About Us
Hinterher was founded by Peter Hornung in Munich in 2012. As a carpenter and architect, he spent years building furniture with raw & fine in a small workshop in the Glockenbach district. The quality was right—but the delivery van wasn't. It was too big, too slow, and caused too many parking problems in the city.
The solution: a bike trailer that works like a good tool. Attractive, robust, flexible, repairable.
After five prototype series, it was clear: this is more than just a solution to a specific problem. It's an attitude.
Hinterher has received numerous awards for its design, functionality, and sustainability—but more importantly, thousands of its trailers are now driving on roads around the world.
The freedom of your bike. Expanded
Bicycles are true masterpieces of efficiency. When we humans sit on this construction of tubes and clever drive mechanisms, we transform ourselves into the most efficient means of transportation in human history. As children, riding a bicycle gives us our first taste of freedom in our mobility. And for many of us, this feeling lasts a lifetime.
After all, bicycles offer nothing but advantages: they are inexpensive to buy and maintain, and we can push, carry, and lift them ourselves. They are always easy to park, are permitted almost everywhere, and require nothing more than our own calories or a little electricity to power them. Especially in the city, it is unbeatably fast, particularly over typical distances. It prolongs life, causes no exhaust fumes or noise, and is comparatively harmless to other road users.
Sure, we can't do everything by bike. But we can do quite a lot, and more than we think. Because with just one click, you can attach a bike trailer to your bike. And then you can experience even more with this great means of transportation.
What should a bicycle trailer look like?
We asked ourselves what a bike trailer that can be used flexibly for a wide variety of transport tasks—from shopping to Christmas trees—should look like. We achieve this flexibility with our aluminum chassis. Unlike other manufacturers who rely on tubes and fabric covers, we use a completely CNC-milled aluminum chassis that is precisely bent and welded. This gives us a rigid but lightweight base that prevents anything from sliding off the trailer. The surrounding edge facilitates the transport of crates and boxes, while the side walls offer openings for tension straps and attachment points for accessories. Many of our innovations, such as the tension strap openings, have since been copied – proof of our quality. Hinterher grows with your requirements and can be adapted throughout all phases of life.
Versatile
Our trailers can be used and combined with a wide variety of modes of transport. Whether by bike, on foot, by bus or train, or on a long hike, the Hinterher is perfectly equipped for almost all of these modes of transport or can be optimally adapted with accessories. These modes can be changed in a matter of seconds without the need for tools. Because the Hinterher can be converted into a flat package with just a few clicks, it can be easily transported in a car or train and stored in any basement, hallway, or garage to save space. After all, you don't need a cargo bike or handcart every day.
Balanced
We strive to achieve a sensible balance between dead weight, transport capacity, and trailer size. Our guiding principle is maximum simplicity with the highest possible quality. We eliminate everything superfluous in order to minimize space requirements, weight, service susceptibility, etc. This painstaking search for optimal details is extremely time-consuming, and the result may sometimes seem unspectacular, but it can hardly be improved upon.
With the appropriate components, our bike trailers can reach a total weight of up to 150 kg. With the right equipment, they can even carry a lot more. But 100 kg is already a lot, and we think that's enough for the current bicycle infrastructure (and most bicycles and their riders).
There are bike trailers (and also some cargo bikes) that aim for even higher payloads. However, this comes with many serious disadvantages, and the vehicles increasingly lose the characteristics of a bicycle and become more like motorcycles and cars. The more weight a trailer or cargo bike is supposed to carry, the larger and heavier these systems and components have to be. This then has little to do with "cycling."
The larger and heavier a trailer or cargo bike is, the more impractical it becomes in everyday use. It becomes a nuisance on bike paths and poses the same parking and storage problems as motor vehicles. On the road, it either gets stuck in traffic with the cars or, when traffic is flowing, is a disruptive, slow system that takes up a lot of space with a comparatively low payload (compared to a van or truck). In addition, the risk of accidents and the severity of accidents on bike paths increases, as does the technical effort required when a trailer is designed for very large loads: A overrun braking system that works in all weather conditions is required, all components must be extremely reinforced and are therefore mostly special parts or come from motorcycle technology.
This leads to an explosion in costs and significantly increased service and maintenance requirements. We are definitely leaving the realm of bicycle technology, which is actually based on simplicity and relatively manageable costs. And then the tail wags the dog, because these heavily loaded transport systems are practically only powered by motors, with humans contributing hardly any propulsion power. In this borderline area of professional goods transport, numerous manufacturers are competing for the more sensible vehicles, whose dead weight, space consumption, range, and transport capacity can offer a better balance in terms of the limited resource of traffic space than huge "transport bicycles," which actually have no place on the cycle path infrastructure.
We ourselves have worked hard to achieve this ideal balance of size, capacity, and cost, for example, after several complex in-house developments such as the e-push trailer and the Paletti (a trailer for transporting a Euro pallet), for which we received the Bavarian State Prize for Innovation. Some of these projects have not yet made it into production because they did not seem feasible at the time.
Sustainable and durable
Technical developments in e-bikes are happening at a rapid pace: every few years, the next generation of motors is released, and everything continues to evolve. So it's great that there are still products like ours that can't become obsolete.
An Hinterher trailer offers such high quality that it would take an enormous amount of effort and expense to improve it even marginally. That's why it doesn't become obsolete, but adapts to your requirements. Even after years of use, it can still be easily converted, expanded, and upgraded. That's why we find the combination of a bicycle or e-bike plus trailer so appealing. The drive and loading area are separate, so that any bicycle can be turned into a cargo bike and the trailer can retain all the advantages of a high-quality but simply constructed product. Without much maintenance or service requirements. The loading area can be flexibly attached at any time. And every ambitious cyclist knows how important it is to have the ideal bike. This can continue to be used, simply with a trailer if required. This is another advantage of the trailer over the cargo bike that should not be underestimated. Most cargo bikes are only available in one size and can hardly be ergonomically adapted to geometric preferences and physical conditions.
This means that, in the future, every new generation of e-bikes, with all their advantages, can be used extremely flexibly as motorized cargo transporters.
responsibility
The creation of Hinterher is based on our experiences in urban transport, which clearly demonstrated to us the need for a mobility revolution. Our aversion to inferior disposable products also shaped the development. From the very beginning, we have wanted to make a positive contribution to the transport revolution and climate protection. In all areas, our company is guided by the principles of sustainable business, a livable society, and the economy for the common good—an ambitious goal that is constantly challenged by numerous obstacles. Cheap production in Asia, excessive bureaucracy, high location costs, and inferior copies of our ideas are just some of the hurdles we face.
Nevertheless, we consistently focus on solutions that take these challenges into account. Our suppliers are mainly based in southern Germany, with a few from other European countries. We live by the zero waste principle, recycle 98% of our packaging, and focus on circular economy and eco-friendly packaging. The carbon footprint of the company and its employees is taken into account, as is the promotion of bicycle mobility. Our employees ride bicycles or e-bikes, for which we offer our own service workshop.
Our bike trailers actively support the mobility transition. We make all product and material decisions based on sustainability criteria and use as few environmentally harmful materials as possible. There is still a lot to do on the way to a completely sustainable economy, but every small step is progress. We look forward to continuing on this path together.