My next suitcase: Two wheels or four wheels?

I have a Samsonite spinner, carry-on size and a bigger bag to check. I took the bigger one to England and had a hard time on the streets of London. The uneven sidewalks would stop the bag from rolling or spin. It was a pain. I went back the next year with the smaller carryon bag. I had no problem rolling that spinner on the same uneven sidewalks. It was great. This year I am taking a much smaller RS rolling carryon bag with 2 wheels. The smaller bag is a must as I will be using several European airlines and my Samsonite carryon is too big to fit in overhead bins.

First, you need to take half the stuff out of your suitcase. I travel for six to seven weeks at a time with under twenty pounds, and that includes the weight of the 22" Delsey. Second, your mom may be right that most people have spinners now, but are those people doing the type of traveling you plan to do? If all you're going to do is push it across an airport floor and then get into a cab or Super Shuttle, a spinner may be for you. But if you are going to be traveling around, getting on and off trains, walking several blocks on rough pavement with your bag, then you need to lighten your load and go two wheels. I just got a new 22" Eagle Creek Load Warrior and loved it on a recent trip. Finally, some people here will tell you to dump all but fifteen pounds of stuff and get a backpack if you want to travel in freedom.

I'm with Diane and Bets! I would look at sharply trimming what you take with you before you make a suitcase decision. Even with spinners, 40# is a huge amount to handle. I'm not sure I could lift that into and out of my car for the ride to the airport.

Last Fall I traveled with the small RS wheelie, so 20 (or 21??) inches for a 5.5 week trip. I could easily have lasted another month with the contents of the suitcase...the contents of my wallet, not so much, lol. This does require me to do hand washing but I really don't mind that.

Did you keep a packing list of what you took to Vancouver? I would start there and whittle down to contents that will fit in a bag no larger than a 22" roller.

You will also find on this site many of us are in to packing light so we can be more mobile. My basic packing list is 3 pr pants (wear 1), 5 or 6 short sleeve shirts (wear 1), 1 long sleeve shirt, 2 cardies (wear 1), 4 unders, 2 bras, pjs, 2 pr shoes (wear 1).

There was a long hotly debated thread on the forum this year. It seemed pretty evenly split about people's preferences. We bought our first 21" spinner to try several years ago when we were taking a trip that we knew would involve a lot of train travel, moving a rolling suitcase up or down a narrow train aisle. We were very happy with the spinner.

A couple of tips. Try to buy the lightest weight one you can find with the sturdiest looking wheels. Get a name brand you trust but don't spend a lot of $. I usually shop for luggage at a large "remainder" store like Ross. Take a tape measurer with you and measure from the wheels to the handle.

We're still using the first spinner we bought without any issues. We've since bought 2 more spinners in different sizes. I also think it's easier on your back to push the luggage along your side than having the downward pull of a handle on your back. You'll know when you are ready to try something different and it sounds like you may have reached that point.

I had a pully bag and my travel partner a spinner on our last trip to France. Let's just say it was easier for me to move around than her, and several times we had to switch bags so I could "drive " hers that she couldn't control easily on hills, cobblestones, escalators.

Your earlier post described that you are going to Venice, Florence, and Rome with Insight Tours and I see that at least some of their tours do provide door-to-door baggage handling. If this is the case with the itinerary that you booked, you won't have many baggage challenges yourself. (I would still pack light for the benefit of the backbones of baggage handlers.) If this were a Rick Steves tour, where you often maneuver your own bags over Venetian bridges, uneven sidewalks, and sometimes hotel staircases, then I would stick to the recommended, carry-on sized, two-wheeled bag.

Well because my big trip last year was a cruise, it included two formal dresses, a pair of dress shoes, and several semi-formal outfits. I will not need to dress up this time. I also will not need t-shirts, capris, or swimsuits. But I expect to need at least one sweatshirt since it will be November and never have enough jeans to last a week. Trimming down to only 20 pounds would be much easier in the spring than a week before Thanksgiving, but at least it is easier than packing for a cruise.

