Ted Walke Fish Wall Chart: Fill & Download for Free

The TL;DR is probably. How much it helps you depends on a number of factors. I haul up to 300 pounds with a Surly Ted bike trailer using my e-bike up the hills of San Francisco to my house. Even with loads like this, people tell me I’m a ‘sissy’ or ‘cheating’. Here’s the thing: my current e-bike has a 250W motor. When you are towing 245 pounds of plate steel up 8% grades with a 250W motor, believe me, it doesn’t feel like cheating. With full assistance and geared down as low as the transmission will go, your legs burn and you get drenched with sweat. 250W is equivalent to about 1/8th HP. It definitely assists you up to a point, but it is certainly not an infinite reserve of power, that isn’t how physics works. And it is not a motorcycle.Now, mine is an extreme case. And in fact, I am currently building a more powerful e-bike from kit components to take over heavy hauling duty from my current bike. Essentially, well it’s just like with cars; if you haul a lot of stuff, you are eventually going to trade up from a hatchback or something to a truck, or from a light truck to a medium, heavy or super duty truck. However, I’ve evolved through all of the equivalent stages on a bicycle, and I can say that I have experience with all of them, including very large grocery runs for my own household during the pandemic. This is roughly how I might break it down:*Disclaimer: technically illegal in most jurisdictions. Enforcement varies by jurisdiction.Sorry for the crappy table put together with Google Sheets and MS Paint. It’s also worth noting this table is a very crude guesstimate. The first row is based on my own, direct experience. The remaining rows are extrapolated from that same experience and what I know about e-bike motors, but I have to stress that I have not ridden e-bikes for the purpose of hauling cargo with motors rated above 250W yet. In black-and-white, the bike I am currently building is technically in the sleeper row (although much tamer than some of the 3–6kW beasts some people are riding illegally). However, it is programmable with profiles that can make it street legal at the push of a button. Frankly, enforcement is non-existent as long as you are obeying the traffic laws. No police officer is going to stop you on your e-cargo and ask to hook a TTL cable up to your e-bike’s computer and see if it is programmed to limit it to 750W. However, you build or purchase and ride such a bike at your own risk. Of course, if you’re bombing around at 60 mph on an illegal Stealth B-52, you are very likely to attract attention. For yours and most people’s needs, 750W is probably more than sufficient.In any event, as you can see from the table, motor power, grade and amount of cargo can affect how suitable an e-bike is for you personally a great deal. Things like ambient temperature also factor in.However, at the very least an e-bike allows you to carry loads you could not with an unassisted pedal bike, and provides at least some assistance even if you are carrying a lot. There are a lot of choices on offer, but the two main options are: Some kind of cargo e-bike; Or an e-bike with regular frame geometry towing a trailer. I personally prefer the latter because I sometimes like riding my bike not for cargo hauling. With a cargo bike, it is always a cargo bike, and similar to a truck with respect to a car, has respectively less maneuverable handling characteristics. There are many other variables, for instance someone else mentioned range. Honestly the best first steps for you are:Try to arrange a test ride, even if you aren’t going to buy that specific bike. If you don’t want to go to an LBS (although honestly, they aren’t usually pushy like car salesmen), you can try a bike share bike for a dry run, or maybe you have a friend or relative willing to loan their bike out for you to try it out.Use the Grin Tech motor simulator: Motor Simulator - Tools. This is the best—and only—tool I have find that comprehensively takes all of these variables into account. It will show you what sorts of range, torque and thermal characteristics you can expect at various grades, speeds, power, throttle and fatigue levels, et cetera. I am a customer of Grin but not affiliated with them in any way. However, if you plan on building a DIY bike, I highly recommend them, either for purchasing components or simply for researching your build as they have outstanding resources about most aspects of building your own e-bike from parts.A third option, which is a bit advanced, is to build an e-trailer with either a regular bike or in addition to an e-bike. I don’t think many people, myself included, will pursue that, but I just wanted to put it out there to present the full range of possibilities.It is also worth noting that there are road legal e-bikes with a throttle mode, which might be helpful to you. Here in California they are referred to as ‘Class II’ e-bikes and while they were not very popular a few years ago, they are increasingly available on the market. There is a style of 750W, Class II ‘cafe racer’ e-bikes with flat seats, smaller wheels and low MSRP that is currently gaining a lot of momentum. I can name at least 4 makes right off the top of my head: Super73, RadPower, Juiced Bikes and Bento. I don’t know how suitable they are for cargo hauling, you’ll have to do your research about what kind of torque curve you can get