Comment 9 for bug 193195

Hm, ok, there must be a more severe bug inside the program.

The first thing you mentioned was the fact that
trickle -u 8 wget -c http://neacm.fe.up.pt/pub/ubuntu-releases/gutsy/ubuntu-7.10-desktop-i386.iso
downloads only with 10 K/s and this can be explained by looking in the code above.
Setting the -d xxxx option works, it your download will be as fast as you want to.

So i checked out what goes on with the upload.
I used the tool you proposed, nethogs:
trickle -u 8 -d 1000 wget -c http://neacm.fe.up.pt/pub/ubuntu-releases/gutsy/ubuntu-7.10-desktop-i386.iso

Now nethogs shows me an upload value of ca. 6 k/s with short peaks at 12 K/s measured over 1 minute

And now comes the really weired thing, exchanging the -u and the -d option, like you wrote above
i get an upload value at ca. 34 K/s with peaks at 40 K/s which is all my connection is able to transfer.

Maybe you can try exchanging the options and see if it does change anything.