That is another big concern I have about spinners - moving them on uneven surfaces - but I never would have guessed having a small suitcase would make a difference in that regard. Of course my mom bought a big spinner that must be checked because it is a 13-day trip. I don't know the dimensions, but it looks bigger than mine. She got a Travel Pro.

Laura, that is true about Insight but we will arrive in Rome a day early. Next year we will take a river cruise. So I thought, "Why not now since we will go back to Europe next year anyway?"

Traveling Woman I totally missed the part in your OP that you've been taking a bag that weighs 40# when packed. I agree with the other previous posters that it's a good idea to think about packing differently for your upcoming trip to Italy in November. If you think about layering, base colors and some small accessories you should have an easier time switching to a smaller, lighter more manageable suite case. The 21" spinner I bought several years ago is always enough for me and we travel 4-5 weeks at a time in Europe each year. It doesn't matter if its summer, fall, winter or spring; I can get a week's worth of clothes and extras packed if I can do laundry about once a week or a little bit at a time on the go.

A spinner bag will drive you nuts in Venice. Those tiny wheels are prone to breakage, and are pretty ordinary when it comes to bridges, boats and stone pavements. 40 pounds is massive for a three week trip.

I've had a 22" Delsey for some years now and it's worked fine with the two wheels. But it weighs (empty) close to nine pounds, and now that it's showing a lot of wear (most zipper pulls gone, lots of fraying) I'm thinking of getting something lighter. Spinners seem to be a lot more common now, but I'll stick with two wheels to save weight and because the only time I think a spinner would be easier would be on a smooth airport floor -- the least of my challenges handling the bag.

I don't really see the advantage of the spinner unless you plan to move it a long way through airports or on smooth sidewalks (seldom found in Europe). Four wheels means heavier plus double the breakage risk.

You're looking for a recommendation and I can't give you one because I'm on the same quest. For me, light weight is the key, as long as it's reasonably sturdy. I like the RS bags except for the logos. I know he's on TV but you'd think he could keep his name and face off his products. So best wishes in your search. If you make a great find, let me know and I'll do the same.

I really think that packing lite is really half mental. You have to believe you can do it. Forty pounds whether it is on two or four wheels is a lot of weight. Forty pounds on four wheels is driving the straight down into every hole and broken sidewalk. I will not bore you with the force vectors to prove that point. Four wheels may be great rolling down the smooth aisle in a train or an airport - but you hate on the cobblestone of most European circle and dragging it over the steep bridges in Venice. Two wheels are better because your are pulling (again force vectors), the two wheels tend to be much bigger so that don't get caught in the smallest cracks.

We really need to rethink what makes up your 40 pounds. We do a lot cruises in Europe and the extra clothes/shoes/etc for the cruise fits into one extra, two wheel rolling carry on for both us. This is in addition to the carry on side bag that each of us uses normally. And total weigh for all three bags is less than 60 pounds.

....never have enough jeans to last a week...... Curious - how many pairs of jeans do you need each week? That could really be adding to your weigh. Jeans are heavy. We never take jeans. Much prefer easier care and lighter fabrics.

Hi,

Between the two: four wheels. I use a Samsonite 4 wheeler, great...much better than a two wheeler. I can't imagine 40 pounds. The max I put in the Samsonite is 30 lbs. for summer travel, whether for two weeks or over two months in Europe. Keep in mind that you have to move this weight yourself on to a train rack. Of course if I reduce it to ca 27, even better for getting up and down staircases in train stations.

I couldn't imagine traveling with a filled suitcase weighing 40 pounds! Regardless of the time of year, please do yourself a big, big favor and look at previous postings on similar topics about packing lighter. You don't want to end up with a sore back from lifting or twisting trying to maneuver your suitcase any place. The five blocks of walking in Vancouver was an excellent exercise. Whatever your final plan, give it the actual walking test before your trip, also.

