By David Schweidenback

February 2020

In February 2021 I will have spent 30 years collecting bicycles. A lot has changed over the years. Initially we received mainly 10-speed bicycles with a smattering of old English 3-speeds. The most common brands were Schwinn and Huffy. Today we receive mainly mountain bikes and the most common brand name by far is Trek! This is actually quite an improvement because mountain bikes are much more useful in the areas we ship to.

When I started we received one 20-inch-tire bicycle for every two adult bikes we collected. This was important for several reasons. A 20-inch BMX or banana-seat bicycle is a great bicycle overseas. It’s the correct size for many adults in the developing world. And these bikes are basically indestructible.

The 20-inch bicycles were also very important in shipping. When we load a container, we put a row of adult bikes side-to-side in the container, plywood on top of them, and then a second tier of adult bikes. We then put cardboard on top of the second tier of adult bikes and have enough room to stand up a row of 20-inch bikes as a third tier. This arrangement uses all the space in the container, so we can fit more bikes.

During the last year or two we started just getting fewer and fewer 20-inch bicycles. When I first started we had no competition for bicycles but now there is significant competition from other groups that are also collecting bicycles for their own domestic purposes. Initially I just assumed someone else was getting those bikes before Pedals for Progress could. The number of 20-inch bikes just continued declining and I realized that competition could not explain the lack of collectible 20-inch bikes. It really has become a problem in the loading process: instead of rolling 20-inch bikes on top of the second tier we now need to lay adult bikes flat on top, which is very strenuous for the guys doing the loading: they’re in a cramped space, lifting 30-pound bikes, and bending forward to stack them.

I was speaking with a bike shop owner and I mentioned this problem of not having enough 20-inch bikes to fill the smaller places in our containers. He was not surprised at all and told me that although he had 20-inch bikes in his shop he almost never sold any. That’s when the light bulb lit up in my mind.

It is not competition taking the bikes but just the sheer lack of availability. Very few 10-year-old kids ask their parents for a bicycle for their birthday. New iPhones and virtual-reality goggles are preferred. There are still many kids of that age who have a bicycle, but every 10-year-old used to have a bike. Now it seems having a bike at that age is the exception, not the norm. Who knew? The lack of 20-inch bicycles is not some fault in our collection system. It is not a serious problem that threatens our Corporation but I was glad to learn the lesson: societies change.

by Mark Call

[The Norristown, Pennsylvania, Rotary Club is one of our most successful long-time collectors. We just got this end-of-season report. They are already collecting for next year.]

Janet Steiner is a friend of the club who makes numerous donations to our collection each year. She runs ads in her church bulletin asking for bike donations, and she stores donated bikes in her garage.

Ginny Politz is the owner/operator of Bikesport in Trappe, PA. Bikesport makes several deliveries to us each year of trade-in bikes that people no longer want.

We have the use of a trailer generously donated by G. L. Sayre trucking in Conshocken, PA. We process the bikes and store them in the trailer until the next P4P collection. We already have 45 bikes and 10 sewing machines.

Our last two collections have netted 97 and 95 bikes. Our next collection is May 19, 2018, at the Norristown Area High School lot during West Norriton Community Day.

Our 27th calendar year collecting bicycles came to a close today on Veterans Day, November 11th, 2017. On a below-freezing morning, the Bunnvale Assembly of God together with the North Hunterdon Rotary Club collected 106 bicycles and 8 sewing machines — a great result in any weather. We would like to thank all of the participants, and especially Jim Murray, who was instrumental in making this collection happen.

There is a strange dynamic for end-of-season collections in the fall: Once we get to November, people are really thinking about getting their car into the garage, and sometimes unused bikes are in the way, so we have a better chance of collecting a lot of bikes. On the other hand we also have a greater chance of bad weather. Cold weather was obviously not a problem for today’s collection.

I would like to personally thank all of the collectors who have helped make 2017 a record-breaking year, with 12% growth in the collection of bikes and an amazing 55% growth for sewing machines. And to all of you springtime collectors, the time is now to book your spring 2018 collection to get the date you want. Get in touch with Lori at 908-638-4811 or lori@p4p.org.

We have been preoccupied with an incredible fall collection season. However, our new end-of-the-year newsletter is almost ready and we will be getting it to you very soon!

