5 Gallon Panniers

Man, I love these things.

I'm carrying 22 lbs. of fresh fruit from Haymarket, in this picture.

I carried that amount of produce in shopping bags, tied and hung pannier style around my neck, once. Use panniers.

Step 1: Prime the Jugs

Cut the tops off of two five gallon jugs, with anything sharp. A Bandsaw is the fastest, but a knife or a hacksaw work too.

Step 2: Lash It to Your Bike

I made a whole bunch of figure eights though the jug handles. When they're full of stuff, they hang down and stay there.

And that's it!

Comments

[spark master]

all of the plastic box paniers are nice! I took a heavy cardbord box and slapped on in my rack (not so great but fine for library trips)

these (and all of the kitty litter/bucket type) look great

here are two improvements

1) add panels of foam insulation on all sides to make one side a cooler, you could get very fancy here.

2) add LED lights if the black plastic is too dark to see contents, or, like your car boot, easy to see at night


I have put this comment on all the ones I could find. For round containers use bubble insulation you make a floor and walls and even a flip top with the double layer aluminum foiled bubble wrap insulation sold at hardware stores and a roll of duck tape.

that will give you a nice refrigerated area , just add freezer packs , the clear containers with aluminized wrap will yield reflective cool keeping and insulative cool keeping. So getting frozen food home in august , for short trips at least is doable
ciao

[bobbyk881]

Cool Instructable!! But wouldn't the waight in the back make you flip backwords? If I were you I would put some waight in the front.

[Tim Temple]

I once carried two bags of concrete on the back rack once.  It worked, but the bike was a little unstable.  I had to hold the handle bars with straight arms.

[xsmurf]

I went cyclo-camping a few times and can tell you, one can easily lug around 60lbs of stuff on the back of the bike with nothing in the front. (see attached image) Just make sure to keep your weight low and in front enough if you go up a steep hill. I also went (lite) trailing with the bike loaded as shown. (Note how I run on 700c, not 26ers!)

[sleeping_gecko]

In some cases (such as snowy/icy roads, or if you are doing some serious trailriding or trying some tricks), it could be a problem, but when you're just commuting, it's not an issue. Bicycles are often equipped with a rear rack and no front rack for this reason.

[dla888]

We get 5 gallon buckets of corn oil of the sled dogs. We go a whole pile of 'em.

[ventolin]

The weight won't unweight the front of the bike as long as most of it is over or in front of the rear axle. Get too much weight behind the rear axle, however, and watch out - it can and will affect handling. I noticed that your pink rack on the front of the bike has a pretty steep angle on it - why don't you bend the mounting hardware that attaches to the upper part of the fork in order to level the rack? It'll help to retain cargo that you mount on the front.

[rediculosis]

I like how you use an old tire tube to tie it haha.

[sideways]

Good job. I saw something similar once; it was two plastic trash cans attached to a rack with plastic zip ties.

[incorrigible packrat]

A rectangular 5 gallon jug, of the type that previously contained hydroponic fertilizer, would be really good to use. I had about 50 of them mysteriously show up in the recycling at my dump one time. MIlk crates are nice too, if a little wide.

[GorillazMiko]

Wow, very cool Instructable! Yeah, I was wondering same as bobbyk881, won't the bike flip over with too much weight on one side?