Bicycles are awesome. They let you commute from place to place without burning fuel, making noise, or taking up a good chunk of road. Problem is, they’re also designed to transport just one person, making the bike a less-than-viable option when bringing a good chunk of cargo along. Fortunately, that can change with something like the T-RAK.
Billed as a “bike cargo system,” it mounts to the seat post of your bike, putting a rack in the rear that serves as the base storage platform. From there, you just connect any of the various attachments to turn it into the storage unit you need to hold whatever cargo you’re transporting.
The T-RAK consists of a rack with foldable side skirting that you can collapse and secure on top when not in use. When unfolded, the side skirting allows you to hang bags and pouches on a post on the rack without any risk of having them touch the rear wheel while you’re riding. This makes it easy to transport groceries and other items inside shopping bags, while also giving you a place to hang your backpack during the morning commute to save your back from all that sweat. Oh yeah, the rack comes with four canvas tote bags that you can use as reusable shopping bags.
A bungee net can be placed on the rack, allowing you to secure items inside the netting (just make sure all items are bigger than the holes of the net), while a utility box can also be attached for holding even larger cargo. The box is especially useful for holding packages on the rack – just tie some straps (or rope) on the grips if you want to secure packages even further. Both the net and the box can be placed on the rack at the same time, by the way, in case you want to use the net to make sure smaller cargo don’t jump out of the box when riding through bumps and potholes.
The T-RAK also comes with a soft cooler that’s designed to fit snug inside the box, making it perfect for quick beer runs to keep a party going. If you’re not quite attached to your current messenger bag, they also offer a saddle bag that’s designed to mount on the rack during riding, while serving as a functional messenger bag once you get to your destination. And, yes, you can keep the saddle bag on the rack while still hanging tote bags on the rack post while also keeping the box on top, so you can fill your humble bicycle with a good load of cargo options without having to tow an inconvenient trailer on the back.
No word on how much weight this thing will handle. Given that it’s mounted to the seat post and bolted to the bike frame using two support tubes on the bottom, we guess it should carry a decent amount. According to the outfit, the polycarbonate rack is fitted with an aluminum spine, too, which should allow it to handle more weight than its looks would suggest.
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for the T-RAK. You can reserve a unit for pledges starting at $75.