My never-ending quest for a favorite errand bicycle continues. I’ve ridden long-tails, built a sorta “mid-tail” thing, owned a couple front-loading cargo bikes, and ridden regular bikes with all kinds of racks. Pros and cons and all of that. One type of bicycle that I haven’t ridden, however, is the Cycle Truck-style. As such, I’m going to build myself one.

After reading what I can about their design, I’ve come up with the following (pertinent dimensions displayed):



I’m fairly well versed on front-end geometry (or, at least I understand how each dimension is figured and how they relate to one another). With this design, I attempted to balance the bike’s head angle and fork rake with the resulting trail/flop values and center-of-gravity for the load.

My eyes tell me that this looks like a bicycle that’ll handle… bicycle-like. That usually translates, I’m finding! If anyone with experience, however, has observations about front-loaders like this, I’d love to read them. If not, no worries. I shall report back down the road regardless, when/if this machine doesn’t kill me.

Happy Monday.

-Chris