When I started to shop around for a cargo bike, I wanted to get an idea of what people were riding in areas like mine. I never see any cargo bikes, but there has to be some out there right? When I go to a Ciclavia or similar, they come out of the woodwork and I see a few, mostly long tails, but there are some front loaders around too.
I wanted to make sure it can be ridden, and not stuck with odd gear ratios or being too heavy to push up hills.
Looking at reviews on-line, a lot of them seem to be from people that live in areas with some basic bicycle infrastructure – dedicated paths, lanes, and places to lock your bike up.
But here in Southern California, unless your in a beach city, there is almost zero bicycle infrastructure. Here and there they painted some lines on the road, but none of those lines intersect, or connect end to end. There’s no network, they’ll start somewhere, and usually dump out into a bad situation. Some areas are starting to make some progress, and setup some more dedicated lanes, but even those have problems – they use plastic barriers that cars destroy immediately and never fix.
Also, like plastic barriers, paint doesn’t stop cars. Tesla’s like to use them as private lanes. There’s often delivery trucks in them, and general fuckery from drivers.
Luckily, the law is on our side, though few know, and even less enforce. We can take the lane if we want. Do you have the ganas to do it though? Ya, now think about doing that when you have your kid on the bike too.
We used to live in a area that was low key a tiny little bit bicycle friendly, they painted lines on the road, and put up signs for drivers to ignore. But, there are some places to lock a bike up, and proper ones at that. It was zoned so you didn’t have miles and miles of homes and no local businesses nearby. I had short bike rides to three different markets, hardware stores, everything. I rarely drove, I loved it.
But, familial requirements beckoned me back to the area I’m in now. I would not call it bicycle friendly, in fact, quite the opposite, its pretty hostile to anything that is not a four wheeled vehicle. Everything is built around the car here. vast parking lots, sweeping freeway on/off ramps.
If you think riding a bike is bad, its gets even worse if your a pedestrian. Gnarly sidewalks, sketchy crossings across freeway on/off ramps, sidewalks that just end, and you need to walk on the road. Must be a nightmare for anyone in a wheelchair. Some places are just inaccessible, or you need to go a particular way that’s completely roundabout and meandering.
When we moved, I went from riding daily and doing most things on bike to rarely riding at all. On a more normal, single rider bike, cars are aggressive. Close passes, speeding past you just to slam their brakes to make a right turn in front of you. Ignoring or not bothering to take the time to see if someone is there, and swinging out. Even when I was bombing a hill 3 mph under the posted speed limit cars were still passing me go 15 mph over. It was crazy, and hey, I have a kid now, so why risk it?
Years passed, I missed riding. I would go out with my kid to safe places cars can’t be to ride. But ugh, driving around here sucks too. Star bellied sneeches (teslas) do what they want, nissans are crashing around everywhere, and emotional support trucks need everyone to pay attention to them or else. Traffic is never clear now, 3-5am is the only light traffic period.
Then my kid started to go to school, and oh my was drop off and pick up time an insane display of childishness, faux-privilege and “main character” behavior. So many cars that the neighborhood would grind to a halt, it would take 10-15 minutes just to get a couple blocks away.
I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore
That was the camel that broke the straws back. I was tired of it. Sick of where we lived, but can’t move yet. Sick of driving, but nothing was close. You know what, fuck em. I’m not going out like that. I don’t have to live like ‘them’, I don’t have to be miserable like ‘them’. I don’t need to feed the machine.
But we couldn’t get by with my oversized courier bag and front basket for groceries and errands. The kiddo can’t ride on my handlebars. I needed something that can take a whole week of groceries, can get bags of compost on the weekend, and just haul stuff around. I needed something to cut through school traffic.
So Many Choices, So Few Nearby
There’s a lot of cargo bikes out there. front loaders, long tails. Two wheels, or 3. Even when you start to whittle it down to specific types, there’s still a bunch of options out there. But one thing I didn’t take into consideration, even though I live near one of the major metropolises of the world – where you can get anything almost immediately – was what was available near by.
Once you look at it that way, there are a lot fewer options.
My first pick – A Larry vs Harry front loader would require a whole weekend roadtrip to northern California to pick up, and for some reason I would need to source the batteries from Canada or the east coast, and what about when I need to get it fixed/serviced? Looking at what was available in the greater area lead me to Riese & Muller cargo bikes.
At first, it seemed like a little too much bike, do I need a full suspension bike for urban riding? Not really.
The exoskeleton look of the cargo area was kinda cool, had a nice utilitarian look. Like a bike you would see in the cargo bay of the Sulaco. Most of the other front loaders had these smooth soft, bulky, cargo boxes.
In regards to drivetrains, they had me with the Rolhoff rear internal hub and gates belt drive. I was not too keen on a traditional rear derailleur and chain for hauling heavier weights, they wear quicker and need to be swapped out more. The Enviolo CTV hubs seemed kind of gimmicy. Disk brakes are all over the place now, including cargo bikes, so no biggie there, most had them.
It wasn’t until I took a handful of bikes on test rides that I was sold. The urban arrow was slow and bulky. The Enviolo hub was fine, but doesn’t hold up when compared to a Rolhoff.
Even the other Riese & Muller’s had some wonky steering (cable based). But the Load series of bikes had the best steering feeling, a more solid connection, less latency. They felt more nimble, the weight disappeared at the higher assist levels. When you look closer, there is a few options to how the cargo area is configured.
You can have a taller cargo area with a tarp over it for carrying larger loads. You can put shorter sidewalls on it (a few screws), and now it’s easy for a kid to climb into. You can remove the back board that the seats mount to and now you have a lower profile cargo area that doesn’t catch head winds as strong. Keep going, take the sidewalls off, backboard, and front wall, and roll the naked frame.
