Aran Francis is giving teenagers – and cyclists – a good name. What has this keen enduro rider learnt from riding for a cargo bike delivery service?
This morning I got up ready to go for a ride, but instead of putting on my knee pads and body armour ready to throw myself down yet another hill, I put on a high-vis jacket and swung my leg over a cargo bike, as I have been doing every weekday morning this week. For me this shift in routine from weekend enduro and downhill mountain biking to e-cargo bike delivery is almost as exciting as zip tying a race plate to the front of my bike on a cold Sunday morning. It’s exciting to play a part in one of the most interesting forms of bicycle riding that is currently emerging. Whilst cargo biking isn’t anything new, with early three-wheeled versions making their way around the streets of Amsterdam in the early 1900s, the electric bike revolution in the last decade or so has presented great opportunities for cargo biking as a sustainable approach to delivery and transport.
The idea is simple, a standard electric bike with essentially a large bucket on the front which can carry almost anything from trousers to lentils. Companies such as Cargodale, based in Todmorden and Hebden Bridge, are able to utilise these bikes as a last leg or first leg of a delivery, avoiding the need to use a van for short journeys to the post office and preventing delivery vans clogging up tight country lanes.
This two metre-long bike with a tiny front wheel and awkward handling could not be more different from the heavy duty enduro bikes that I am used to riding, designed for muscling through rocks and negotiating tight and steep tracks in the woods. Yet I couldn’t be happier riding a cargo bike on a regular basis. Not only is cargo biking extremely sustainable, reducing air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and, since the bikes aren’t restricted to main roads, congestion too, but there’s a real buzz to be had from pedal powering two wheels carrying up to 200kg of cargo and manoeuvring that weight from A to B.
The electric motor works in the same way as any other electric bike; with several levels of assistance which the rider can choose, when it gets tough, just flip the switch to turbo and float your 50kg payload up a 1 in 4 hill. Although there is more to a cargo bike than just using an electric motor, I was confident that the move from enduro to cargo bike would be fairly straightforward – confidence which quickly evaporated. The bikes are simply different to anything I’ve experienced before – the front wheel sits a metre away from handlebars, making the steering a tough sensation to become accustomed to. However, after two or three wobbles around the park and more than a few incidents of oversteer on the hairpins which characterise the Hebden Bridge delivery routes, I am now pretty used to the ride. In fact now that I am used to the cargo bike I would go almost as far as saying it can handle better on roads than my enduro bike – up to a point. When fully laden, this bike is impressively stable in a straight line – almost the bike equivalent of moving from a car to a lorry, as its handling on tight corners is a lot more troublesome.
Riding a cargo bike is really rewarding for me, it’s a job that I get up in the morning and want to do. Not only am I being paid to ride, which is not much short of a childhood dream, but the connection to the local business community and indeed the responses of passersby is a huge bonus. Aside from interactions with clients, I have noticed that the interactions with the public are far more positive on the cargo bike than they are when I’m on my mountain bike. The cargo bike certainly is a wacky looking creation which draws the eyes of pedestrians and many passersby are keen to share their excitement over the bike with me. People seem naturally more willing to give way and are without doubt more polite to me when I am on the cargo. In contrast, on the mountain bike I’m often met with hostility and people refusing to give way. To some extent, I attribute this to the image that mountain biking presents, and possibly bad experiences with a minority of badly behaved riders, giving the whole community an image of hooliganism. This has highlighted the importance of taking care to be extra polite on the mountain bike to counteract this misguided reputation. In contrast, cargo biking presents an image of a positive, sustainable and friendly form of cycling. Riding smugly past the heavy queues at the petrol stations this week, blissfully unaffected by the recent petrol panic, brings home just how important cargo biking is for a sustainable future as a clean alternative to a van, resilient to the political uncertainties of the 2020s.
However, it is not all positive, and the question of how drivers view the cargo bike rider compared to the mountain bike rider reveals some unhappy answers. The extra girth takes more road space and the cargo bike often needs to be ridden assertively in the middle of the road, to the inevitable frustration of car and truck drivers, at times leading to dangerous overtakes and rash decisions. On the most part, cars are patient but curb squeezing or dangerous tailgating are sadly not rare.
Whilst I’ve been lucky to have the opportunity to ride a cargo bike as part of a business, these bikes could be more than a delivery workhorse; whether you are a downhill racer or a die hard roadie if you have a love for two wheels there is a lot to learn from riding a cargo bike, and you may even be impressed by how much you can achieve without having to use your car. Have a look in your area and see if there are open/ taster days and book yourself for a go!
