Hello everyone and welcome to Issue #22 of Cargobike Culture!
I’m writing this from London, where I’ve been staying for a few days. I’ve been cycling around on Lime bikes and lets just say, I have thoughts. But too many for an introduction so lets get on with things.
What if you can’t spend €/£/$5000 on a cargobike
A few issues ago, I wrote about how expensive cargobikes can be. This prompted a number of comments asking about bikes at the other end of the pricing spectrum. What’s out there, are they any good? So let’s take a look, starting with non-electric bikes.
Part 1 - The acoustic options
The only way of getting a new sub-€2000 front box cargobike is to get a non-electric model. In this category you’ve got a few options. First we’ll look at the original Bakfiets.nl. Largely unchanged since it’s launch in the late 1990s, for €1950 you get a Shimano 3 speed hub, roller brakes, battery lights and that’s about it.
They’re incredibly robust with internal gearing and brakes. The frame is triple powder-coated and made of thick steel. Everything is stainless steel where it can be. If you take of it, theres no reason it won’t easily last 10, 15 or even 20 years. In Utrecht I still regularly see very old models shuttling families around the city.
So if I only had a couple of thousand to spend and wanted a reliable cargobike for a young family, and lived somewhere pretty flat, this would be my default option.
However, there is another sub-2000 option in the Babboe City.
Coming in at just below €1800, its a popular bike in Utrecht and I see plenty of them around. But, I don’t think it’s worth your money and I wouldn’t choose it over the bakfiets.nl above.
The thing about Babboes is that you don’t see many old ones around. And I think theres a few reasons for that.
Firstly, let’s take a look at the box. Here’s an old bakfiets.nl. Azor, the manufacture changed the frame shape slightly in 2008, so we can identify that it could be up to 15 years old. Looking at it, I’m going to guess its between 5 and 10 years old.
I can tell you from experience, that box is in pretty good condition. It looks a bit faded, and the bottom edges are a bit rotten. This happens because people tend to leave them uncovered in the rain so the interior gets wet, and if the drain holes are blocked or there’s a mat or cushion on the floor, it stays wet. In those conditions, especially in the Netherlands, no wood is going to age well.
But our first bakfiets had the same complaints and it was easy to repair. And more importantly, it doesn’t effect the structural integrity of the box. It’s also another benefit of a wooden box over the more popular EPS foam and Aluminium frames you see on modern cargobikes. Wood is easy to repair with simple tools and basic techniques. Good look welding a cracked aluminium frame at home.
Now back to the boxes, lets take a look at a Babboe. I have no idea how old this one is, but looking at the seat, peddles and handlebar grips, items you’d expect to see a lot of wear on, it doesn’t look that old. Maybe a few years?
And look at the state of that box. It looks awful. Another thing to note is that the box is constructed with separate wooden pieces with steel brackets. This, I believe is a purely cost saving measure as Babboes are manufactured in, and shipped from China, You can squeeze a lot more cargobikes in a container if the boxes get put together at the other end.
What this creates is a weaker box with more edges exposed to the elements, as as we saw on the bakfiets box, the edges are the weak areas. In comparison, the Bakfiet’s are build in the Netherlands and delivered as complete units.
Next, the overall build quality of the Babboe is in question. The warranty each manufactured supplies perhaps speaks to their confidence;
Bakfiets: 10 years on the frame, 2 on everything else (excl brakes, tyres etc) vs
Babboe: 5 years on the frame, 1 year on the box (excluding UV, water damage) and 2 years on everything else.
This Flickr post and great photos from respected Amsterdam bike shop and manufacture Workcycles says a lot:
At Workcycles we repair a lot of bikes, especially the transport bicycles since that's our speciality. About half the bikes in the shop are usually Workcycles but we're happy to fix anything as long as we can do the job well. We're one of the few shops in Amsterdam that repairs Babboe bakfietsen so we see quite a few of them.
The repairs are often extensive, such as this one that had the rotted wood panels, the rear wheel, saddle, seatpost, cranks, bottom bracket, brake lever, shifter and all cables replaced. It was more than a full day's work for the mechanic. Ironically a Babboe is often much better bike when it leaves our shop than when purchased new.
