bicycle gear
Abraham Dubb takes a spin with his BikeBox, a lightweight pannier made from corrugated plastic.
A Balancing Act Is the world’s best pannier designed in Philadelphia? by
emily kovach
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early every cyclist has had this experience: You’re at the Reading Terminal or the farmers market to grab a few things. Five impulse buys later (beets were on sale!) and the ride home becomes a precarious one. Straining under a stuffed backpack, you swear you won’t make this mistake again. And yet, you almost definitely will. That is, unless you’re one of the early adopters of the BikeBox. This ingenious bike-cargo solution is designed to take the load off your shoulders and put it onto the back of your bike. Designed to take the place of unbalanced panniers and flimsy milk crates, the BikeBox might be a key to unlocking the future of urban bike culture. After researching and developing prototypes for a decade, Abraham Dubb, 47, 10
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a former primary-care physician, left a 15year career in medicine to pursue this as a business. “I am a diehard urban cyclist—I don’t currently own a car—and Philly’s geography and elevation make it one of the most bike-friendly towns around,” the Center City resident says. “I’ve always wanted to do things from my bike.” Dubb is also a musician, and the BikeBox idea was born after many unsteady rides bringing his instruments and gear to shows. After trying a few different bike-mounted boxes, Dubb had a breakthrough in 2011: coroplast, the corrugated plastic that is used to make political-campaign signs. “Corrugated plastic is a material of the future: It is very light, durable, waterproof, impact resistant and cushioned,” Dubb
says. “Plus, it’s [made of] polypropylene, so it can be recycled and sourced from recycled materials.” Working out of NextFab in South Philly, Dubb uses computer-aided design (CAD) software to develop the boxes virtually and then a Computer Numeric Control (CNC) cutter to finish them. One of the first BikeBox iterations (the BikeArrow, with boxes on the front and back of the bike) was field-tested by Dubb on a 550-mile bike ride between Philly and Charlottesville. Packed inside his BikeArrow was bottled water, a drone, his computer, two pairs of shoes, clothing, a tent and tools. “It performed amazingly well,” he reports. “I rode through torrential downpours and on flooded paths, and everything was kept nice and dry.” The BikeBox, which fits neatly over a standard rear rack on a bike, comes in two sizes: the Standard, a good size for groceries, and the smaller Bike Purse, with a more streamlined silhouette and a bit less cargo space. Both are available on BikeBox’s website and are assembled by the user at home. Dubb says P HOTO G RAP HY BY KRISTO N JAE BETHEL