paper boys' bikes…

[alecstilleyedye]

prompted by the daily telegraph thread (which has gone a bit awry), what bike(s) did folk here use to delivering papers?

a raleigh wayfairer (my dad's, had only the pedal axle remaining on the drive side)

a fixed wheel "tracker" bike with a gear ratio that would embarrass a granny

a team murray bmx bike with mag wheels and a back-pedal brake. that was the nuts…

 

[andylaw79]

Gold Raleigh burner with black mag wheels - repainted it white and it looked the business

 

[tyred]

Never had a paper round but a mate used to do one on his mother's Triumph 3-Speed and had to wheel it for the first 40 or so stops as he didn't have the strength to pedal it fully loaded.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

Them Raleigh Choppers were a death trap, had a go on mates once and lost control of it, fortunately I fell off it outside the hospital - which was handy!

 

[potsy]

+1 for the Raleigh Chopper my 1st and only bike as a kid.

 

[Maz]

Mine was a walking paper round (had no bike)...but one would've been really handy though.

 

[Speicher]

We used to have two paper boys' bikes round here. One blew away and the other one folded.

 

[Maz]

Whichever one didn't have a puncture. So, mainly-

What was the smaller Grifter called? One of those, or

my sister's Raleigh 18.

Was it called a Budgie?

 

[Maz]

OK. Come to think of it, I think the Budgie was the diddy version of the Raleigh Tomahawk.

 

[4F]

Oooh, it might have been a Tomahawk come to think of it. I'll Googleimage them when I get home.

Tomahawk was the small version of the Chopper.

 

[Joe24]

Ive never bothered with a bike on my paper round. The houses are all too close to each other, so there would be no point in getting on the bike to ride a few doors down. So i just walk it.
I do sometimes take my mess about fixed up and lock it up outside the paper shop to ride to the shop and back, but only when i can actually be arsed.

 

[palinurus]

A red Raleigh singlespeed with a cantilever frame.

A red Tensor five speed "racer" (although in retrospect this must've been a terrible bike it was good for 30 miles or more)

A black Grifter that was found dumped at the side of a country lane (didn't have that one long)

 

[yello]

Raleigh 20

...and, from the age of 15, a Suzuki GT185 for the morning paper.

 

[fossyant]

Raleigh Chopper here, then a Coventry Eagle Stratos (racer).....

 

[Black Sheep]

brother had a raleigh burner that he'd bought of a friend of a friend

i had a random chopper like thing that had come out of next door's skip

was black, had two narrow top tubes next to each other, instead of the one, that carried on backwards to form a rear rack, it had a banana like seat and had forks that were meant to look like a motorcross bike (it did have 'motorcross' written on the saddle)