Bicycle Carriers and Racks Education and Training

Finding online options for learning about bike racks and carriers

By J. Stoltzfus, writer/programmer LOCAL CITIZEN
For most avid bicycle riders, there comes a time when the bike has to take a break and be carried by a vehicle, and bicycle carriers and racks provide the solution for much of a bicycle's high-speed transit. But what about learning about bicycle carriers and racks, education and training for those who have not used or installed one of these neat tools before?

You can often get training from the shop that sells the bike carriers, but you can also check out the Internet for education, not only on the safety tips for these tools, but on pricing, quality and more. The Internet is a great resource for learning about bike carriers and racks. Readers can choose from:

1. Sites offering info on purchasing or product details, with overall recommendations on how to go about selecting a bicycle rack.

2. Safety guides and instructions online from bike racks makers or other groups interested in bicycle safety.

3. Good first-hand info from forums where bike riders talk about bicycle storage racks.

 

Use consumer websites before purchasing bike carriers

Your web search can begin before you put money down for a bike rack or bike carriers for cars. Take a look and answer the questions that these helpful info sites set up, taking advantage of the general product ratings and other tips on the sites.
Try: The Consumer Reports website helps to answer questions about your bike rack or carrier needs and how to evaluate a purchase from a safety perspective. Get more purchasing details at sites like Lab Safety Supply, with bike rack product info and pricing.

Locate safety and install guides for bike carriers and racks

Another web option for using bike carriers is online instructions that help show how car bike rack models are generally used. If the guide doesn't cover your specific model, keep looking, but sometimes the ideas in the guide will apply to different types of bike carriers and racks and provide more general education about how to make sure they are safely connected to a vehicle.
Try: The site at Hollywood Racks includes specific instructions on installing and using its rack models. Thule makes available bike rack installation instructions for nearly all its models. Get bike rack installation instructions for any  rack. Check out the guides at similar sites for instructions on any given bike rack model. Get more bike carrier safety info at HowStuffWorks.

Look at bike forums for learning about bike carriers and racks

Don't overlook public web forums when thinking about bicycle carriers for cars: this is where others like yourself have posted their experiences and thoughts. Forums help individuals to avoid the mistakes that others have made before them, and can be extremely valuable for selecting products and for using them safely.
Try: At BikeForums, bikers dish about their experiences with bike carriers and racks. Another forum for bicycle carrier info comes from an unlikely place: the PriusChat forums, where those interested in hybrid cars and bicycling combine the two topics.

 

  • One of your best resources is always your user's manual: keep it handy when you have selected bike carriers and racks to make sure you don't end up trying to get the same info from the web, where articles and guides are not as specialized as the guide that comes with a specific model.