After more than a century, Sainsbury’s is to resume a customer delivery service using cargo bikes.
Sainsbury’s first delivered groceries using cargo bikes and tricycles in 1900, but the revived service has been updated and digitized for today’s time-pressed shopper. Using the Chop Chop app, customers in London can request, pay for and track an order for up to 20 items, and have them delivered by bicycle within the hour. The service costs £4.99 and its expansion follows a successful trial.
A team of 40 shoppers and cycle couriers based at the company’s Pimlico and Wandsworth stores process and deliver the orders to over 35,000 post codes.
Cargo bikes in Britain might be back, but elsewhere in the world they never went away. And while the best cargo bikes might cost the same as a good secondhand car, their widespread uptake in cities would have a transformative effect on our collective quality of life.
Imagine school run congestion, and the associated road danger, replaced with a procession of sturdy cargo bikes
Cars vs cargo bikes
Most people will be unable to spend large sums on cargo bikes while at the same time running a car. By giving up a car and in the process saying goodbye to mandatory insurance, VED, petrol, resident permits, parking charges and fines, servicing costs and devaluation – not to mention the gym membership you’ll no longer need – the average city driver can save over £3,500 every year. This amount happens to be the price of the latest electric assist cargo bike from Butchers and Bicycles.
Elsewhere in Europe, the bicycle is considered a practical alternative to the car and cargo designs are used to carry loads of up to 250 kg. In Britain, faced with a growing number of parcels, the Post Office has phased out bicycle deliveries. By contrast, and in a perfect illustration of the European attitude towards cycling as a mode of transport, in Germany they developed a larger and stronger cargo bicycle to cope with the extra demand.
Such cargo bikes tend to be, by their nature, big and heavy and relatively slow. The Butchers and Bicycles MK1 aims to challenge the perception of how fun and easy riding a cargo bike can be without compromising usability.
The Mk1-E uses the same ‘built-to-tilt’ system that features on the rest of the range, but it also boasts a powerful Bosch eBike electric motor and an integrated parking stand that’s easily operated from the rider’s position. The cargo box seats two children aged up to around seven.
When it comes to transporting young children by bike, especially on the school run, there are various options to choose between. By far the simplest and most popular is the child seat fitted onto the rear rack, but on a standard bike it is not possible to carry more than one child in this way.
In Denmark many families with two or more kids, have turned to the Christiania. There is a choice between a standard-sized model, which can fit two to three kids, and a longer version, which can comfortably seat four to six. The box where the kids sit is in front, so everyone gets a good view, while the rider can keep an eye on the kids.
The Madsen Cargo Bike is like any other bicycle features an extended frame equipped with a tub large sturdy enough to carry 250 kg. The advantage it has over the trikes is that it’s easier to store and park if space is tight.
The ethical choice
The ETA was established in 1990 as an ethical provider of green, reliable travel services. Over 30 years on, we continue to offer cycle insurance , breakdown cover and mobility scooter insurance while putting concern for the environment at the heart of all we do.
The Good Shopping Guide judges us to be the UK’s most ethical provider.
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