A Such trailer

For a number of reasons, for the last year we have been addicted to using the car for our weekly shop. In Reading the big-box Sainsbury's was out of town on a road that wasn't bike trailer friendly, the trailer was damaged in a minor accident in town, ... all "good" excuses to default to the comfort of the car, especially during the winter.

But enough, using the car for the 10k round trip to our new "local" supermarket was starting to make far less sense, and given traffic was also a rather painful experience. It was time to resurrect the trailer!

The trailer in question was originally a fairly crude "low-cost" kiddie trailer. The frame was bent in the accident, and the fabric was beginning to tear from having been used for load carrying it wasn't designed for. My plan was to strip it right down to the basic frame, straighten it and then mount a suitable box onto the frame that would be suitable for load carrying.

Stripping it was easy enough and, being steel, it straightened easily enough without cracking or any other loss of integrity. For the box, my research found that a "Euro standard" industrial packing crate was just about the size I was looking for (800x600), so I ordered one.

Assembling the lot was easy enough and I was quite chuffed that it all fitted together so well without modification - almost as though the parts were made for each other.

In practice it works really nicely, the low CofG making it very stable and the large crate proving easily able to swallow the weekly shop. To add to my sense of achievement, I hadn't got 50m from our flat when a lady stopped me to ask about the trailer. I think that perhaps I should build these to sell; I'm currently looking into sourcing the parts needed - but I do think that I can build something similar (and better) fairly inexpensively.

I also need to solve the problem of keeping the lid on (for this particular type of crate), as well as mount suitable lights, reflectors and mount a flag. Watch this space.