Best compact cargo/utility bike

[cwah]

Hello,

I've been lurking around for way to carry more things with my bikes and recently I've been looking at compact cargo bikes (although I'm not planning to get one... yet).

The best to date seems to be the ODK juicy bike V3:

I say best because it's compact, small, agile and can be used as a normal bike. It saves space against edgerunner, yuba mundo and more as it's more compact.


The next good one upcoming is the Megarack, which is the updated model of the very successful freeradical extension kit:

http://bigdummydaddy.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/longtail-of-future-xtracycle-megarack.html


Here's the presentation of the megarack which is coming soon... apparently first batch would be delivered this year:

I'm really looking forward for this kit to come, so I'd bolt it to my Dahon Jetstream and have a folding cargo dual suspension bike

 

[danielrlee]

How much / what are you looking to carry? I also have recently looking into cargo bikes with a future purchase in mind, but the need has been somewhat reduced with the purchase of some large pannier bags:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/RCP-WP100-carrier-bags-2015/dp/B00OT3AR52

 

[cwah]

I want to carry...
- 10 kg battery
- Bike lock
- 1 week worth of grocery or more. About 10kg of milk, drinks, salad... takes a lot of volumetric space
- 1 passenger

All at the same time!! lol


Doing it with this bike now with the carrier you mentioned

But battery (5kg only) is making the bike wobble a bit. It may be a bit too high.

 

[danielrlee]

These bags are great for the price aren't they? I find that they will comfortably hold 2 large grocery bags in each without any effort and 3 if I can be arsed to repack into the panniers. You must eat a hell of a lot of food if that isn't enough for a whole week

I find that even fully loaded, the bike is stable to ride, although a little top-heavy to leave unattended on a kickstand for long. Also, that's a great place to store a D lock BTW.

 

[cwah]

yeah, these bags are great. The battery is taking some space, so when I had my weekly shopping today I had to go with my backpack.

There are 3 things missing in my current configuration:
- Bag safety and thieves protection. I know i can take the bag with me but I don't want to do that all the time
- Passenger peg. I need something allowing passenger to put their leg somewhere
- And wobbly driving with 5kg in a bag. I'm testing it to see if the rack and bag can hold up over time. It does feel the battery needs to be a bit lower to limit that.

Cargo bike may solve all of these at once!