The first time you stop at a red light on a cargo trike with your kids on board, you notice something odd. Nothing happens. You do not put a foot down. You do not brace against the weight of the bike. You just sit there, chatting, while the kids argue about who saw the dog first.
That is the whole pitch for three wheels, really. Everything else is detail.
What a cargo trike actually is
A cargo trike is a cargo bike with three wheels instead of two, with a box up front between the two front wheels. Your kids and your gear sit ahead of you, in view, close enough to talk to at a normal volume.
It is a different animal to the two wheel cargo bikes you see couriers riding through the city, which put a long box over a single front wheel. And it is different again to a longtail, which stretches the rack out behind you and stacks the kids at your back.
All three are cargo bikes. They just solve different problems.
Why the third wheel changes the ride
The obvious answer is stability, and that is right, but it is worth being specific about when it matters. A cargo trike is not more stable at speed. It is dramatically more stable at zero.
That covers most of the moments that make new riders nervous. Waiting at the lights with two kids on board. Loading a toddler in while the bike stays put. Stopping halfway up the street because someone dropped a banana. On three wheels you apply the parking brake, sort it out, and go, with no kickstand to wrestle and no wall to lean against.
The other thing you get is room. A two wheel box comfortably fits two kids. A trike box fits four, and if you have not got four, you have got space for scooters, balance bikes, a soccer ball and the beach gear that usually decides whether the outing is worth the effort.
Then there is who can ride it. The stability is why grandparents get on these bikes. That is not a marketing line, it is the single most common thing we hear from families who bought one.
Where a cargo trike is not the answer
Three wheels cost you nimbleness. A two wheel cargo bike handles more like a normal bike, takes corners faster and threads through traffic more happily. If your riding is fast, tight and city centre, that trade may not suit you.
We do not think it matters much for most families, because most family riding is not that. It is cycleways, quiet back streets and 16 to 20 kilometres an hour with someone singing in the box. But you should know what you are trading.
If you want the bike to feel like the bike you already own, look at a longtail instead. The Tribe Evamos Longtail is our two wheel answer, and it rides like a normal bike with a very long rack.
The two Tribe cargo trikes
We build on three wheels, and we have two of them for two different jobs.
The Tribe Original is the family cargo trike: the box up front, up to four kids, and the one most Tribe families end up on. It starts at $5,490.
The Ricky Rickshaw is the passenger version. No step to climb over, one or two adults up front, and a rider close enough behind to hold a conversation the whole way. It is the bike Cycling Without Age chapters use to take older people out on the road again, and it starts at $7,490.
Still weighing it up?
Reading about low speed stability is not the same as feeling it, and nobody has ever been talked into a cargo bike by a paragraph, including us. The next best thing is hearing from people who already ride one. Every Tribe Original page carries owner reviews from families doing the school run on theirs, and they are more use than anything we could write about ourselves.
If you would rather talk to somebody in person, our bike shop partners around the country can give you professional advice, and they handle assembly and servicing too.
