Oregon Cycling Magazine

by Will Ross, age 17 and Eli Reid, age 16

Recently, we contacted a company called CETMA Racks about their front-mounted cargo racks for bicycles. We found out two things right away: CETMA was a company of one guy—Lane Kagay—and that he and his wife were in the process of packing their bags and moving to our town from San Francisco! We rarely make such a good impression.

CETMA racks are sturdy cargo platforms for standard bikes. They are made to mount to the front, attaching at your handlebars and to your fork or dropout. According to Lane, carrying your weight on the front of a bike makes sense. For one thing, you can keep an eye on your load. If things start to move around in unacceptable ways, you can stop and put things right. Also, heavy loads on a rear rack tend to destabilize a slow-moving bike. Without the control that your handlebars provide for a front-mounted load, your bike will want to lay itself down. Lane also notes that the front of your frame is stronger. “The rear part of the frame is where almost all frames break. The thin chain stays and seat stays are notorious weak spots,” he says. The racks come in 4, 6, or 8-rail models.

Lane mailed us a rack with an invitation to try and break it. We were delighted. Breaking things is something we can understand. A week later, Lane showed up in town on a house-hunting expedition. Our rack was still in one piece, but we hadn’t really put it through the paces yet. He stopped by CAT and dropped off one of his newer models, this one a 4-rail made with steel tubing rather than solid stock.

We decided that since we had access to many different kinds of bikes here at CAT, we would try to mount the CETMA racks to as many different kinds of bikes as possible. We had little success with the recumbents and the unicycle, but the upright tandem was a hit. We had no problem mounting the rack, which is a good thing, because we didn’t have any documentation to work with. Luckily, we’re all rather handy and know our way around a toolbox. Nolan kept grumbling about the locknuts (hard to hand-tighten) but it only took us about ten minutes to mount the rack. Now it was time to get it out on the road.

Without a load, the CETMA rack is not really noticeable once you get going. We had a 6-rail, which weighs three pounds and measures 12”x12”. There is no guardrail, so large and bulky items are no problem if you have enough bungees. The 8-rail weighs four pounds and measures 12”x17”. We couldn’t imagine that the larger rack would make much of a difference in handling, but we hadn’t even loaded it up yet!

We had fun trying to find larger and stranger things to strap to our rack. Our best efforts included a stack of crates and buckets full of garden tools, a 67-pound roll of newsprint, and a 72-pound student (not all at the same time!) The rack handled well under the strain, especially when the weight is mostly on the rack. The roll of newsprint we carried was the most difficult because the roll was so long that only a portion of it actually rested on the rack. The rest was left hanging over either end, about a foot on each side.

After we ran out of things to strap to the rack, our eyes turned towards the tallbikes. We had two racks—could we possibly come up with a rack system for one of them? We went to work and came up with a configuration that we thought might work. Now what to load up? We decided that we hadn’t carried any books yet, so we set up a bookshelf on the bottom rack, with books on welding and bike repair (you never know when they might come in handy) and a crate on the top. The bike was a little hard to ride at first, but I’m confident that, given enough time, I could get used to it. While we were busy doing all the work, Eli wrote a rap song about CETMA:

I always boast ‘bout the racks I like the most.
CETMA racks are on the attack.
Terrorists stink and CETMA rules
And all I could do as I sit and watch is drool…
Over my CETMA rack.
I LOVE MY CETMA RACK
Uh huh uh huh uh huh CETMA
What what CETMA

Lane and his wife sold their car three months ago, before they moved to Eugene (one less car!). Now they are entirely bike transported. He says he looked at Portland first but decided to move to Eugene because of “the climate, the scenery and the awesome bike paths.” CETMA racks are now made in Eugene. They range in price from $80 to $120 and come in your choice of colors. Currently, CETMA racks are spraypainted, but now that the business has relocated to the Willamette Valley, he has plans to powdercoat his racks here at CAT. Stay tuned at www.cetmaracks.com for more details!

Possibly Related

• May 2008: Collecting oddball bikes
• May 2007: A visit with Joseph Ahearne
• March 2008: BMX racing: a rider's perspective
• January 2008: My bike is reverse-engineered
• April 2007: Filmed by Bike is back in town