And finally, there’s another issue with Babboe as a company which would stop me giving them my money.
See the yellow pin behind the battery in the above photo? That’s the lock which keeps the battery from falling out/getting stolen.
Here’s the problem, that pin is on the end of a long flat piece of flat steel. And it only takes a modest amount of effort to bend it out the way and nick the battery. It happened to our neighbour last year. On our doorbell camera I saw a chap walk up their bike with a long screwdriver, less that 5 seconds later he turns around and walks off their the battery.
The above photo shows the issue. Take a look, you can see paint has stretched, and I don’t think you can even see a weld. You probably don’t even need a screwdriver if you’re strong enough.
That photo is from a three year old Reddit thread. And this model was launched in 2010 with what I can only assume was the same design. Would you trust a company who haven’t fixed an obvious design issue in 13 years? Especially when Babboe use proprietary batteries that only they sell. A battery which today will cost you almost €600 euros to replace. I don’t want to turn this into a conspiracy newsletter but come on.
Ok. we got off track a little, after all, if you’re spending sub-2000 on a new cargobike you’re not going to have a battery to steal. But, I think it says a lot about a companies attitude, so its worth mentioning.
So we’ve looked at the Bakfiets and the Babboe, are there some other options?
Sure. Theres the Yuba Supercargo at about €2500 which comes with a 24 speed Shimano gear set and hydraulic disc brakes.
It’s also got an aluminium frame so only weights 25kg, which is getting towards half the weight of a Bakfiets. I’m not sure how the twin 20 inch wheels effects the handling and carrying capacity, but if I lived somewhere a little hilly and needed the most efficient gear set, and the lightest bike, I’d defiantly consider it.
And yes, you could buy a cargobike from Aliexpress for €1500, but knowing how I abuse and overload my bakfiets, I can’t imagine it being even close to a sound investment.
So, for most people looking for a new sub €/£/$2000 box cargobike, I think the Bakfiets is the best bet.
In the next issue we’ll take a look at the secondhand market and see what you can get for around the same money.
I will not write a cycling-egg pun
It took a lot of restraint to title this section . The tweet by Tab sent me to the wonderfully titled Dalston Egg Shop, which is a shop in Dalson, London, which sells eggs.
They recently upgraded from their bike trailer to a full on Urban Arrow cargobike. I’m not sure if the trailer got poached, but it’s certainly an improvement. Stay subscribed to find out more after I catchup with owner Simon Boot in the next couple of weeks.
London observations
I’ve been in London for a few days this week. I saw a good few cargobikes around, almost exclusively business bikes doing deliveries which is understandable since I was in Central London.
I also got tired of walking everywhere and jumped on a few dockless hire bikes from Lime too. They seemed to be by far the most popular I saw around.
As for the actual cycling, yikes. I know London’s got a lot better. When I lived here in 2010-2014, cycling was a contact sport. I commuted from Battersea to Bloomsbury everyday and got to the other end of the journey so hyped up with adrenaline.
And it’s okay on the few segregated cycling lanes, like the well known one along Embankment (above), but outside of that in the areas I was in (Marylebone, Kensington, Westminster, Camden, Greenwich) it’s a complete sewer. Seeing so many people cycling around in normal clothes, on normal bikes, without helmets says a lot about how far cycling has come in London, but it’s still got a long way to go.
James is running a marathon
Next April I’m running the London Marathon in aid of Mind. Mind is a mental health charity in the UK who do crucial work campaigning for healthcare services, whilst also offering direct help and support to those in need. As regular readers know, this is an issue close to my head heart and I’ve set an ambitious £2000 target.
If you’d like to donate to my efforts, you can do so on my JustGiving page or if you’re in the Netherlands and don’t want to use a credit card, you can use this Tikkie link.
I’m already a quarter of the way to my funding total and even brought my running kit with me to London, so rest assured I’m putting the work in at my end.
Thanks for reading and see you next time!