You knew the weekend of June 24, 2017, was going to be action packed when you saw the P4P trailers and parking lot. The Triton 40-foot container had been delivered for our 11th shipment to Albania. The Avis rental truck was ready for the final collection of the spring season. And Dave’s Mini and a couple of volunteer vehicles were parked out front.

Sewing Machines to Tanzania

We had collected enough sewing machines for a shipment of two pallets to Tanzania. Our tinkerers Simon Rosenstein and Dennis Smyth had worked tirelessly over the last few months getting the machines into good working order. Several dozen machines were boxed and ready to pack. We had just made the final arrangements with our partner in Tanzania, the She Can Foundation. The Summer 2017 InStitch newsletter has this post about a recent trip around Tanzania by She Can founder Sophia Mwakagenda, a Member of the Parliament of Tanzania.

On Friday, we prepared the two pallets. We stacked the boxed machines on a pallet, leaving room for a couple of sets of the heavy treadle stands. We nestled the treadle stands inside the walls of boxed sewing machines, put a cardboard roof over the treadles, and added another layer of boxed machines. We added some cardboard padding, roped it up, then shrink-wrapped the whole thing into a neat 4-foot cube. We shipped a total of 68 machines in the two pallets.

Bon voyage, sewing machines. See you in Tanzania!

Eleventh Container to Albania

Also on Friday, we pre-loaded 53 adult bikes, 25 kids’ bikes, and some sewing machines into the container bound for Albania. The pre-load lets us take care of any special packing before the big push on Saturday. This time we used the pre-load to pack very carefully a handful of spectacular bikes, including that famous carbon-fiber Specialized Roubaix. In the photos you can see that it has its own personal cardboard stall. These bikes will go to people who love cycling and are willing to pay a high price for a special bike. Our partner in Albania, PASS/Ecovolis, will be extremely happy to get some high-end bikes they can sell to help support their programs.

On Saturday, the real loading crew took over and did the hard work. They started at 7am to try to avoid the heat of the day, when the interior of the container attains advanced sauna status. Some sections of the container get three rows of bikes stacked on top of each other: two rows of adult bikes and one row of kids’ bikes. To pack the top row, you climb into a sweltering 3-foot niche with the broiling roof of the container blistering your flesh. Then you contort yourself into the most awkward position you can think of and take ridiculously heavy kids’ bikes from the person passing them up. Then you push them into position, using hands, feet, and any other body part that proves useful. The idea is always to get as many bikes as possible into the container—the shipping cost is fixed, so every bike adds to the bottom line.

When the container is almost full, we close one of the two container doors and jam in the last few dozen bikes, jig-saw like. Our partners are well aware of our packing methods, so they open the container doors gingerly, hoping not to be crushed by an avalance of bicycles.

The final count for the Albania container: 426 adult bikes, 100 kids’ bikes, 25 pairs of pedals, 9 saddles, 12 baskets, 25 helmets, 9 sets of training wheels, 2 bike racks, 4 wheels, 8 tires, and a few other miscellaneous bike parts and accessories, plus 15 sewing machines. That’s a full container!

Our Albania partner, PASS/Ecovolis, is one of our most active partners. They have a bike shop and a bike sharing program in Tirana, the capital of Albania. They also have projects in reforestation, childhood literacy and nutrition, and low-income housing.

As for sewing machines, Ened Mato, head of Ecovolis, tells us that they now have extra importance. Partly thanks to Ecovolis efforts in political persuasion, Tirana merchants now must charge a small fee for plastic shopping bags. Yet another PASS group, Trasta o Nona, manufactures fabric shopping bags, using Sewing Peace machines. The PASS shopping bags should sell much better with the new fee on plastic bags.

Flemington Collection

While the crew was loading the Albania container, Gary was running the final collection of the spring 2017 season. The Presbyterian Church of Flemington and the Flemington Rotary Club collected 42 bikes and 19 sewing machines.

Summer Break

So that was our big weekend: we shipped 68 sewing machines to Tanzania on Friday, finished loading 526 bikes and 15 sewing machines for Albania on Saturday, and also on Saturday collected 42 bikes and 19 sewing machines in Flemington. Well done all around.

The shipments to Tanzania and Albania emptied the trailers of most bikes and sewing machines, but there are a few left as a start on our next shipments, which we will make later in the year.

Our collections resume in September. Get in touch if you’d like to host one. Have a great summer.