“But tradespeople can’t carry their stuff around by bike” – oh yes they can! How cargo bikes are changing the way people work

A friend tried a cargo bike from a hire pool near his home. Narrow streets, pedestrians, ebikers, pedal cycles, children, old folk, parked cars and cargo bikes. Concluded he and everyone needed practice, training, full Highway Code testing. Heavy loaded is huge inertia to turn and park. Public liability insurance essential or face life changing costs if you get something wrong.
Some trades will work, some won't. Ladders, lots of heavy metal tools soon get extremely heavy - ok in straight line but very dangerous on a bend with black ice. Braking distance. Especially downhill?
In principle, I'd like one. In practice, a trailer for my urban pedal bike might work (but I couldn't ride it up SE London hills like we live on). Many folk have nowhere to park them. Back to complete rethink about how we use roads in UK

Tools, spare parts, and other things I carry with me daily take up about a quarter of the space in my ford van, roughly 1750 litres. I also have several ladders, as well as lengths of pipe on the outside of my van. I would need a trailer 14ft long and 6ft wide, just for the ladders. Not to mention without an engine, I would have to choose between charging power tools and using the electric motor on the bike. E bikes have great utility. Last mile delivery and commuting are perfect use cases, but they are not practical as service vehicles at this point.

I'm a self-employed plumber using only a cargo bike for work in Bristol. I started my business a year ago with the bike and it's the best thing I could've done. No problem on Bristol's many hills (electric assist), no parking charges, no getting stuck in traffic becuase I can use bike lanes... I've adapted the bike so I can carry 3m lenghts of pipe, and bulkier stuff I can get delivered to wherever I'm working. I carry all the tools I need, no problem, and no one has yet tried to break into the locked box. The bike lives in a shed I built in the tiny space in front of my terraced house. I know this wouldn't work so well in a rural area but in the city it's a winner and more tradespeople should try it. See for yourself @plumbergreaves

I have made cargo bikes and like everyone here advocate for less people driving and getting on your bike. I'm sure we also have a tale to tell about white van men too but there's a reason why white vans are the backbone of western civilisation.

I think that a bit like these discussions you get when purple-haired girls are asked 'what men bring to the table' and they are unable to think of a single thing. What it really says is they are totally ignorant what builds the modern environment and maintains it. Thinking a self-employed trades-person would be thriving using a cargo bike is largely fantasy for all but a pretty narrow range of scenarios. In fact for many trades-people even cycling at the end of a day's work is an ask because it's often physically demanding doing a days work. Assembling a bit of IKEA furniture on the weekend doesn't qualify your average journalist or white collar worker to know what it feels like on a Friday afternoon when you are a groundworker, labourer or scaffolder. I could list a bunch more trades but believe me, some jobs don't lend themselves to riding home 10 miles on a modern bike let alone a hefty cargo bike with 25kg of tools uphill after a days work.

Safety bikes have been around since 1885 and cargo bikes arrived hot on their heels. Even when people didn't have access to motor vehicles they would still opt for a donkey/horse and cart or hand cart over cargo bikes. In third world counties, cargo bikes can help productivity but then in some countries there are gangs of people carrying heavy stuff up mountains in sub zero temperatures wearing very short shorts and flip flops... So people do stuff because they have to not because it's the best option. Willing us back to technology that was second or third choice in the 19th century is like a lot of the current environmental do-gooding. It's not really thought through.

Today although auxillary electric propulsion adds a lot to the proposition, cargo bikes haven't come on enormously in the past 150 years and don't get close to the utility of a van. Human powered, you are looking at about 120watts and that means you can't move much in terms materials or tools any sort of distance. In any practical sense you need fairly flat places to move load. With gradient it's not just going up hills, coming down hills with weight means you need a whole different class of brakes etc. Believe me I set out with intention to make a really light cargo bike using carbon fibre etc and by the time I was finished to make it strong enough to carry load and stop it was a hefty hector. If I wanted CE certification to manufacture it, it would probably be 30% heavier. With electric assistance the question is less about cargo bikes and more about light electric vehicles.

If you've seen rickshaws that are designed to move a couple of people...That's maybe 150kg load...You are restricted to walking pace and those posts we have here where people are moving a sofa or wardrobe will almost certainly have experienced a whole new level of road rage riding at 5 mph, forming a rolling road block to other road users. Sure it can be done at everyone else's expense over short distances but that sort of exception isn't the rule for your average self employed trades person and you can probably get away with it because so few people do it. If there were hundreds of people riding round London slowly with wardrobes and sofas I'm sure there would be a drive-per-mile tax on them in a heartbeat.

