was a much cheaper alternative to driving.  Instead of spending $6000 for a used car, I spent $150 to equip my bicycle with grocery baskets so I could use it for shopping.  We also purchased a tandem bicycle for $250 that my wife and I now use for bicycling to church (the round-trip distance is about 10 miles).  By saving on car expenses, we could devote extra hours towards starting our business instead of working outside to make car payments.

The average American household spends around $10,000 per year on car ownership (this includes auto insurance, gasoline, and maintenance).  That’s quite a large sum of money to pay for the privilege of sitting in traffic jams.  Car-free living can be quite profitable if you stash the savings away each year.  A little math reveals some startling conclusions:

Estimated Savings (assuming $10,000/year car ownership expenses saved, at 7% return on investment compounded annually)

  • Car-free for 1 year: $ 10,700.
  • Car-free for 5 years: $61,532.
  • Car-free for 10 years: $147,835.
  • Car-free for life: $2.1 million dollars. (1)

What would you do with an extra two million dollars?  You could pay off debt, or save for your retirement, or work less.  If possible, I encourage you to donate it to a charity (2).  Try the math yourself and see how much you can save (3).  After playing with the numbers, you’ll quickly realize that every time you authorize an insurance payment or fuel up at the gas station, you’re burning a hole through your wallet.  Take the time today to ask yourself the two-million dollar question: “Could I get by without a car?”  Wean yourself off the car addiction today and your wallet will thank you tomorrow.

On the next post, I’m going to talk about the environmental impact of cars and hint at some practical solutions for living a car-free lifestyle.  Stay tuned.

Have you consider going without a car? What do you think would be the hardest part living without a car?

  1. I assume that if you go car-free for life, you will go car-free for about 40 years (I assume you are about 25-years old and continue saving until you are 65).  Calculations courtesy of MoneyChimp: http://www.moneychimp.com/calculator/compound_interest_calculator.htm .
  2. I encourage Christians to consider going car-free as a way to help support their church and church-related charities.
  3. Calculator courtesy of MoneyChimp: Vary the numbers up with your own situation: http://www.moneychimp.com/calculator/compound_interest_calculator.htm . I used the following values: current principal is $0, annual addition is $10,000, years to grow is 40, the interest rate is 7%, and the amount is compounded 1 time annually.