Two things. 1. I love cargo bikes. I think they are the answer to much in urban cycling and family car lite living. 2. Xtracycles are my least favorite cargo bike after the Kona Ute/Minute. There, I said it. I really don't like the whole Free Radical conversion system. So, why do I own two? Dinero! That is about the only reason in today's world. I bought my first one used back when the Free Radical was pretty radical and represented the only option I'd ever seen or found for sale. I got it built on a very small Trek 980 for $250. The second one I bought a few months ago as the Free Radical only for $250 because we kind of need two cargo bikes now. Kids are growing up (read, getting heavier) and we are doing more and more on the bike that requires bringing stuff. Because I work on my own bikes and because I have a few boxes of random and old parts (not old enough to be vintage the vintage bike folks tell me.....which means they aren't worth squat) I have not had to put much if any extra money into building things up. Bars, tires, chains and cables constitute about the only outlay I've had to contend with. So, in all reality I've spent less than half and almost a quarter of the cost of a Mundo. But, if I had it all to do over......... well, I'd be on my way to the local spot that sells Yuba Mundos. I I had it to do over AND I had an unlimited budget I'd have bought or built a box bike but that's another story.
But this isn't a post about how I did it but rather about why I love my second to least favorite cargo bike option. I'll leave off bashing the Ute. I have my reasons. No point in that. With the Xtracycle build we have on our old Bridgestone MB we are able to take the kids everywhere we want in town. We've gone to only driving when the weather is too nasty or cold to put 2 kids on the back of the bike, out of town trips and the grocery store once a week (true, we could bike that trip too. We do often but for some reason most of the time we drive). When we lived 10 minutes outside of town before we had kids we filled our tank with diesel once a week. Now we fill it once a month. That 75% reduction is with two kids under 10. I'm pretty happy about that and that's why I have learned to stop looking at cargo bike options and just ride the Xtracycle I have. It works quite well for what it is. Has proved more than durable and carries a combined weight of 100 lbs of kids and cargo adequately. I used to urge folks who asked me to get the Mundo or at least the Big Dummy but now I always follow that up with a caveat about cost. The less than $1,000 we have into our cargo bike solution has saved us 40 tanks of diesel in a year. We've been using the bikes exclusively with the kids for almost 3 years now (before a year and a half ago it was the trailer for the kid over 1 but too young to sit the back of the bike hooked to the back of the Xtra or the "big train" of tag-a-long with trailer). If I use a conservative figure of $3/gallon, which is $1 less than we pay today, and the 40 tank/year savings I come up with a bit over $4,000 savings (12 gallons per tank, 40 tanks saved per year for 3 years). That comes out to $120 a month, which aint chump change. Funny, that would pay for two Mundo bikes with bags and stuff. Even if I subtract the cost of the Xtracycles and stuff I still come out way ahead. If that isn't enough to motivate me to keep on the car lite path, nothing will (the nice parts like getting to ride my bike more and being outside are kind of gratis reasons really).
