Implovator Sometimes innovating gets your hands dirty

Un-Crating an Enertia

My Brammo Enertia was delivered today. Woot! I've seen pictures of it crated before, but it was pretty interesting to see it up close. The crate has a very sturdy steel tray section that acts as a pallet. The bike is tied down to that...entirely too tight for my taste, as the forks were nearly bottomed out. For my street bikes, I like to leave a little bit of travel to help protect their seals. Anyhow, it was to no ill effect, because as I'll explain in a future post, the suspension is choice.

I'm getting ahead of myself. I must have been one of the last stops on the deliveryman's route. The Enertia was all the way at the front of a nearly empty truck. He couldn't back down the driveway, so he just parked on the street. As you can see, the crate nearly filled the width of the truck. Amazingly enough, he was able to pop it up on a pallet jack and spin it around 180 degrees. Then he pushed it out of the truck and onto the liftgate. He was parked on a hill, and all I could imagine was that crate rolling off of the back of the truck.

He lowered it on the liftgate and we rolled it down the driveway and left it horizontally in my one-car driveway in front of the garage. Right after he left, I realized that I didn't have any room to roll the bike off of the base, but it wasn't a problem. It slid on my driveway pretty well, so I just spun it 45 degrees after I got the cardboard off.

The cardboard had taken a little bit of a beating, and it was falling off a little. The cardboard was secured to the upper framework with self-tapping sheet metal screws. Once I removed some of it, I could see that the Enertia was in great shape...and quite a looker too. The paperwork and keys were hanging off the bars, and everything was in order.

I took the rest of the cardboard off, and disassembled the framework. It was constructed of thin-gauge steel box beams. It basically just acts as a frame to protect the crate in case something falls on it during transit. It was bolted together, and the nuts were conveniently welded, so all it took was a single ratchet. Once the framework was down, I removed the ratcheting tie-downs from the front end. The Enertia is extremely light and was really easy to roll off of the back of the base.

That's it in a nutshell...err steel and cardboard crate. I've transported tons of bikes before, but I've never had one crated. I'm not sure how typical this crate-job was, but it was really solid. Certainly better than having a bike bouncing around in the back of a trailer with a bunch of tools, gear, and ez-ups like what I'm used too.