When the Pickle Cycle rolls down the street, strangers want to stop and talk about it, says Pedro Dos Santos, chef and co-owner at Vert Catering, a Toronto company that delivers food via cargo bicycle. Its newly built replica of an old fashioned British butcher delivery bicycle has a metal carrier in front of the handle bars large enough to hold a cooler bag with lunch for a crowd. It seems to elicit a yearning for days of yore in passersby.
"The first time I went out, at every stoplight, someone would come up to me," said Mr Dos Santos. Today, bicycles carrying heavy loads are becoming increasingly common: As environmental consciousness rises apace with the price of gasoline, entrepreneurs are looking to pedals to power their businesses. Cargo bicycles are de rigueur in such cities as Amsterdam, and in China and India, where you will often see bicycles piled high with everything from luggage to livestock to hay. The idea to use your legs rather than a motor to move stuff is catching on here.
In Vancouver, a group of young entrepreneurs are launching SHIFT Urban Cargo Delivery, a enterprise they hope will fill the gap in the market between the bike courier and the delivery truck by transporting everything from small furniture to office supplies in the downtown core. They will use cargo tricycles that have an electric assist to make it easier to move bigger, heavier things to their clients. In Toronto, the landscaping company Green Gardeners uses the bikes to head to client sites, towing garden tools and supplies, and Chocosol, a fair trade chocolate company, uses them to bring its stock to farmers' market.
Laurie Featherstone, of Featherstone Two Wheels Green Delivery, whose client list includes the City of Toronto and a daycare catering company, says that cargo bikes make her business financially possible. A friend built her bicycle and heavy duty trailer for $900, and maintenance fees costs about $500 a year.
"For me it was much more viable to do a small business like this because I have no overhead," says Ms. Featherstone. She believes she saves between $7,000 and $9,000 in insurance and maintenance costs a year over a car-based service.
It wasn't to save money that Mr. Dos Santos and his business partner decided to buy their $1,200 Pickle Cycle. Rather, it was a testament to their green ethos. Once they had the bike, however, it turned out to be cheaper to run than a car. Mr. Dos Santos believes they save at least $5 a trip downtown, not including maintenance costs.
Loretta Laurin of SHIFT Urban Cargo Delivery points out that there are benefits for everyone beyond the dollars.
"Our trikes are more appropriate technology in the downtown," she says. Unlike delivery trucks, their cargo bicycles won't get stuck in traffic because they plan on using Vancouver's new bike lanes that have been separated with a barrier from cars. And once they arrive at the delivery location, they don't have to wait for a truck loading zone as they can pull up along the sidewalk and get to work. "For our business clients, we offer time compression because we don't have to wait." Then of course, there's the environmental benefit to everyone: less air pollution, less oil consumption and fewer cars blocking the road.
Despite their clunky appearance and heavy loads, cargo bicycles are fun to ride. You can load them up with anything – even children, depending on the model. The bicycles come in all forms, such as the bakfiet, a long john bicycle named for its stretched form: Its front wheel is located several feet out from the handle bars with the box in between. There are tricycles with big containers and reverse trikes whereby two wheels sandwich a cargo box in the front. Then there are all sorts of styles of racks and platforms that are welded to every part of the bicycle. While there are only one-person workshops that build them in Canada, there are an increasing number of stores that carry imported bicycles from larger companies in Europe, Britain, as well as the United States and China.
Because the bikes are designed to handle weighty packages, they're easier to pedal than regular two-wheelers that have been loaded down. "When you are steering, you don't feel the wobble," said Mr. Dos Santos who has cycled with enough soup, stew and sandwiches to feed 60 people. "I'm a weasel in traffic."
Special to The Globe and Mail
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