out of the motors they use.Whatever you choose, just make sure you do your research, thoroughly and obsessively. Here is a loose list of a handful of pointers that hopefully short circuits things a little for you:Motors can burn out under high stress for prolonged periods. Make sure you understand the motor’s thermal characteristics for your application and don’t push it over the limit. Ideally, you should buy or build a bike that takes automatic measures to prevent the motor burning out and/or informs you what the motor’s temperature is. Most systems do one or the other.I’ve found rear cargo decks and rear panniers very ineffective for large loads, which is one reason why I use a trailer now. When you load a bunch of weight over the rear wheel, it greatly reduces the handling of the bike, makes starting and curb drops/pops difficult, and makes the rear end fish tail like crazy. I have dumped bikes loaded like this and it’s very hard to pick it up again with all that weight loaded on the back. It’s better to keep your load as low to the ground and as close to the bike’s center of gravity as possible in all dimensions. One solution is a cargo bike; another is a trailer; yet another is going touring style with panniers fore and aft, and perhaps a handle bar bag or top tube bag if your bike has a top tube to keep the weight distributed evenly.It is very important to load your bike trailer properly. Just like with an automotive trailer, there is a maximum tongue weight, and you want to keep most of the weight loaded over the axle of the trailer. Not doing so can radically effect handling and even cause accidents (been there, done that). I recommend buying a cheap, lightweight postal scale off of Amazon with a capacity of a few hundred pounds. It’s about the size of a dinner plate, very thin, weighs about a pound and fits very easily in a pannier. Costs about $30. I don’t always use mine, but usually carry it just in case. You place it under your rear wheel with an unloaded trailer and turn it on to tare it out (make it start at a value of zero). Then, as you load your trailer you can see exactly how you are affecting tongue weight and readjust. For complex loads, the results are often surprising and lead to completely changing how you configure and strap the load.I have found folding, modular milk crates, specifically the Big Ant brand, to be very helpful. Oversized cargo nets like these are also very useful.If you are going the trailer route, make sure you research whether the hitching method will be compatible with your bike. You may need to do some problem solving to make things work.Kick stands are a massive issue. My current bike cannot fit a center kick stand, and the stock kick stand interferes with the hitch on my Surly Ted trailer. I went through 5 or 6 kickstands that catastrophically failed before I hit on a suite of solutions for my current hauling bike, a Riese & Muller Homage. The bike now has 3 kickstands, including a drive-side kickstand, which is rare and was hard to find (The Hebei Fox Uni), and I also carry a Click-stand just in case. The latter is a solution favored by touring cyclists owing to the same difficulties with kick stands. I learned from buying a Click-stand that putting cinchies on your brakes is an extremely effective parking brake and means of stabilizing the bike. It essentially turns your wheels into additional stationary legs. I now use that method with all of my kickstands. I remove the stock kick stand that interferes with the hitch before attaching the trailer, use one mounted farther forward in its place, and use the drive side kick stand as a safety when I stop in case the bike tips over. It doesn’t damage the bike much, but it could (I’ve broken more than one mirror), and it’s annoying, embarrassing, a pain in the ass and a potential legal liability, as I have almost flattened small children into pancakes or injured adults. Fortunately they all had spry reflexes and were able to avoid the wrath of my falling bike. If your bike can fit it without the center bolt rotating, the Ursus Jumbo center kick stand is ideal.If you are going to be carrying a lot of weight downhill, strong brakes are very important. I upgraded the existing 2-piston hydraulic disc brakes on the Homage to 4-piston brakes. At a minimum you will want mechanical disc brakes.For extra credit, and if you can afford it and are brave enough, you can rig up a hitch on the rear of one trailer to tow a second. I do this to tow our dog’s Burley bike trailer behind my Surly Ted, because I have found it is a very effective push cart for ferrying cargo from my PMB at the UPS Store to my bike.Make sure you have back-up axle nut/hitch hardware in your emergency kit. I’ve had the races on my Surly axle nuts both fail simultaneously due to improper loading. A very easy fix with a wrench and spare axle nuts; as it was I had to have the wife rescue me by bringing me spare nuts (insert hours of puns here). I now make sure to carry spares.I personally find step-through frames more convenient for this application, although my newer DIY bike, with an old used frame, has a top-tube. Some toxic dude bros will say you’re riding a ‘girl’s bike’, but they aren’t trying to haul hundreds of pounds on their bikes, so their opinion isn’t really relevant (typically true in almost all situations anyway).You may have to reconfigure loads on the fly if you have multiple