Monday, June 2, 2008

BAT Truck


I'm back on my BAT bike (Bicycle As Transportation) but this time I've got a BAT truck (trailer) to help me carry stuff. I'm calling it a BAT truck because it looks like a little stake bed truck and it's more fun to say than BAT trailer. We bought this trailer about 18 years ago from Toys R Us to use for hauling stuff around. It was cheap and it worked out great for groceries and trips to the beach to haul an ice chest, chairs and other stuff. A couple years later we strapped our baby daughter's car seat into it and took her for rides until we got her a better kid trailer. This trailer has rarely been used since. We didn't want to get rid of it cuz it's pretty cool. We pulled it out last year to haul our dog around on bike rides at the beach and stuff. She liked it so much that hubby added a carpeted platform for her to be more comfortable. This weekend he added the side rails. It even has a little storage compartment. So cool!

This morning my daughter and I took it out for a BAT trip to the grocery store. Notice in the picture above what we would have taken otherwise...a gas guzzling Yukon XL. We have that to haul the harp around and to pull our camping trailer on vacation - but it's my regular vehicle too. I don't drive much but the gas prices really hurt. So just one trip to the grocery store probably saves about $4. Not bad. Especially if we make a habit of this. And it feels so great to do something like this without using gas.



Here's a picture of it loaded with groceries at a stop at the park to get a drink of water.


This is my daughter taking a turn at riding it home, pulling the load, saying, "I think I can...I think I can". lol We were joking that we're the lil BAT bikers that could! lol It's a little harder with the load but we did it! If we keep it up we'll definitely get stronger.

We used our Trader Joe's insulated bag for the cold stuff and re-used paper grocery bags for the other stuff.

2 comments:

claudia said...

That is SO AWESOME! Very, very inspiring.

Sel and Poivre said...

I've been seriously thinking about getting a bike to cut back on my car usage and the thing that was holding me back was the absence of cargo space. I love your BAT truck! I need to rig up something just like that. Now you've got me thinking...