Ortlieb Back Roller Classic Bicycle Panniers - Why did they fail?

Ortleib products have set the standards for many years in all things cycling and expedition. But after 3 weeks bicycle touring southern Italy, I now wonder if Ortleib standards are slipping - at least in terms of their ubiquitous Back Roller Classic rear pannier.

Bicycle panniers have to be strong and we all want them to be as light as possible. The challenge for manufactures like Ortlieb is making sure that strength isn't compromised in favour of lightweight materials. This is what I think might have happened, but let me give you a tiny bit of back story to help explain a comparison between Ortlieb panniers bought years apart.

I bought my trusted Ortlieb back roller panniers about 7 years ago in 2010 from a cycle shop in south England. Since then I have cycled over 8000 miles with them through Europe and beyond over all sorts of terrain and they have proved to be virtually indestructible, if not completely bullet proof!

My great friend and occasional cycling companion Nigel, bought his Ortlieb back roller panniers in 2015. The only obvious external difference is the bottom rack clip which, on the newer ones is adjustable without needing a screw driver. An improvement in usability for sure.

In 2015 we both flew to Georgia from our respective homes in England and Australia. We cycled from Tbilisi to Batumi over 14 days. This was the first time Nigel had used his (blue) panniers. The roads in Georgia often turned to gravel and rutted tracks, but all four of our Ortlieb panniers performed without complaint. This is the kind of benchmark reliability that cyclists all over the world have come to expect from Ortlieb products. They are made in Germany and they do what they promise to do - Vorsprung durch something or other.

We have just got home from a cycling tour of southern Italy. We rode 2 KTM bicycles from Rome down the beautiful coast line to Calabria. 600km or so of stunning roads hilly tracks.

While riding through the back streets of Naples we noticed that one of Nigel's panniers had come loose. We stopped to take a look and saw that one of the main screws holding the rail on had stripped right out of it's fixing.


This was the last thing we had expected to see. I'd never had any problems with my panniers, and we assumed both were constructed the same way.

My panniers had taken significantly more punishment than Nigel's over the last 7 years, so we suspected a design change might have compromised the strength of the new ones.

We decided to try and find out how it had happened by examining the fixings and comparing them to my older pannier fixings.

If it was a design weakness, then we would have to reinforce the rest of the fixings to make sure we didn't lose the pannier completely.

Bungee ropes and cable ties might come in handy.

Stopping in a Naples backstreet we discovered that there were some differences in design between my panniers and Nigel's newer ones.

Nigel's pannier rail fixing screws are held by a disc shaped plastic nut. Two of these have had their thread stripped by the screws being forced out. You can see the one of the screws below just after it came out, still with parts of the plastic thread that stripped from the nut.

On my older panniers this fixing is different.

I unscrewed my fixing to take a closer look that revealed what we'd suspected - a different fixing nut. This nut is deeper and evidently stronger.

I wonder if Ortlieb have reverted back to using this kind of nut in their latest models?

There was no way we could use the fixing now since the screw had stripped the thread out of it.

Nigel had some cable ties and used them to secure the pannier back to his bike. Hopefully this would reinforce the remaining 2 fixings.

A few miles later we noticed that the cable tie had come lose and the middle fixing had now also stripped out.

I decided to contact Ortlieb via twitter. Perhaps they could help us find a replacement on route.

In the meantime Nigel re attached the cable ties and then added bungee support to hug the panniers to the rack. This took the pressure off the cable ties and fixings to allowed us to continue cycling south.


We got a well intentioned twitter response from OrtliebUSA later the same day.

I was put in touch with Ortlieb in Germany by email.

I'm sure they did their best to help us out but it seemed that once the conversation moved to private emails, the public pressure was off and Ortleib in Europe failed to follow through with their promise of help. After one email asking us what our route was, we  heard nothing more.

Maybe there was nothing they could do without a dealer close to us?

Perhaps all they wanted to do was take the conversation away from social media?


Nigel's panniers just about survived the 3 week tour, held in place by cable ties and bungee supports.

I haven't seen a 2017 Ortlieb back roller close up so I don't know if this issue is resolved but Nigel's 2015 panniers are evidently not as robust as the ones I have from 2010.

It does seem very strange that the fixing nuts are so different. Why would Ortlieb change something that works so well?

Update 29th may. 

I am very happy to say that Ortlieb sent out replacement panniers to Nigel in Australia. 

His panniers were from a faulty 2014 batch and all fixings before and since are the same as the ones I have, which I highly recommend.

Thank you Rebecca M at Ortlieb for your great help and understanding dealing with this issue.