How I Picked an E-Cargo Bike for My Growing Family

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been car free. As a teen, that meant walking and using the TTC (public transit) and once I started working full-time, I was still mostly walking and using transit until I started cycling as a form of transportation because I lost my metropass one summer day.

When I first met my partner, he did not bike regularly, but he was pretty open-minded and was OK to try it out as well. Luckily, he loves it as much as I do, and once we got married and moved into a house, we got a trailer to do more serious hauling like weekly groceries and bulky returns.

Buying a car was always something we’d eventually do one day.

Now that we’re expanding our family of 2 to a family of 3, the conversation around buying a car has come back, but I still don’t feel ready. Having a child and taking parental leave is an expensive time in your life, and adding 1400/month to the budget, for something we don’t use super often, seems like the wrong decision.

I’ve always been interested in an e-cargo bike after watching Notjustbike’s video on it a few years ago and after getting pregnant, we finally went for a test ride at our local bike shop.

E-Cargo Bike Selection Criteria:

1. Safety - As safe as can be on the Toronto roads & Toronto drivers🤷‍♀️

2. Family friendly/ Has to fit an infant car seat - While we don’t anticipate bringing our child every day in the bike, and especially in the beginning, the bike is meant to be a car replacement, and we want to do so as safely as possible, which means that it should be car seat ready on day 1

3. Bikes & parts should be readily available in Canada - We’re lucky to live in Canada’s largest city but there are so many US/EU brands/bikes that don’t ship here or are exorbitantly expensive that I don’t want to fuss with things. Brands like Bunch bikes are not really available locally, and I don’t want to pay extra to ship them.

4. Easy to maintain - We’re just not very handy people and would prefer this to be a hassle free owning experience.

5. Comfortable to ride - This bike will be with our family for years to come so I want it to be as comfortable as possible.

6. Price

   
   

Models We Tried

On a nice Fall day, we dropped into the store and found 3 promising candidates to test ride, based on our above criteria:

1. Riese & Müller - LOAD 60

   1. technically, the Load 75 is better for a car seat but that was not available for a demo that day. Still, we wanted to try it for the experience

2. Riese & Müller - Packster2

3. Urban Arrow Family 

   
   

How they scored

Criteria	R&M Load 60	Packster 2	Urban Arrow
Safety	3/5 - you have to add more configuration but compared to the other two with the safety foam, this is comparably less safe	5/5 - the entire front box is out of the EPP safety foam so it definitely safe	5/5 - front box is out of EPS safety foam, so very safe
Family Friendly/Infant car seat	4 /5 - the car seat is available, but there’s more accessories you’d need to buy to add one in. I believe the base model bike is just a frame	? Adapters potentially available but ideal age for passengers are 2+	4/5 - infant car seat adapter available. Kids will age out of bike by 7+, depending on their size
Availability for parts/Easy Maintenance	✅	✅	✅
Comfort	4/5 - My partner enjoyed the ride more than me since he has a bike that is more ‘forward leaning’ but in general the ride was very nice and smooth. I personally prefer a more upright cycling position	3/5 - The Packster felt a bit clunky to handle and turn. Maybe something I’d get used to in the future but it’s hard to say	4/5 - I liked how the position was upright but the bike was bulky with the front box
Price	High - $13k+ this is only for the base model, and to configure it would be additional costs	High - $15K+ less configuration required but the most expensive bike we tried	Mid-High the base model was ~ $8-9K

Our Choice 🚲

In the end, we ended up choosing the Urban Arrow, as it was the best one to ride and the base model price was the lowest. The company also seemed to specialize in young families with a plethora of accessories available such as a rain tent, sun tent, and an infant car seat adapter. Of course, the accessories are expensive but I like that I have the option to space out when to get each item and for the most part, the bike was easy to use out of the box. With the recent Boxing Day sale at the shop, we’ve put in our order and are now diligently waiting for the new bike to arrive.