I ended up ordering a fully loaded Load 60, the 75 was a tiny bit too big for my needs. Rolhoff Hub (which only comes with the GPS head unit), dual battery, and higher power motor.
3 Months Later
Yea, so uh, I guess people don’t like keeping bulky, awkwardly shaped bikes in storage so that you can you know, get them quickly. So when I ordered my bike, it needed to come from the mother ship in Germany, cool, but was going to be 2 month journey.
Two months pass, Didn’t hear much, waited a couple weeks, reached out and found out I’d have it in about a week. It showed up a couple weeks later.
As soon as it showed up, I swapped out the plastic pedals for some aluminum PNW platform pedals, and changed the grips to a different color, they can with the same Ergon’s, but black. Later I added some 3M reflective tape to the side panels.
It rode great. The suspension I thought was overkill wasn’t like a bouncy mountain bike, but instead it was just smooth, soaked up the bumps. The high power motor meant I could cruise at 20+ at top assist levels.
Night and Day
Something about that large bike really changes how drivers act around you. They don’t pass close, give you a lot of space. They know if they hit me the bikes not bouncing off, and its also going to mess up their vehicle too.
It’s also a novelty, there really isn’t that many around, and in this area, probably the only one. People are interested in it. Most like it, some are still hostile.
School pick up is the best now. The kiddo loves riding in it. I can zip in and out, and cut through the traffic – despite shitty moves by some of the more aggressive drivers who want me to also be stuck like they are. I get the closest parking spot. I can do school pick up faster on the bike than if I drove, solely due to my ability to bypass traffic.
2 Years, and Almost 3000 Miles Later
I used to be skeptical when people would refer to cargo bikes as “car replacements”, sure, whatever. I’ve been riding a regular bike as a car replacement for years, I didn’t need a cargo bike to do that. That lines for normies. Pssh, get out of here.
I was wrong, it is for sure a car replacement. My trusty 8th gen Civic has cob webs inside and out now. I fill it up maybe once every two months. I only really drive when its raining or I need to go somewhere that’s too far away.
Most of my life is in an 8 mile radius right now. I work remotely, headquarters is out of state, so no office to go into without requiring a plane flight. My Mom, which I am her primary caregiver, is a few miles away, so I’m over there all the time. The kiddos school is even closer than that. All with-in easy reach of this bike, and I’ve even worked out safe routes to take and nice in direct routes when I just want to cruise a little further and stop at that one taco truck that’s good.
When it comes to school pick up, I now see more and more parents on bikes, or carrying a bike for the little one to ride back on. No ones gone full psycho and gotten a cargo bike, but, that’s a long shot. One father carries his daughters bike while riding a beach cruiser, rad.
I’ve thrown a cooler in it to pick up Prime Ribs and briskets from my favorite meat market across the valley – its a fun ride. I’ve had bags of potting soil, compost, and even a nectarine tree in it once. I’ve had a santa sack full of presents in it. I’ve loaded it up with radio gear to go setup a remote station in the field. I’ve sped across dry lake beds. All with a smile on my face. I can confidently say this is the best $13k I’ve ever spent in my life.
There’s a few assist modes you can run it in. “Eco” and “touring” will make the bike feel more like a regular, non-cargo bike with plenty of range to go all day and then some. “Sport” gives you more umph, and “turbo” is just a ton of fun.
Maintenance Notes
So far, I’ve had to change the brake pads once, and will probably need to in another month or so, and swap out the oil in the rear internal hub once, and will need to do it again at the end of summer.
The back wheel has had some work done – some spokes have broken, but I mostly blame myself for that – sometimes I forget the cafe lock is engaged, and roll the bike forward.
I’ve had to tighten down some stuff that works loose with vibrations. The screws for the panels in the cargo area work loose, and the steering linkage needs to be tightened down every now and then. You know you need to when you get speed wobbles, just snug up the bolts with cotter pins.
The Rolhoff rear hub is nice, but it can be temperamental. It has electronic shifting. Sometimes when you start it up and get going, it won’t shift, and you have to stop, turn the head unit off, then back on (30 sec). Every now and then it won’t shift for a minute.
Otherwise, its very snappy with shifting, and when you stop you can define a gear for it to auto down shift to, so you don’t start off in a high gear you can’t push at low speeds. Sounds like a DSLR taking continuous shots when it triggers.
When it comes to shifting you do need to let off similarly to a derailleur, otherwise it can get jammed up and noisy. A couple times I’ve had randomly down shift. I would love to be able to remove the lowest gear and get one more gear on the high end. It can shift at a stand still, but will jam up if you try to down shift from a higher gear when going really slow. It sucks, tends to leave you vulnerable when it happens.
The head unit is a very full featured one. GPS, navigation, color touchscreen that you can kind of see in full sunlight. The screen has a metallic backing to it, that kind of negates bright sunlight. It does get a little washed out, but still readable.
The navigation is ok, it will get you as close as the block your going to, but doesn’t have the detailed location information to tell you exactly where your going like a google maps will show you, but it works. The maps are stored on the head unit, so you don’t need a constant data connection. You can use the phone app to map your route, then send it over to the head unit to run – I’ve used that feature quite a bit to route my runs around town getting things done.
Overall, getting a cargo bike has been a net positive, I’ve event lost a bit of weight. Sure, eventually the kiddo is going to outgrow it, but that doesn’t mean the end for this bike. It’s way too useful, and fun to ride. Plus, I’m getting a dog soon, and they’ll love hanging around in the front on rides.
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