stops. Be patient, it ain’t a car, which is the point. Modularity is your friend.Locking storage can be a problem, you will have to find your own solutions for that. I have some very light, short-term locking solutions in the form of strong Abus 1/4″ hasp locks in keyed-alike sets used in conjunction with small holes drilled in my folding crates. Makes me comfortable for a few minutes to a half hour in highly visible areas; but they are still only 1/4″ hasp locks, very easy to defeat.Another Quoran mentioned spare batteries; I have two batteries for all e-bikes I purchase. It seems obsessive until you run out of juice with a 60 lb. e-bike hauling 200 lbs. of cargo (been there, done that). I usually only use slightly more than one battery (500 Wh) maximum, but I have used two full batteries on occasion. I can’t give you exact numbers, because, like motor power, range is highly dynamic depending on assistance level, load and grade. I carry 1000 Wh for the R&M with a 250W motor; our HPV with Go Swissdrive, also 250W, has 1168 Wh with both batteries. The bike I am building has 2.08 kWh, but it also has two motors. Two batteries is expensive; the first time you burn through a battery mid-ride and swap in that second battery, any buyer’s remorse will burn away instantly like a secret message in an old spy movie. More than once, someone has observed me doing this and said, ‘That’s bad ass.’ I think that’s an overstatement, but you do feel that way when you do it. The inverse of that is running out of juice, which can be a bad, dark place to be.The chart mentions having to push if you are overloaded for a grade. Note that this is very difficult. The R&M has walk assist, which helps a little, but walking the bike is still much harder than riding it. I had loaded the trailer with 300 lbs., up to its limit, with lumber once. Some of the hills I had to push it up were about 12% grade. I ran the numbers through a physics calculator and discovered I was doing the equivalent of squatting roughly 300 lbs.—about 1200W of work I believe—continuously while pushing that load. With heavy loads, it’s often worth it to take the long way around if it will reduce the grade considerably. With loads over 200 lbs., slight variations in grade become magnified.With heavy loads, if your bike has a chain, be careful when starting due to the torque that can occur. I’ve broken more than one chain while starting. Carry extra chain links for repairs. Don’t put all the force you can immediately into the pedals at the start, try to ease into it. It can be challenging to find the right balance when starting from a stop with a heavy load, but believe me breaking a chain is not fun.Make sure you are highly visible, especially at night. I have high visibility safety flags on whips with retro-reflective patches, tassles and multiple colors in a gradient that many toxic dude bros call me ‘gay’ for on the road. Apparently some people think that any combination of more than one color is some sort of pride statement. I guess some people didn’t learn what a rainbow looks like in kindergarten. But if they think I’m gay, that means they are noticing me (seems… interesting that such macho, supposedly straight men are noticing what they think to be gay dudes, but I digress), and that means I am not being run over. The flags I buy are from Purple Sky Flags, and are expensive, but they are the only safety flags I have owned that do not get shredded within a year. Funnily enough, they do make an actual pride version of their flag, which is not the version I own. I also adhere to the philosophy that there is no such thing as too many bike lights. People make fun of me for it, call me a glow worm, a Christmas tree, Santa, et cetera, but again if they are making derpy comments that means they saw me and aren’t running into me. I’d rather they express their inner idiot than kill me with it. I use these for low profile things like trailers and the trike. For the bike itself, the numerous lights and reflectors are good enough. I also run both a handlebar light and a very powerful helmet light. I also put lights on the whips. I use the bicycle headlight, flags and flag lights as daytime running lights. Makes SMIDSY arguments impossible, although, amazingly, someone will still use that excuse once in a blue moon.Update 10/20/2020:I forgot to mention that the above assumes the OP is doing everything else a cyclist should be doing as far as self-care when riding a lot, especially when hauling, namely:Stretching.Warming up, if necessary. This depends on the person on condition level. I don’t usually do it, but it may help you.Making sure to replace key minerals, like magnesium, calcium and potassium after and/or before your ride.Replacing electrolytes. I use Pedialyte Advanced Care.Protein replacement. Protein shakes with SpiruTein or Tera’s Whey with a frozen banana and a cup of milk work well. The banana is also an excellent source of potassium.I have to do all of the above when hauling on an e-bike to avoid painful cramps after a ride (like charlie horses that make you want to kill yourself), so if you are hauling without an e-bike, it’s even more important.Also, I have some errata to report with what I said about scales. The kind of scale you want is variously called a shipping, postal, receiving, pet, livestock or medical scale. The style is a thin, high capacity scale with a digital display that can extend