Just for reference, we travel to Europe each year for a 2-3 week trip, and I travel a lot for week-long work trips. For all of those trips, I only bring my carry-on suitcase (an Eddie Bauer Expedition), and my husband uses the RS roller carry-on.

Enjoy your time in Italy!

Let's see, what I need in Italy are . . .

1 Sweatshirt
2 LS t-shirts
1 cardigan
Rain jacket
1 bra
12 undies
2 jeans/pants
12 pairs of socks
1 pajamas set
Toiletries
Battery chargers

That is much less than what I packed for my Alaska cruise and two days in Victoria. But the way Mom is, I don't see how she will trim it down. No matter how hard she tries, she can't keep it under 25 pounds.

Fortunately Insight Vacations will handle luggage and take us to the airport in Venice so we don't have to worry about our bags there. Rome is another story because we will be on our own upon arrival. We will not ride any trains. Does that affect whether 2 or 4 wheels, regardless of weight, are better in Italy?

For your long sleeve tees I recommend you look at Lands End cotton modal blend or another brand of not-100% cotton. They wash easily and dry quickly. I also like their heat crew long underwear tops. I size up and wear them as a shirt.

This will appall you but I recommend cutting your socks back to 4 pr. It won't be hot and you can wear them for more than 1 day especially if you look at getting merino wool (Smartwool is one brand). I will tell you that long ago and far away I lived in Gainesville and never would I have considered wearing a pr of socks twice!! Yikes! The Smartwool makes all the difference.

You might consider an outer layer that will pack flatter than a sweatshirt. Depending on how cold it is and how cold natured you are you might be able to manage with your rain layer and a polarfleece vest.

"my mom said most people have spinners now"

And if your mom said that most people let their kids play on the freeway ....?

Your mom's not the expert on travel. "Most people" do dumb things.

If your bag weighs 40#, you are packing too much. If my bag weighed 40#, I might want a roller (or a spinner, too). But wheeled luggage just facilitates over-packing. Learn to get the weight down in the first place to what you can carry and ditch the wheels.

I can imagine travelling with at least a 35# suitcase...because my mom did when she came with us to Italy and it was horrid.

Quick backstory - hubby and I adhere to the small carryon around 22# for our Europe travel (it's hard to sacrifice stuff out of the suitcase!). Trips of upwards 23 days. Usually ranging from mid-Sept to mid-Oct...and hubby only wears jeans, so he carries 2 and wears one. I tend now to lighter capri pants and a pair of jeans for the plane and rainy/cooler days.

My mom joined us in 2014 to Italy. She had been in the UK for 3-4 weeks previous visiting my sister - which is why she had a lot of weight (she is still taking over stuff that my sister couldn't take when she moved over in 2007, so she takes a big checked bag and a smaller carry on). So we picked her up in Portsmouth, flew to Naples, then Amalfi/Rome/Venice.

Her large bag weighed about 35# (we had a lot of 'bring back fudge' requests, so a lot of my sister's stuff taken over was replaced with bags of fudge from Thorntons...lol), and my poor husband ended up being the pack horse. He got to drag the big bag, I got to drag two of the carryons and mom had one...plus we all had a personal size bag as well. After a few minutes of dragging that monster bag, that 35 soon felt like 75#. So I know where you are coming from re : Vancouver. Hindsight being what it was, we should have left her large bag in the UK, and paid for train tickets for one of the grandkids come up to London with it as we flew home from there and it would have been so much easier not dragging it around. It only reinforced my conviction to travel light.

And Venice can even take a toll on good quality wheels on pricier bags. We had a piece of 2 wheeler Atlantic luggage and the covering came off one of the wheels while humping it over a bridge. I've since replaced it with one of the RS bags. I'd hate to see what Venice would do to a spinner! I do find that the 2 wheelers can get heavy (even at 22#) if you have to drag em a ways, but after hearing about spinners on cobbles and breaking free and rolling down hills, I'll stick with the 2 wheeler.

