At Practical Cycles we realise that buying any bike can be a difficult decision. Buying a Cargo Bike is exciting but it's important that you get a bike that is best suited to your needs.

Some of our Cargo Bikes do things better than others because they are specifically designed with that task in mind. In general, our bikes are 'all rounders' but they each have areas in which they excel. 

We have graded our bikes on a 5 'point' system on the 3 main categories we feel are important in the decision making process.

* 1 star = Awful

** 2 stars = Not so good

*** 3 stars = Good

**** 4 stars = Very Good

***** 5  stars = Excellent, the best

We believe there are 3 main categories to consider using a Cargo Bike for so we have rated all our bikes on each of these categories:

General Shopping - We believe that a cargo bike should be able to carry and easily stow away 2 weeks shopping for an average family of 4 (2 Adults and 2 children under 16). So a star rating of 1* for a bike would be useless for shopping (think BMX!)

Child Carrying - This is a key category for Cargo Bikes. For this category we rate for two age groups. We also rate on how easy is it to fit child seats to carry young children and how many. Child seats are important for children up to the age where they start to stay awake in the bike seat and are totally aware of what is going on around them. Beyond this age they can either ride their own bike, perhaps use a tag-along (although we don't recommend them) or be confident enough to ride on the Cargo Bike in another way...

By another way we mean sitting on the purpose-built 'deck' (for example on the Xtracycle). Some Cargo Bikes can be adapted in this way either with accessories we sell and fit or, as some people do, with their own DIY method.

So we have two ratings for Children - young children and older children.

'Unusual' Loads - We understand that sometimes you just need to transport a new door from the DIY superstore or a chest of drawers you snapped up on Freecycle. So we have rated all our bike's abilities to carry those cumbersome, oversized and unusual loads. For some this sort of ability is the icing on the cake for a cargo bike - for others it's the main reason they are buying it.

PLEASE NOTE - some of the ratings acheived by the bikes take into consideration the accessories that are available to adapt the bike so the rating is not necessarily based upon the standard bicycle specification. We do not base ratings on any accessories that are incompatible with the bikes - that would be stupid.

We hope this information is of use to you and helps you decide which of our bikes is best suited to you. If you are still unsure, please do get in contact with us or come for a test ride at our Cargo Bike Studio.

PRACTICAL CYCLES CARGO BIKE SUITABILITY SCALE