Extrawheel Bike Trailer Review

My wife, brother-in-law, and I recently used Extrawheel bike trailers on a 400-mile bike tour in Vermont. (We were following the beautiful Green Mountains Loop, mapped out by Adventure Cycling.)

Although I have not used another style of trailer myself, I can say that the Extrawheel system works great for road touring. We pulled our trailers up very steep and long hills, including Middlebury gap, which is a 12% grade. On descents, we routinely exceeded 30 mph, with few problems. (However, when my trailer was loaded in excess of 30 pounds, my trailer and bike did shimmy substantially if I rode much over 30 mph. With a lighter load, this was not a problem.)

Interesting, we each shed quite a lot of gear after we finished the camping portion of our trip, and the weight reduction of 10-15 pounds made no noticeable difference. With the full-sized wheel, this trailer can haul a substantial load fairly easily. You know that the trailer is there, to be sure, especially on long hills, but the trailer didn’t slow me down much.

The mesh saddlebags hold dry bags that come with the trailer. The dry bags work very well. We rode several hours in hard rain with no problems. Furthermore, it’s very easy to tuck rain gear or extra water bottles in the mesh bags for quick access. (It’s harder to accomplish this with other styles of trailer.)

The Extrawheel trailer was designed and manufactured in Poland. As best as I can tell, one entrepreneur imported a shipment to sell in the United States. We purchased our trailers from BicycleTrailerShop.com, from which we received great service.

Having pulled this trailer for about 650 miles, I can highly recommend it for road touring. It’s especially easy to connect and disconnect to your bike (using the provided rear skewer), it has a lightweight and simple design, it tracks wonderfully, and it has a tight turning radius. For a couple more pictures, see my Flickr photo set.