away from the unit with a long cable. The one I originally bought, from Accutek, was about $35 from Amazon as far as I recall. Literally the day after this post, my Accutek scale broke after working fine for a year or so, so I had to spring for a new one. They appear to have gone up in price, or the one I purchased was on sale. They range from about $50–200 it seems. I purchased a San Jamar SCDG264 264 lb Industrial Receiving Scale, on sale for half off for about $100 from a restaurant supply store. It’s still worth it IMO if you haul a lot of stuff via trailer. It was between that scale and the Angel POS Medical High Precision Physician Digital Scale. I like the latter because it has no auto-off feature, and has a manual, analog toggle power switch on the back of the display. It also uses AA batteries instead of 9V like the San Jamar does, which have more capacity than 9V batteries. I didn’t like how thick it is and the apparent cheapness of the top plate. I ended up going with the San Jamar because it has a very robust, all metal display, but doesn’t have the clunky wall mounting bracket on the Angel POS. Its auto off feature is not programmable like the Angel, but it is long compared to other scales at 4 minutes, it’s a little thinner and I like the top plate better; plus it was on sale. I hope I made the right choice; I’ll know in a year or so after I’ve put it through its paces. I also bought a 4-pack of EBL LiON 9V rechargeable batteries from Amazon with 600 mAh of capacity. Just know that if you purchase any scale other than the Angel POS scale, you will need to twiddle something on the display, remove something or place something on the scale before the auto-off time out to prevent it shutting off. Tons of people complain about this in reviews for just about every one of these scales of every make and model, you’d think the industry would get a clue and manufacturers would add the ability to disable this feature to their scales. I’m not a shipper, though, so for my purposes I think 4 minutes should be fine. I cannot now recommend the Accutek postal scales. I was also a little off on the weight, they tend to weigh a few pounds up to maybe 10 pounds for larger ones, but the smaller units I purchase tend to have plates that are about 12″ on a side, and they fit great in a pannier or a milk great and their weight is negligible on an e-bike. I weighed the Accutek by feel and thought it was a pound or so.Pics:Got steel?Our other bike, an e-trike, performing occasional lighter duty hauling. This load is only about 100 lbs. with the trailer.A very large grocery run.That same load broken down.A 50 lb. bag of flour hauled on that run; the postal scale in the foreground.Hardware run. That’s 200 lbs. of Sakrete gravel in the back there.This is where that 245 lbs. of plate steel and metal chop saw ended up.My new hauler is slowly taking shape. Its design is based on everything I’ve learned hauling with the R&M. Basically, this will be my bike truck, and the R&M will go back to its original lighter duties of trail riding, bike camping, jaunts around town, et cetera. People will make comments on the street that having all these e-bikes (or even just one) makes me ‘rich’ but the total cost of all 3 of these bikes and both bike trailers is still less than what most people spend on a single car, and maintenance, parking, et cetera is dirt cheap compared to even the cheapest or most reliable car. According to Kelley Blue Book, the median car price in 2020 is $37,851:Average New-Vehicle Prices Up 3.5% Year-Over-Year in January 2020 on Sales Mix, According to Kelley Blue Book.People will say, well I can get a used car for much cheaper. Yes, you can, but that is an apples to oranges comparison because I didn’t purchase any of my bikes used, with the exception of the frame for my new e-bike, which cost me less than $200. All of the other components on that bike, and the other bike and trike in their entirety were purchased new, so that’s the comparison you have to make (not to mention that an e-bike’s MPGe blows any car out of the water, including EVs). All in, including PPE, trailers and any aftermarket parts I’ve added, I’d say these 3 bikes combined are under $30k, spread out over 14 years. And you can of course go much cheaper on an individual e-bike, especially now that demand has scaled up. So think about that the next time you yell that I’m a richie out the window of your $40k Audi.We do have a car, btw, a 2001 TDI New Beetle, in which we run biosdiesel stock. That’s the only car we’ve owned between us in 16 years of living together, and the only one we need. The money we’ve saved by not trading up to a newer, fancier, faster, higher insurance risk car every 3 years like most people is what allows us to own multiple e-bikes, not being fantastically rich. It turns out if you don’t fall prey to every financial trope people who are actually rich—the millionaires and billionaires who run our plutocracy—want you to, you can live pretty comfortably on a middle class household income. This used to be the norm by the way, until 10 or 20 years ago. Things have gotten so bad that the rich actually have the poor and the lower middle class attacking what remains of the middle class instead of the rich themselves, basically finishing the job the rich started. You don’t have to live your life the way society tells you to; take your own route. I ride mine on an e-bike.