The specialised cargobike used by an Amsterdam dog walking company🐕
Hello everyone,
Welcome to Issue #5 of Cargobike Culture!
This issue we’re talking to the owner of a very special cargobike in Amsterdam. Instead of shopping or kids, this one carries 8 dogs and their dog walker to their daily exercise.
The doggo bike of Amsterdam
On a brisk sunny Saturday morning in January, I wandered through the quiet streets of the southern Amsterdam district of De Pijp in search Emilie and her very special cargobike.
Emilie is a co-owner of a professional dog walking company in Amsterdam. With her colleague and best friend of 30 years Helene, they walk about 24 dogs a day in a forest close to the city.
Helene had been running the company since 2004 and 5 years ago Emilie joined full-time. For most of those 5 years, the pair shared a van with dog crates fitted in the back. Together, they had organised an efficient system. One person would drive the dogs to the forest. The other would then walk them for 1 hour, whilst the driver went off in the van to pick up the next load. The fresh dogs would then arrive at the forest and the other tired, happy hounds would head back home.
On paper, it was an efficient way of working. However there were a lot of variables which often caused the pair headaches. Amsterdam’s traffic was a big one. You could never guarantee how long it would take to do the round trip. They could sometimes end up walking the dogs for 1 1/2 to 2 hours whilst waiting for the van to return.
The unpredictable timing wasn’t the only problem for Emilie. She also hates driving. And piloting a van around Amsterdam’s busy, narrow residential streets isn’t for the faint hearted. Picking up the dogs meant leaving the van in the middle of the street, running upstairs to the apartment, grabbing the dog, loading it up and heading off for the next one.
Often when she got back to the van, she’d be met with an angry impatient driver waiting for her to move. ‘Couldn’t you park in a space so the road wasn’t blocked?’ I asked. ‘No’, answered Emilie. 'if you do that, you get a fine for not having a parking ticket. Everyone on the road is so grumpy, especially the vans drivers she said. This part of the job was causing a lot of stress for Emilie.
Eventually after exploring some options, the pair landed on the idea of using a cargobike.
The bike they settled on is based on Urban Arrow’s Tender model. The Tender is a very strong and robust cargobike which has a large platform on the front. This allows customers to either fit a standard box on from UA, or specify their own creation.
Emilie and Helene partnered with a local company who produce high quality dog pens and crates for places like vets and transport vans. The craftsmanship on the bike is excellent and was obviously built by some very talented and experienced people.
The custom cargobike has electric assistance, and you need it. Emilie let me try out the bike and it’s almost impossible to ride without the motor on. But that’s not a surprise since they estimate the weight at somewhere between 300 and 400 kilos (660lb and 880 lbs).
After speaking to Emilie for a while, and trying it myself, I was wondering if it was a little over engineered. After all, I see dogs in the front of normal cargobikes every day. I put this question to Emilie. ‘Well it has to be safe’ she said, explaining that many owners see dogs as their children, so care that they are being transported safely.
As well the robustness, the bike has other safety features too, including lockable door crates so the pooches are secure whilst Emilie is picking up, and dropping off other dogs.
Emilie also needs to be able to carry enough dogs for it to be economically viable. The bike has 4 crates with each being able to hold 2 small, or 1 medium dog. That means that she could carry up to 8 dogs per trip and that’s only possible with a custom designed cargobike like theirs.
When I spoke to Emilie, they’d only had the bike for 4 weeks and naturally, had learnt some things about their new vehicle. They quickly swapped the standard chain out for a belt drive. There was so much torque needed to move this very heavy bike, it was too much for the chain. The suspension on the bike could be better too, after all the frame wasn’t designed to carry animals. This means that Emilie has to take it very slow over bumps in the road. The range with the supplied battery is also only 25km, which is just enough for the whole shift, so they might need an extra battery soon.
Another problem unique to their situation is that the ‘beg buttons’ you sometimes need to push to change the traffic lights are impossible for Emilie to reach without getting off the bike. It doesn’t happen often in the city where most crossings are either timed or are activated by sensors in the ground. But when she needs to, she has to apply the parking brake to stop the bike rolling away, get off, press the button and then hope she has enough time to get going again before the lights change back to red.
Safe storage and security are a big concern too. The bike was a big investment for the company so they have a nearby secure storage unit where the bike lives when not in use. They’ve also added an additional battery lock from Lockride and beefy chain lock.
And how do the dogs like their new vehicle?
‘It took a bit of getting used to for some of them, but some dogs also didn’t like being in the van. With the bakfiets it’s like they’re outside’. The sometimes rainy Dutch weather can be a problem, but Emilie has been hacking together some covers to provide shelter when it’s raining sideways.
And how does Emilie like her new ride? She loves it. ‘I was always so stressed in the van, but now my shifts with the dogs are very relaxed and slower’. Now she’s not stuck driving the van, she can take the smaller, less busy roads which is naturally a lot more relaxing.
The new bike has also made Emilie’s work time a lot more predictable. She now knows that a shift takes her exactly 3 hours. 1 to pickup the dogs, 1 to walk, and 1 to take them home again. With no traffic jams to get stuck in or vans to wait for, things are a lot smoother for her.
And the public like it too. Emilie always gets nice comments from people passing by or when waiting at traffic lights. It’s even been a good tool to create new business. They’ve had people enquiring about their dog walking services from seeing the bike around the city.
The environmental story is important too. Emilie estimates she’s travelling around 150km a week on the bike, which is a lot less diesel emissions being exhausted onto the streets of Amsterdam.
Another final benefit Emilie tells me with a broad smile, is that when you have a yappy dog on board, you don’t need to use the bell, since everyone can hear you coming.
Cargobike of the week
This issue’s cargobike of the week is the shared bakfiets I used in Rotterdam.
This week my family and I went to Rotterdam for a couple of days and used some shared cargobikes from Baqme. They’re similar to Cargoroo, but you can leave the Baqme bikes anywhere in the city which was really convenient for us. It cost just over €3 for the 12 minute ride per bike from the train station to our hotel.
Other links of interest
That time the US government thought cargobikes could help win WW2
I really enjoyed this article by transport journalist and historian Carlton Reid. In it he talks about how during the second world war, the American government attempted to increase cargobike usage in response to personal motor vehicles being rationed.
It didn’t last long though, and as soon as the war ended, so did the cargobike love.
Twitter corner
Adam is a rider for London-based cargobike delivery and taxi service PedalMe. This week he shared on Twitter how he delivered 30 heavy brick samples from the supplier, straight to the desk of Alice, an architect at Foster and Partners.
Dave McCraw spotted this leaflet for a gardening business in Edinburgh who work via cargobikes.
And if you live in East London, local social enterprise CarryMe Bikes are offering a great deal on long term cargobike hire.
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