...also, I'm one of those people who will keep my old ratty undies and almost worn out socks and discard them along the way on vacation. (I know, I know, why does Europe want my trash?!). I'll take about 6-8 old undies depending on how long we are travelling for (socks less so because we travel when it's warmer and I'm usually in sandals, so I may take 3 pair max) - wear em a few days and toss em. I'll take a few good undies and rinse them in the sink if we are somewhere more than a few days.

Our family of 4 (2 adults + 2 kids) did a great joy or traveling light last summer. We each had one 21 inch carry on. However, I absolutely refuse to skimp on the socks and undies. i can wear a pair of shorts, capris, or jeans for several days, but I need a clean pair of fresh socks everyday, and sometimes I just like to change into a pair of fresh socks. We walk a lot! 10 pairs of socks & undies can be rolled very tightly, fit into a small packing cube and don't weigh that much. I love my family but hand washing 4 sets of underwear in a hotel sink is not my idea of a vacation.

I was against spinners for a while, because the wheels looked so bad. Some of them do have pretty good ones now. I recently bought Travelpro Spinner and have used it a few times. You can easily pull it on two wheels on rough pavement. We used it in New Orleans. No cobblestones, but some pretty rough pavement there. It only weighs 6 lbs. Travelpro also has a two wheeled version. Macy's has frequent sales on it.

(Where's Lee to tell us all to reduce our stuff to 3 lbs and carry it on our back? ;))

How about 2 bras and six undies and pairs of soxs. Just hand wash in the sink. You will probably need something warmer than a sweatshirt at the end of November.

As stated earlier, the packing advice on this website is really good. Maybe you'll be able to influence your mom and save her from a future back injury.
Also, instead of thinking about luggage only for Italy, try to think of what other overseas traveling you may do in the future.

Glad you asked the question.

Ha ha Karen, Lee already chimed in and told the OP to "ditch the wheels".

Bets, I did state in my OP I am thinking about later trips to Europe, including a river cruise next year.

Underwear and socks are the smallest things people wear so I need to concentrate on bigger items. I always pack only one bra.

I've been on the packing light bandwagon since my first trip to Europe in 1977. I pack for a week and a day, following the guidance many have listed already. I do sink washing when needed, but prefer to slow down about once a week to go to a real laundry and do it myself or have the laundry do it for me. Many places I have stayed will wash, dry and fold it all in a big load together and charge a per kilo price similar to what it costs to do it myself. You don't have to pay 2 EUR per pair of panties.

Beyond my personal methods I highly recommend that you take a look at Sarah Murdoch's blog on this topic at http://adventureswithsarah.net/. She leads tours for RS and also has a packing light Travel Talk video on this website at https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/video/travel-talks/packing-light. She does a very good job of showing how to layer and change how you look with amazingly few items.

Another option is always the Vivienne Files for clothing coordination.

Full disclosure here: I don't take as much stuff as either of these women take. Having grown up in Texas and living in AZ, the solution to staying warm was always to throw a jacket or sweater over my year-round clothes in the morning and discard it by noon. Layering was foreign to me. Both blogs and the video show how to layer well.

As for luggage, I have a 22" spinner that weighs 6 pounds and a 20" 2-wheeled bag that weighs 5 pounds. I just got back from a domestic trip using the smaller bag. When it put it in the sizer, it squished in fine for the depth, the height was considerably shorter (that 2" less looked more like 4", but it was a Delta sizer) and the width was perfect. We were gone for a week. The trip taught me what I wore, what I didn't and what to leave out for my 6-week trip to the UK. Regardless of which bag I end up taking overseas, I keep the total weight to 20 pounds. If it's over, I remove stuff until it's not, and/or change what I wear on the plane so as to lower the weight in the bag. I love my Lipault spinner, but I sure did find that Eagle Creek Load Warrior easier to lift and carry, even at the same weight.

What is a sizer? I don't know anything about different luggage companies except two of the best are Travel Pro and Samsonite.

