Cargo Bikes

yes I think the current sus forks that are widely in use are laughably cheap (like £30 from factory, 90+ on trade and 180 to consumer roughly in my experience). And they become useless junk after 6 months to a year of heavy use.

Aua, mein Kopf! - dach kinder 😆 Diese Leute sind verrückt

My brother has one and swears by it. He's bias as he works for Trek. I've ridden it. It's massive, rides more like a small motorbike. Obs be sure you can store/move properly etc. As it's a lump.

No, that's the literal translation.

dach kinder

roof children???

Na falsch, DACH is D-A-CH: Deutschland, Österreich und die Schweiz. So dach kinder are the children of the german speaking world.

I don't think many people would fork out (lol) for a higher end fork even if they were available. This market is so driven by price that a bike having a nicer fork and costing £500 more will not sell.
I've gone through similar discussions with New Motion Labs about their drive train. It is so much better than a standard chain or belt for heavy cargo bikes, and probably not more expensive in the long run, but getting OEM spec is really difficult except for commercial customers.

Hab ich noch nie gehört aber was weiss ich schon?

seems like the solution is we just stop trying to put suspension on cargo bikes. Let the children toughen up.

New motion labs is v overhyped though imho. They were trying to push it hard when I was working in a cargo bike workshop looking after a fleet. We begrudgingly tested a few.

I was generally against it because the ‘benefits’ were not reflective to cost difference (can’t remember the exact numbers but many times more expensive for a full drive train), and fairly certain their supposed benefits inflated by their marketing team. They didn’t have rohloff approval to make sprockets, and you couldn’t buy spare parts in any bike shops in London at the time. It’s just another metal chain and good chains do a fine job already you don’t need a niche one.

I think a better comparison would be gates drives over chains. I don’t really want gates. But some people do and they will spend considerably more on it.

For very long cargo bikes like the UA XL front sus smooths the ride out considerably. It also improves front wheel braking.

I can also imagine them being used on Carla style trailers, instead of a regular fork.

Super wide tyre clearance (3” plus) could also be a possible alternative to sus, but would be accompanied by its own set of hurdles to overcome and there is limited availability of tyres in that size I think.

I just thought it was quite an interesting, supposedly low maintenance solution. I imagine the cost could be reduced significantly in future

Sound like you're being cavalier about CTE

i think you forgot the "/s" on this one

That was firmly implied

One thing I would say front suspension helps a lot with is overcoming curbs. Going up them loaded, specifically. Which doesn’t happen a lot especially with passengers but for cargo stuff it’s helpful to be able to.

Also road surfaces in England are actually quite terrible.

I’m happy with my fully rigid cargo. But I see the benefits of it :-)

Kinder in Berlin haben brain damage!

There are 20x4.0 tires.

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<3 so good

They also sell a fork, but unforunately my bakfiets ist 1".

And E50 rated so good for 50km/h

While Rad Wagon etc Look stupid in my opinion, cargo with that amount of Rubber would be great.

45km/h s-pedelec cargo with fat tires!

where did you buy from and how much?

Sprockets Cycles

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Im not a messenger or anything but we have 3 cargo bikes in active rotation and we ride them up and down curbs pretty much every day. All are rigid setups and all have the same solution of stuffing the biggest tires that will fit in the front. I really have not had problems with 2.1-2,4 tires solving these problems but dont carry super large loads probably max around 70-100kg (so max loads of around 200kg all in.) Maybe it makes sense above that.

Do they do a suitable mud guard?