Our Top Tips For Packing a Bike Box

Transporting your bike by plane can be risky business. Whilst bike bags and cardboard boxes can suffice, hard shell bike boxes such as the Bike Box Alan will give your bike the best protection when travelling abroad leaving you to travel with peace of mind that your bike will still be in good working order once your reach your destination.

What you’ll need:

• Allen Key set

• Wrench

• Zip ties

1. Removing your pedals

Sometimes the trickiest (and most frustrating!) part of packing a bike can be removing the pedals – especially if they’ve been on for a good while. Make sure you have good leverage with the wrench and remember to turn your right pedal counter-clockwise to loosen and clockwise to loosen the left pedal.

2. Removing the wheels

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Any tips for disc brakes etc?

3. Seat post

Anyone who rides regularly or has had a professional bike fit knows how important the height of the saddle is. Don’t forget to mark the height of your seat post before removing - you’ll be thankful the other end!

4. Getting the bars flush with the frame

You may be able to rotate the stem 90 degrees and turn the bars up and under the top tube. Otherwise, you’ll need to remove the stem.

5. Take care of the Rear Derailleur

You’ll need to pay most attention to the rear derailleur – without adequate clearance from the box, you risk damaging the derailleur or worse still bending the rear mech.

An inch or so will do the trip and always make the derailleur well is secured tightly with the Velcro straps.

6. Packing your accessories

The Bike Box Alan has lots of extra Velcro straps to help secure bike accessories – pedals, helmet, shoes etc.

7. Cable ties

These are invaluable if you don’t have locks. Make sure you have enough to secure the bike for both outbound and return travel. We always advise to secure the box with cable ties just before dropping the bike at the oversized baggage drop – check in staff have been known to request access to the box to check contents, so always best to leave the cable ties as late as possible.

*The obvious disclaimer! You pack your bike at entirely your own risk. These are just our tips to help you along the way.