At Large

AT LARGE

The Cargo Crisis

Steven L. Thompson

NONRIDERS USUALLY THINK THAT the watershed event in a motorcyclist’s riding life is the First Fall. Like many fancies harbored by nonriders, this is wrong. The real watershed event for any motorcyclist is the Cargo Crisis.

This particular crisis occurs when you awaken one day to realize that you’re now so deep into motorcycling that you need a vehicle just to haul things associated with riding. Like motorcycles themselves, or parts thereof. And because of what it means to your life, the Cargo Crisis can be more traumatic than the acquisition of the motorcycle itself.

When you begin contemplating adding a trailer, van or pickup just to dedicate to your “hobby,” your family and friends suddenly realize the depths of your obsession. You have crossed the line from being “a guy with a motorcycle” to being “a serious motorcyclist.”

This is often upsetting enough to loved ones who thought they knew you. But when you succumb to the “which hauler?” problem, your life and theirs will never be the same. It was bad enough trying to figure out which bike to buy. Trying to figure out which vehicle to buy to haul the bike with is even worse.

Nobody I know has faced this without making mistakes and miscalculations. Nobody I know—from pro racer to motojournalist—got it right the first time. And nobody I know who’s honest about it will deny that he’s still trying to get it right. Partly that’s because of the range of options, and partly because our motorcycle games themselves keep changing. But the result is that guys who started with El Caminos or Rancheros move on to flatbed trailers, then maybe to three-rail trailers, finally to enclosed trailers and eventually to vans, only to begin the process all over again when the motorcycle inventory exceeds the available haulage capacity.

The real problem with all this is that there’s no reliable testing agency giving us guidance about products. If

you want to buy a bike, there are plenty of tests to read. And you can buy consumer magazines that tell you in a general sort of way about some trucks, vans and even trailers. But how about bike trailers? How about a comparison of new minivans, asking the only questions about them that really matter—to wit, will they carry motorcycles? How many, and how easily? And can they be loaded by a guy with a broken collarbone?

Bereft of such magazines, we in the moto-mag biz have tried, with no success to brag about, to share any info we might have collected when we've borrowed “test trucks” or bought company vehicles. But not often, and not well. We’re stuck, just as you are, with using the word on the street and track, and our own experience, as guides for what the right stuff in haulage might be.

I became a Serious Motorcycle Guy in 1967, when I had to tow my first racer—a new 350cc Yamaha YR1—to places like Vacaville and Cotati and Antelope Valley in a UHaul trailer behind my dad’s Firebird. By 1972, when I stopped racing seriously, I'd owned three vans, and was part-owner of two other “team” trucks. For seven years thereafter, I made do with rented and company vehicles, until I bought a cherry ’69 El Camino, which everybody called, for reasons I still don't fathom, “Tex.” After that came a Holsclaw

three-rail trailer, and, finally, yet another van. And all this in spite of having more or less continuous access to company haulers. Is it any wonder our spouses despair?

Probably not. But they don't despair any more than we do, when we realize that after more than, say, two decades as Serious Bike Guys, we’re still trying to get the right alignment between what we have to haul and what we have to haul it with. For the wealthy, this is no problem. For the rest of us, it's no joke. Buying an expensive piece of equipment that has to be registered, insured, maintained and used enough to justify its costs can be a major headache.

The headache only gets worse when you itemize not only the advantages but drawbacks of each kind of hauler. As usual, the pros and cons often cancel each other out. Worn down, most of us just make the easiest choice (“This van was too good a deal, honey,”) and wonder if there’ll ever be a one-size-fits-all solution.

Before Japan, Inc. rewrote the textbook on the car manufacturing game, I would have said “No.” But now I see some hope. The vehicles that get the most attention these days at the glitzy car shows are wonderfully weird multi-use vehicles that aren’t cars or trucks, but something of each. The success of the mini-van (with rare exceptions, too small for us) has driven this, as well as the disappearance of the once-open American road. But whatever the cause, the effect is the potential—and still only the potential—of a universal solution to our Cargo Crisis.

If so, if the potential becomes the reality of an expandable, four-seat 30-mpg hauler with enough guts to conquer the Rockies at speed and enough to room to haul my Norton Commando Production Racer, BMW K100RS and dirtbike as well as the tool boxes and gas cans, I’ll be first in line to buy one.

And if not, maybe the right response is to start a magazine to force the issue. Cycle-Hauling World, anyone?