There are loads more problems too. You can't carry more tools than you can carry in one go or they will be stolen as you move between your cargo bike and work place. It's bad enough with a van and they are way more secure than a cargo bike... and of course there's a fair chance your cargo bike will get nicked whilst you are working anyway. Even white collar workers commuting by bike know it's always a welcome treat to find your bike is still there when you want to go home. Cargo bikes aren't so easy to park up or store as normal bikes, especially ones able to carry bigger stuff. If you live in a city terrace you aren't going to get many brownie points from your flat mates parking your 35kg 12 foot long bike in the hallway and if you leave it in the street it's just a matter of time bore it's stolen because cargo bikes are EXPENSIVE.

If I just think about the 'extras' that have been picked up on the job in the past week for the project I'm on in addition to the big deliveries, there were a few sheets of plasterboard, several lengths of timber 3.3m to 6 m long, bags of cement, plaster, lime, 100m of armoured cable. Forget I'm in North Wales, it's hilly, the sellers are too far away, the stuff needs to stay dry and all that jazz, to maintain the built environment requires tons and tons of stuff. Even that spool of armoured cable that didn't look big weighed 145kg. Now obviously I could have ordered it all and wait for it to arrive but if you think you can run a business on a MyHermes schedule or whatever you will be out of business in a week. Several of those extras were on the van, so the work just continued. The rest was picked up.

Don't get me wrong cargo bikes will amaze you in their carrying ability and utility but in any realistic sense they are limited in how much they could be adopted. There is enormous kudos for hipsters with clip-on man buns to be riding the roads of Hoxton with an artisan loaf of bread on the front but there is a reason why cargo bikes haven't featured heavily in the self-employed-trades scene that keeps Britain going. The business of building and maintaining the modern environment requires lots and lots of energy to move millions of tons of materials, tools machinery and manpower every day. A human is good for 120 watts. Fine for a local handy man or window cleaner with a local round but not realistically for self-employed full-time trades people (let alone someone in a hilly city like bath or anyone outside a city where jobs, home and suppliers are spread out). Sadly we aren't just selling ice cream on the sea front.

Of course there will be some activities that don't work without a van, but probably fewer than most people think.
I've been gardening by bike (not in London) for 25 years, and have never thought of it as anything special. Maybe even a bit old-fashioned. Makes total sense as far as my situation is concerned: most of my trips are only 2-3 miles, urban streets or through town centre, so it's no slower than driving, and I never have to worry about traffic or parking restrictions.
You don't necessarily need an expensive cargo bike either. My current 'company vehicle' is a very basic steel-framed rigid MTB-style hybrid thing from Halfords to which I've added a sturdy rear rack to accommodate a tradesman's bag with lots of storage and a pannier for sticking out things like loppers. If it gets nicked, or knackered by potholes, I’ll just get another one.
I have wondered about a cargo bike or trailer, but most people already have lawnmowers and big stuff like spades and rakes, so not much point carting those around. And I like the speed and nippiness of a normal bike in traffic (it's surprising how little the load I carry affects handling), and the option to go off-road when necessary.
Mind you, some of those delivery bikes are seriously impressive, and look as if they might be rather fun . . .

This is a perfect example of the silly things bikers do ,this trailer is seriously overloaded for the power a bike can generate . There are strict laws about how much a vehicle can tow for the simple reason of braking ability , even on a slight hill this could never make it up or have enough power to brake going  down . A small trailor to carry tools to work or allotment fine but this is beyond dangerous 

Worked in the past and occasionally now with equipment that in total maybe was half my weight, moving around on a bicycle was never a viable option. There were some times that I was so physically tired, that trying to return to base, and having to pedal a super heavy bicycle, seemed just ridiculous. The closest attempt was in a certain project was to use the metro, as parking was hard and for this project, equipment was very limited, so in this particular case it made sense.

There are though more realistic improvements that can be made. One company had one of these huge pickup trucks, that was a menace to drive and very impractical, but in theory could go off-road and carry four people and a lot of cargo (we very rarely did). At a mission I proposed to the boss to rent a simple A-segment mini car, and it was much faster to operate.

I'm ashamed to say that, just for a milli-second, I wished Boris was back.

I mean if you are going less than 5km and the route is flat then sure but I live near Crystal Palace good luck with that. As a cyclist and a designer please stop trying sell bikes as a catch all solution to ensure bikes have road dominance, it rediculous.