The cargo bike market in the US is growing fast. This is partially so because there are relatively few of them on the roads. The other component is the love-fest the US had/is having with the car, and attachment to comfort in general. Who wants to sweat pedaling under a heavy load when you can just use what everyone else already uses – a car.

Both of these relationships have been souring on us as gasoline prices and the bills related to car ownership slide higher and, simultaneously, our girth wider. Maintaining our relationship with the car takes more and more sacrifice.

Enters biking for transportation, and cargo bikes for carrying stuff. Cargo carrying with bicycles is relatively new in the USA, but it has been around in other countries almost as long as bicycles were around. Whether it is on a tricycle with a big basket, a trailer hooked up to the bike, or longer and stronger bikes with racks, people carried pretty much everything using largish wheels and their own energy, for over 100 years.

The newest development on the scene is bikes with longer frames. Ones that have a cargo area behind the rider, and ones that the cargo area is in front of the handle bar. I have used each in different situations, and found they excel in different ways. Let’s call the back-loader ‘long-tail’ (the Yuba Mundo), and the one with the cargo area on the front a ‘front-loader’ (one I rigged up using a regular frame from a used bike), as I don’t particularly like ‘long-nose’:-)

Loading cargo is easier with the long-tail. The bike tends to be more stable, as the loading area is closer to the kickstand (not even counting the extra wide kickstand the Yuba Mundo, pictured here, comes with). I even loaded a 50 pound bag of chicken feed on one side of this bike, with no load on the other side, and the bike remained standing. I am lucky if I can find a position on the front-loader to place the same bag in any position, and have it remain standing.

If the load is alive, however, it may be beneficial to use the front-loader. A child, seated on the front is easier to keep an eye on, and communicate with, than one sitting behind. And I find, that I can talk to my girlfriend when she rides on the front in a quiet voice, even keeping eye contact (it’s so romantic!), neither would be possible on a long-tail bike.

I guess the most important difference between the two is in steering. With a long-tail, especially a stable bike like the Mundo, the weight of the load doesn’t affect steering. With the front-loader, the steering is indirect (chain, wire, or a rod connects my handle bar stem with the front wheel way ahead) so steering feels a bit different even without a load. But with a heavy load steering becomes even more sluggish.

So, overall, carrying load with a long-tail is easier. But for me, carrying load with either is fun, and carrying heavy load is a welcome challenge.

To learn more about the Yuba Mundo, click here.
To learn more about either the Front-Loader or the Mundo and other long-tails, come to the Neighborhood Bicycle Resource Center