We bought Samsonite hard luggage about 20 years ago...the cases are much thicker and stronger than the ones sold today. Trouble is they only have 2 wheels located at one corner of the case and the little pull handle at the side...so they are much harder to wheel than the 4 wheel type. We've recently bought a couple of poly-carbonate suitcases...much lighter and they are supposed to be stronger than today's hardshell cases.

Case closed.

Haha, very funny

You should have stayed 'outside' of this thread Alfresco

Cooler

That's very good. The other thing about holdalls is that they fold down wheras suitcases remain the same size and can take up space if you are staying in a small holiday rental as we di for two weeks.

Cheers,
Cooler

I'll zip it then.

Depends on your custom(s)

Cooler

Just can't get a handle on this thread. Its not my bag baby

It's my duty.

Get a grip will you!

Feeling a bit lost now.

I agree with the sports bag/soft trolly bag types. I weighed our old cases and they were 5.5 kilos each so off they went to the car boot sale. Got bags from ebay that weigh between 1 and 2 kilos each. Perfect for when we moved out here.

We find a combination works best for us.

We have:
-two large soft suitcases that can be wheeled around.
-two med/large luggage bags that are generally folded up and put in the top of each suitcase. So we can travel light back to Canada and then pull out and use the luggage bag as extra luggage to bring back all the stuff we seem to return with. Plus, it's easier to store in our house as large suitcases take up a lot of room.
-small kids rolling suitcases to fit in the overhead locker (we have Dora and Diego, so they are still pretty small)
-backpags for our carry-on as they are small, carry a lot and are easy to store in the suitcases when we are done with them
-Hard case specifically for our golf clubs. When we brought them over we stuck both sets of clubs in one bag and put in the case (no weight limit). When we got here we bought an extra golf bag.

If you have 4 kids and want to get one piece of luggage for each person then I would suggest you get about 2-3 large suitcases and then 3 slightly smaller ones that would store inside the large ones when not in use. This could be the next suitcase size down from the large or a luggage ba to take up even less space. I definitely wouldn't get 4-6 suitcases all the same size as storage in your house would be a nightmare unless you've got massive amount of garage space or closet space.

The other advantage to the luggage bags is that if you ever have difficulty fitting it all in a rental car at the other end you could as a last resort unpack the luggage bags and fold it up and then spread the contents around the car in every nook and cranny you could find! This of coruse fills all the gaps that are left by the large pieces of luggage. This might not seem like something you would want to do but we did actually have to resort to this one time and if we didn't have those luggage bags we would have had to make two trips to get all of our luggage home.

Also... a luggage bag is a lot nicer to have laying across your lap rather than a suitcas.

I've used my hard suitcases for over 12 years and they're still going strong. Only problem is they're bloody heavy. I'd go for a mix of soft and hard. Use the soft bags to put inexpensive stuff and the hard bags to put all the delicate/more expensive stuff.

We bought a couple of USA made hard Samsonites of the maximum size permitted on most planes, that was well over twenty years ago, they've been round the world almost every year and on a few other trips, they weigh 2.2 Kgs. Almost every flight attendant uses them. Samsonite are now made in other countries. We looked at one of the large soft cases with zips only last week, the weight was just under five Kgs, they were on display in our local shopping centre, they had many different sizes at low prices but we found that you could only buy a complete set. There is no such thing as cheap good luggage.

Time to pack it in then?

Case dismissed!