I recently had the use of one of the new hireable Urban Arrow ‘S-Cargo’ bikes for a day. It is an imposing Cargo bike with a high quality feel. It comes with all the necessary items for safe and convenient use – lights, a good bell, a solid stand, a chainguard to keep your clothes clean, reassuringly powerful disc brakes and sports a particularly easy to operate ‘single twist’ gear system.

It is one of the increasing number of e-bikes coming onto the market (Electric power assists you when you pedal) – a type particularly well suited to hauling stuff/families about. Being legally classed as a bicycle means you can also use off road cycle lanes etc, and can choose whether or not you wear a helmet.

The load is held securely in a lockable box mounted on the chassis between the wheels, ahead of the rider. This configuration – a long wheelbase with a small front wheel – whilst brilliantly suited to load stability, requires a short period of practice to acclimatise to the way it handles. Once you have become accustomed to the wide turning circle, and to ‘balancing’ the weight of the bike as you manoeuvre, the unladen S-Cargo is remarkably nimble, very comfortable with its upright stance and relaxed frame geometry, and is great fun to ride.

I loaded the bike up with 65kg of groceries from around town and up to Crookesmoor on first run, and fetched a similarly heavy 3 x 50ltr bags of compost from Crosspool on the second. Although this bike is rated to safely carry more, on this initial run at least I found this to be plenty to manage on Sheffield gradients. It is probable that I would feel able to comfortably manage more with practice, but on initial acquaintance at least I reckon that for me a carefully distributed 50kg load would be a sensible limit when manoeuvring the loaded bike in this terrain, particularly when starting off on a hilly junction or executing a ‘cambered’ turn, situations where as the driver I most noticed the combined challenge of the bike’s overall mass and long wheelbase. (Bear in mind I add approaching 100kg kg body weight to the overall bike weight!)
Other quickly learned tips included ensuring I parked facing uphill such that I was using gravity to help me pull the loaded bike onto the very secure centre stand in a downhill direction when parking on any gradient.

Given the constraints of weight and gradient all bikes are subject to, even with the electric assist on the highest setting, I found myself giving more forethought to the routes that would best suit the heavy load hauling nature and purpose of this bike, choosing those giving a more gradual ascent wherever possible, for example tracking round the ring road cycle way adjacent to Hanover way to make my way up from Bramall Lane to Walkley rather than tackling Sunnybank, at least when loaded.

These considerations aside, using this bike meant that I could pick up stuff that I would either have had to make multiple cycle trips for, or indeed fire up our camper van for one of those horrid short polluting urban journeys which we try hard to avoid, so well worthwhile.

Richard Attwood