I will not worry about the weight and what to pack before deciding if my suitcase should have two wheels or four wheels.

A sizer is the measuring device at the airport that you use to verify if your bag is carry on size.

Peter, I always know whether a bag will fit or not because I know what size to look for while shopping for luggage. Expanding a bag is necessary if I use a carry-on size, which makes it too big to fit in a sizer. So I never need to put bags in them. If only Southwest was an international airline . . .

I saw yr note about 4 posts back,,,,,i always back a spare bra. even when I have inspected it carefully before leaving, I have had bras implode from the extra reaching over the head, etc, spurge & pack a spare if yr gone 13 days

@ Traveling Woman....moving 25-30 lbs on 4 wheels is much easier than pulling the same weight on two wheels. On the sidewalk or inside a train station it's like gliding the Sansonite on 4 wheels as you're walking, works perfect for me.

Check luggage ratings and recommendations from Consumer Reports (which you probably subscribe to, if not find library or online).

You may think that your bag will taken care of most of the time, but I guarantee you are going to need to deal with it yourself for much of the trip. My travel partner overpacked and guess who "couldn't carry it" and guess who had to take it over?

All of these complaints about spinners make me wonder why most people have them.

Because most of people traveling to other countries go on organized tours or cruises. A lot of the time their luggage is delivered to their room or cabin for them. Also, all we see in stores now are four wheels at popular price points. The better the quality line, more likely there will be sturdy two-wheel bags.

You happened to ask your question on a Forum where the vast majority are independent travelers who do our own planning, hauling, and research. Our style of travel usually involves walking on surfaces that would kill four wheels. If Fred and Mona have gone over to the other side, we still love them because they have so many other good qualities.

Spinners are just fine - until you leave the airport.

Thanks Bets for still loving us...we'll be taking our carry on spinners to 3 different countries for our 4+ week trip this summer. I think we've had them for 4-5 years with no complaints. My husband bought his 2 years ago when he crushed a vertebra in his back and can no longer use his JandD backpack and the pull of a 2 wheeler is a strain on his back. Me, I just love maneuvering mine along tight spaces like train aisles and crowded places, pushed slightly in front of me. It's light enough that I can grab it's handle and carry it up stairs easily when necessary. I was starting to struggle getting my backpack on and off without bruising my arms so I said no more to my 20 year old frameless backpack that I bought at the factory back in the day in Santa Barbara. So far, so good.

I have a large spinner suitcase for my travel to the US for vacations. It rolls just fine on the cobble stone sidewalks of Frankfurt. If need be, I tilt it and roll it on just 2 of the wheels. No problems at all. It does roll so nicely at the airport and the train stations. For me, there is little difference between the 2 styles, except it is a lot easier on the arms and shoulders using the spinner type.

Thanks for the compliment. One advantage with a 4 wheeler is that it can be pulled as a two wheeler when needed. If using it as a four wheeler is too taxing in terms of resistance, I pull it as a two wheeler, otherwise it can glided along. It's how you limit the weight that helps in tossing it onto a train rack plus quickly getting on and off the trains

Spinners are great for me when I do domestic airport travel for work. Recreational travel is different because I can't pull the spinners on cobblestone or other rough terrain. I need 2 wheeled bags in Paris.

I recommend the Samsonite 4 wheel spinner, perfect for my way of traveling especially when using trains a lot.

It looks like I obviously need to use my carry-on bag and let Mom use the bigger Delsey because we will be walking on cobblestones.

Based on experience from my fellow colleagues and frequent business travellers to exotic destinations, spinners' wheels break more frequently. Just two, but larger wheels are better outside of airports, hotels or cruise ships. Go for a two-wheeled duffle bag rather than a two-wheeled suitcase, because it fits through the narrow aisle in the train. Buy the size you need, rather than the maximum size allowed for check-in or carry-on. Fully and smartly packed even smaller bags easily reach the respective weight limit.