I'm considering purchasing a 28" hardside luggage so that I can check as much as possible. The one I'm think about is 12 lbs. 5 oz. and is 60 linear inches.
My biggest concern is that with all of the room I'll get, will it be hard to keep under a 50 pound weight limit? Does anyone have a bag this size and is constantly struggling with its weight?
I do, and I don't struggle with the weight, but I religiously eject all dense fabrics from my entire family's travel wardrobe. (This is when packing for domestic trips. Overseas requires more complex strategy.)
Why would you want to bring so much?
I use a 21" roll aboard and stick to whatever fits in there. We just did a 10-day ski trip, and each of us used one of those for the trip. (So, puffy ski pants, goggles, all that extra stuff.) It worked. Give it a try; it's very liberating.
Well, when I travel alone I *do* pack very light, but when traveling with my children (and especially when transiting through multiple countries) going through the "slow" line while someone manually searches several bags for your party gets old. One bag for the entire group is very convenient on trains and buses.
I'm going to be headed for a 6 month trip to Africa and Europe so I want to take as much as possible. It depends on who I fly with as to how many bags I get to take without overage fees of course, but I'm also considering using it for our annual two week trips to WDW.
Also, I'm already not the lightest packer around, I tend to lean towards eliza's feelings. I'm getting sick of having to pack light or not get certain souvenir because of condensing things.
As for the weight in the luggage itself, it is one of the lightest I could find that I am willing to buy. I only one is less but it's 65 linear inches and all of the softside bags are in the 15 pound range. That is, also being in the 27-29" size.
Joking comments aside, on a long trip like that you are traversing seasons, so you may even need to switch wardrobes halfway through the trip, so do consider the possibility of shipping at some point. On public transit I have always found that fewer items to keep track of is always better, even if fewer equals larger. That said, I have a few techniques. The most common one that I use when attempting to get an entire family's things into one case for foreign ground transit issues is the bag-in-bag split-packing method.
Split-packing assumes that you WILL go overweight for the airline check, and therefore also assumes that you will check two bags with the airline. The trick is that when you are on the ground, one of those bags lives inside of the other. It is always cheaper to pay for a second bag than to try to check one that is overweight or, horror of horrors, oversized. To this end, I use a hardside bag that is only a smidge under the 62" limit, and also a large soft cloth duffel that weighs about 11 oz. I pack the hardside around halfway full, and then put the remainder of the volume into the duffel in compression bags, then put the duffel inside the hardside to head to the airport. When I arrive at the checkin desk I remove the duffel, put zip-ties on both, and check them both. When I arrive at my destination's baggage claim I claim both bags, check for damage and inventory the contents, then put the duffel back inside the hardside and roll on out of the airport and onto a train. Normally the combined load will weigh about 75-80 lbs.
For about 30 years now, the classic world traveller's case has been the Samsonite polypropylene Oyster. If you have ever transited through Heathrow you have seen thousands of them, often in the most garish colours imaginable:
About 4 years ago Samsonite updated it with the F'lite line, which unlike the Oyster has a telescoping pull handle. It weighs a bit more, but not too much. The 30" F'lite measures at EXACTLY 62" linear inches, and closes with a rubber gasket seal that will keep out rain, dust, and bugs (something to think about when it will ride strapped on the roof of a rural bus.) It comes in both 2-wheel (10#) and spinner (10.5#) versions, and if you haven't considered it in this context, you probably should take a look.
(I work with several folks who travel back and forth to Africa quite frequently; they all use a F'Lite. If you can't lift a fully-loaded 30" over your head to get it onto a bus, there is also a 28".) A common emergency modification I've seen is the addition of screwed-on metal eyes on both halves of the case, so that if in the unlikely event that someone does decide to smash your lock, you can run a wire padlock through the eyes and keep it closed anyway.
some one once suggested that when I go to Europe, I take one pair of shoes and 1 pair of sneakers. I suggested they get a life. 
Because they are the super lightweight material, I can fit more into them.
The piece is very large so I am surprised it's as low in weight as it is.
