Around town on the cargo bike

I've been minimising my car use lately and riding the Cargo Cycle between our nursery, our house and my factory. It's a stretch of fairly flat road so it's easy going on the big bike. I made the mistake of cutting across the golf course to our Chamber of Commerce meeting last night at the Golf Club and discovered it's heavy pedalling in long grass!

Here's a shot of the bike in my workshop with a load of tools (about 50 kilos) I brought back from the nursery a few minutes ago. It easily handles big weights (I've had 100 kilos in it) as far as pedalling and handling goes. Steep hills are another matter of course! It has an eight-speed Sturmey-Archer hub gearbox, which is very clean as it allows for a chain guard and it seems like a very nicely made unit.

Anyway I'm the agent for these things in Foster. I'm getting lots of interest in it as I pedal around the town and have one trader seriously looking at buying one. In Holland there is a longer version available which would certainly be very useful for tradesmen. This is a Chinese copy of the Dutch original, but it's very well made.

I like the way you can chat to people as you ride by. It saves lots of fuel and takes hardly any more time than using our diesel van, which I was driving up and down Station Road half-a-dozen times each day before I started using the bike. It's taken me a short while to get used to it physically, although I generally walk the dogs a couple of times a day so I'm not totally unfit. But still, it gives me a heart and lung workout! Helps to burn off the boysenberry muffin I get each morning from Ando's Bakery too.

My plan was to use it as a local delivery vehicle for the nursery, and with a suitable cargo container we could use it for flower deliveries from our florist business too.