Joplin man invents "bike-a-basket"

According to a Joplin Globe article, Jene Baldwin invented the "bike-a-basket" 25 years ago but only recently has an area tech school taken an interest in manufacturing them:

Basically, the bike-a-basket was a basket on a trailer pulled by a bike. Jene used his bike-a-basket to run errands, deliver meals to the elderly, collect and haul recyclable materials, and generally to help out around town.

The Joplin man certainly wasn’t the first person to slap a trailer behind a bicycle, but there was something different about the bike-a-basket.

First of all, the frame connecting the trailer to the back of Jene’s bicycle was low to the ground. The low center of gravity, he said, made it much easier to tow the trailer. Perhaps the most unique part of Jene’s contraption was the hitch that connected the bike to the trailer. The hitch rotated, allowing the basket to stay upright even if the bike were to fall over.