Cargo Bike Businesses

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Pimp and like a true pimp you make the bitch pedal and you ride in a pimp chair in the cargo part of the bike.

>>1026551
>kinds of services that could be delivered on a cargo bike. Any ideas?
Delivery company delivering packages. Only viable in big cities, with big congestion of cagers and traffic jams during rush hours.

>>1026557
Yeah, but I'm not keen on being a courier again. It's a fun job for a while, but there's no skills to add to the mix. Most delivery companies are essentially app/customer interface based.

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>>1026551
Rad waggon

>>1026551
>I think there's a lot of people that would pay more for certain services if the person doing them arrived via bike.
Where did you get that idea?

>>1026777

This.

That just doesn't seem like the way things work, anon.

>>1026777
>>1026779
Oh. I guess I'm talking about rich hippies. The kind of people who would pay more for something because it was locally sourced and organic.

Why should I pay more to get less? For any service/product I can only see your travel by bike costing me more because either your labor is the greatest cost OR you have to take more trips to deliver the same amount of product less reliably or more slowly.

The best I can see happening is serving a population by bike that you can't serve by truck (food service in the center of a park?) But is that a better customer base than a construction site or major business? Or being able to travel across the city to service two to four sites in a day?

The second best option is that whatever service you offer is high enough quality that your travel time doesn't factor into the decision to hire you (because travel is part of the bill either directly or indirectly).

Finally, I suppose, is if the cost to operate is reduced because you aren't paying for a truck. That would be initial startup costs (a used cargo bike probably costs less than a used truck on purchase, upkeep and insurance) or if somehow saved taxes or earned tax credits mean that the aforementioned indirect cost to your customer undercuts your competitors and thus I get the same work for my dollar.


I don't think there are no places where cargo bike is a better choice than truck/car but I do think the markets are super limited and convincing a bank to lend you start-up costs is highly suspect without major research. While you do need to live a life you find ethical and honest, you also have to provide a future for your wife and child. Find a balance.

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I don't think anyone is gonna pay more because you arrive on a bike but since I own two cargo bikes myself I can only recommend you get one. As soon as you have it you'll start realizing how much shit you thought you needed a car for can actually be done with it.

Obviously if you have to carry huge amounts of wood it's not gonna work for that but you can fit quite a lot of tools on one. For example, in my city there's a guy who has a mobile bike workshop on a cargo bike and rides out to people to fix their bikes on location. The same is possible for cars and you might reach your customer faster in dense city traffic. I also know a guy who does facility maintenance for a bunch of buildings (fixing heat, electricity, plumbing etc.) and does the same thing, he says it's way faster than a car even outside of rush our because he never has to waste any time finding a parking spot and/or hauling a bunch of gear from the car to the building. He can just park everything right in front of the door.

That being said, this is all in europe, these cities are not small but they are dense, parking is hard to find and traffic is crazy at times.

I'm not sure how well this would work in retarded US cities where everything is spaced miles apart and everyone shits on bikes.

You can haul a lot of shit with these bikes if you're comitted, if you get something like an omnium, even things that are way bigger than the actual cargo area. Pic related.

>>1026792
The idea I was going for is the green dollar. Some people are willing to pay more for electricity if it's generated from wind or solar, for instance. Some people are willing to pay more for organic food, etc. etc.

I'm think of a high-end service business.

>>1026799
Facility management sounds like a pretty good one, but at some point I assume you'll have to go and get a truck to bring something big onto the site...

In my hometown (Hannover, Germany) there is this guy who is a courier for medicine related stuff. He rides a recumbent with space for cargo in the front and in the back, he might even have a small trailer attached, not sure. But he fills a very small niche in transportation, he delivers blood/organ samples and the likes from hospitals to labs etc..
Not sure if something like this would work wherever you live, the town I'm talking about is the exact opposite of hill and has 500k inhabitants with a good bike infrastructure.

>>1027006

Even in towns that have a lot of rich hippies, people willing to pay for shit like that are few and f ar between.

>>1026799
Sell them to chemical plants and shit. I see a lot of them use tricycles with big baskets in the back. Maybe they'd like a bicycle better. Who knows. A lot of these facilities use bicycles and stuff for workers because it's way easier and cheaper than a fleet of golf carts.

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Mobile bicycle repair. Food delivery. (couriers already present in a lot of cities doing this) I know a few guys who run like coffee shops out of bikes or trikes by showing up at events, sorta like a food truck. Their primary appeal is the novelty of having something so small and cute do the same job as a bicycle. The environmental benefits are great too.

I think these type of businesses work well in certain areas, dense and urban.

Also, worth noting - front loading cargo bikes do not have as much capacity as long tails. The latter allows you to strap long items to the sides, then strap even more on top. It often requires a little more creativity too. I'd recommend the Surly Big Dummy first, or Xtracycle Edgerunner 10E (electric) or Edgerunner 30D (pedal-powered). Trikes or other front loading vehicles are cool, and good for simple delivery or like a cafe or whatever, but in terms of max capacity I really think longtails are the way to go.

FYI I've been working in a cargo bike shop for about 4 years, and was involved with mobile bike repair before that.

>>1027008

$20/day for a U-haul pickup truck when required. It's something I've looked into as I consider getting a cargo bike for general car replacement.

I could see the Whole Foods type going for something bicycle related. Should it be the main focus of your business? Probably not. Would it work in the right city? Absolutely. Especially for businesses that are trying to look good in the public eye by going green as much as they can.

Selling quality drip coffee and croissants outside of business parks might work too..

>>1026785
Run a personalized weekly delivery service from the local organic farmers' market.

Yes

People love a service that takes longer and costs more money than most other routes

smart thinking

>>1027195
>$20/day for a U-haul pickup truck
$20/day plus insurance ($15) plus fuel (they're not fuel efficient) plus mileage (like 50¢/mile IIRC). Shit adds up pretty quick. Also fuck Haul they are a terrible shitty company.

>>1027726
Last time I rented one, the $20 included insurance, and fuel cost $4 for the day. It's really not bad at all compared to the average $9,000 yearly cost of car ownership.