A drop in the bucket.

In 1990 or so I was planting trees in Northwest Montana with a group of semi-idealistic treeplanters called the Kootenai Collusion. We spent long days on the hill and sat around campfires at night. One of the crew, I think it was Roger Vance, a true minimalist, was extolling the virtues of the square plastic bucket one evening, waterproof, makes a good seat around the campfire, packrats don’t get into your food, endless uses…..about the same time I was trying to figure out how to have room for my bike panniers in the van for a long trip to Mexico we were planning. The two thoughts percolated for a while and before long the idea of transferring pannier hardware over to a bucket was born.

The very first pair was made by swiping hardware off an old pair of Needleworks panniers, but that was not vey sustainable so some trips to the hardware store and the first Bike Buckets were born in Missoula Montana. They immediately generated questions from people and so we decided to make some more and try and sell them at the farmers market. I think we made two pair and they both sold very quickly. One of the pairs was bought by a guy who planned to circumnavigate the US with them. Sometime and several moves later we got this postcard from him.

In the winter of 1991-92, I took a workbike building class with Jan VanderTuin , which would become the prototype for the center for alternate transport in Eugene.  This was an inspiration to scale up and we decided to go into “production” on Bike Buckets. We made a deal to get used fruit buckets from Nancy’s creamery (Ken Kesey’s family’s Yogurt company) Then trick was finding hooks, I liked the look of hooks on the Jandd Panniers and packs so I called them up and they agreed to sell them to me, I was impressed that they would enable a “competitor” . The buckets started selling pretty well at bike stores in Eugene. We got asked to write a Story on how to make your own for Rain Magazine. After that we started to hear from people all over North America.

When I went into farming I sold my hardware supplies to my friend Vince who started to make and sell them in Portland. Vince was a better marketer and businessman than me and the buckets became commpnplace in Oregon. He eventually “sold” the whole enterprise to Citybikes who still sell them today with the design modifications made by Vince.. Now the City of Portland sells kits based on that design and I’m happy to see Jandd is still supplying the hooks. I thought about this recently when I saw some bike buckets in use in Davis and I did a Google search on Bike Buckets, wow. I don’t know how many Bike buckets have been sold or made by now, nor do I know how many independent origins these have come from (In genetics we call this convergent evolution or homoplasy), but I am sure many groceries have been carried and I am amazed and humbled by how many people have been enabled by a simple idea. Even though I’m sure its just a drop in the …..