A diatribe against roller bags

I hate roller bags. You know which ones I’m talking about, the trunks with a telescoping handle, on either two or four wheels. The ones that scream traveler no matter who’s carrying them. The ones that make an annoying clicking sound when traversing any sort of bump on the road. Why God put them on his green earth to spite me, I don’t know.

But why pick a fight with such an essential part of travel? I will admit, roller bags have many advantages. When one needs to go hands-free, it’s easy to let go of such a bag. They’re so universal that airplane overhead storage is designed around their sizes, as are a variety of backpacks and messenger bags designed to slot over their handles. They are a lightweight receptacle for travel goods and facilitate transport of large quantities of objects with ease. Owing to the construction of the roller bag, it’s possible to organize items neatly, as well as transport delicate items. I’ll preempt complaints about my supposed ablism and neuronormativism here: roller bags are a travel essential for those who have mobility or strength issues, and those who need to see everything neatly arranged. For everyone else, get out of their space. Death to the roller bag.

To me, the roller bag screams amateur American travel. I counter complaints of elitism and gatekeeping by suggestion of other humble alternatives later. But the roller bag is designed for clean, structured travel within hotel lobbies and airports. Outside of those environments, it become a hinderance. Firstly, its wheels become dirty. A trunk, whether it’s Samsonite or Rimowa, is meant to get dirty during travel. But a roller bag will inevitably need to be carried: up stairs, across puddles, and over snowbanks. When a bag with dirty wheels gets carried, there is nothing that can be done to prevent the dirty wheels, which have been in contact with miles of floor, from dirtying the carrier’s pants or even worse, bare leg.

It doesn’t help that the bags are designed to open down the middle, which would be the best spot for a handle, Instead the handle is placed at a third of the width of the bag instead of being perfectly balanced, resulting in an increased propensity for leg bumping. The off-kilter balance is worsened by space allocated to chambers for the telescoping handle, which is lighter than the contents of the bag. Consequently, the handles are placed at where a quarter of the weight of the bag usually resides. The proper way to pack a roller bag then, is to place heavier objects close to the length of the telescoping handle, which should distribute the weight. Unfortunately, the indents left in the interior of the bag by the handles make it difficult to place larger objects lower, and instead necessitates placing carefully folded clothes to maximize packing space. A carefully packed roller bag is a thing of beauty, but is unrealistic.

Another flaw in its design is its perception of durability. Firstly, most roller bags are not as strong as they may seem. Though they are rigid, or semi-rigid, the necessary compromise between weight and strength is usually won by weight. They are dragged over bumps and carried by the telescoping handles, resulting in lost wheels, split sides, or broken handles. What is left then is a box that must be carried by its remaining working handle or lifted. In the specific case of air travel, a common occurrence is that the overhead bins do not contain enough space for the suitcase, and owing to its perceived strength, the bag will have to be checked. Backpacks, purses, and duffels are almost never asked to be checked, but the owners of roller bags are always the first. Checked bags are very likely to get misplaced by airlines, especially when checked at the gate. Furthermore, the carry-on traveler with a roller bag likely has no other bag. That means makeup, clothes, and maybe even laptop are all in the roller bag; if that bag doesn’t arrive with the plane, well that long weekend vacation just got a whole lot more expensive.

I will admit my last grievance with roller bags is a personal one: I’m too tall for them. The bag is designed to be dragged along at a forty-five degree angle behind the traveler, and with my slight-taller-than-average frame, the bag sits at sixty degrees to the ground, and leans backwards much more than is comfortable. Frustratingly, the heels of my feet also constantly hit the bottom of the bag as I pull it along, causing me to stumble and gripe. But what of the four-wheel bags, ask advocates for the roller bag. Perhaps I am also slightly too tall for those, because it feels strange to push a suitcase horizontally along the floor by the means of stick emanating perpendicularly from the direction of motion. There is a lot of give, and it fees as though it’s not designed for that. Certainly, corners cannot be rounded with any velocity, nor does it work on any surface other than smooth floor. Like the carrying handle being placed off-center, it’s a noticeable irritant.

There are two alternatives that I suggest and employ: the backpack and the duffel. The backpack requires no hands, is ergonomically constructed, and moves as fast as its owner, it’s possible to immediately travel upon arrival with a backpack, but a roller bag requires stopping by a bag check or a hotel first, to lose the extra weight. They are both big enough to command overhead storage space on a plane, and also small enough to fit under a seat in a pinch. Its many compartments eliminates the need to completely open the bag in order to search for one thing, much unlike a roller bag. If more space is needed, my bag of choice is a duffel bag. More space, wider zippers, and more elegant looking than a roller bag. They are designed to be carried, so there is no risk of imbalance, and they can also both be placed in the overhead compartment as well as below an airplane seat. Both of these bags deal well with weather and cobblestones, and are so popular these days that they’re often combined: a duffle bag with backpack straps, or oversized backpacks with duffel-like zippers.

The only time I will use a trunk with wheels on it is when I need more storage space than I can physically carry. In that situation, I will resort to a large roller bag that a duffel or backpack cannot substitute for. I would like to claim that my gripe with roller bags is that they encourage their owners to overpack, shoving everything they can into a little plastic coffin, but that is simply not the case. Rather, it’s solely the user experience of these bags that I take issue with: the unbalanced handles holding up thin pieces of plastic and their dirty little wheels. Louis V., or Tumi, neither are for me. Is a war on the roller bag truly the hill I wish to die on? Yes, it is. Have fun dragging your physical embodiment of emotional baggage across cobblestone, you rube.