I have just been out bicycling with a BOB YAK Trailer attached to the rear of the bike and have been putting it through it’s paces.
View of the loaded BOB Yak trailer.
The trailer itself is made very strong to carry loads up to 40kg. I even think that it could carry more weight but then you have to be careful of your bike’s front wheel lifting up.
When the trailer is empty it bounces around like most trailers do, but it still tracks along right behind the bike and you only really hear it, because it does not pull on the bike.
When the trailer was loaded to a little under the recommended weight I could feel that the trailer was there when traveling at a very low speed. When traveling faster it seems to track better and pull easier. Riding up hill was no problem at all. That’s what gears are for.
Traveling through soft sand when empty was no problems, as you could probably guess, but when the trailer was loaded it was like climbing a hill and the steering would drift due to the soft sand. I found it was still controllable as long as I kept up a good speed.
If riding in really rugged country you might want to have a look at the B.O.B IBEX, which is the trailer with the spring on top of the trailer wheel, which one day I would like to road test as well. Maybe someone out there could road test it for me.
A few little things I found, is that by placing weight to the rear of the trailer and keeping the weight low it tracks better. Sometimes when I was riding I had to look in my mirrors to see if the trailer was still there.
View of the BOB Yak trailer attachment points.
The parts of the trailer that I liked was how it hooked up to the rear wheel’s axle instead of being attached to one side of the bike or the seat post like most trailers do.
You also get a cool water proof (Dry Sack type) bag to keep all your equipment dry and everything is in the box on delivery to get you on your way including a spare locking pin for the attachment system.
It also comes with a skewer to replace your current one to allow the trailer to mount to the rear axle, so all that is needed is to remove the current one, and replace it with the one supplied. You can purchase separate skewers for the rear axle, so that you can use the trailer on several bikes, without having to swap the skewer over. I gave this trailer an 8 out of 10.
Side View of BOB YAK Trailer
Close up view of BOB Yak attachment point.
