When I lived in Milwaukee, grocery shopping involved a 2-mile ride on urban side streets. We were a two-cargo-bike family, so doing a full week’s worth of shopping was no big deal. I could take our Yuba Sweet Curry, that I had added a Bafang HD middrive kit to, or our acoustic Yuba Supermarche. Either bike would hold all the groceries we could eat in a week. The short trip on paved streets meant the acoustic front loader was a fine option if my wife had the e-assist long tail.
Living in the Wisconsin Northwoods, our nearest Marketplace Foods grocery store in Hayward is 10 miles away via a busy highway with a narrow shoulder and lots of logging trucks. The off-road route isn’t much longer, but the surface is part chunky ATV trail with lots of washboard. We sold the low-clearance front loader before moving Up North, but kept the e-assist long tail.
In order to make that bike work better for our off-road errands, I swapped the 26×2 clearance rigid fork for a Limited Edition Camo Manitou Mastodon when I saw them on sale. Add a 3.8″ 45NRTH Vanhelga tire on a Schlick 47mm wheel I had, and mounted a 20×2.6″ Kenda Booser Pro on the stock rear wheel, and this rig is ready for the rough stuff.
Astute observers will notice the small orange case, which houses a custom-made 1,000 kWh battery pack. This, plus the smaller Shark battery pack, gives a worry-free range that allows a 20mph pace with a loaded cargo bike over rough terrain.
Now my grocery store runs are a bit of an adventure ride, and I don’t have to be concerned about getting blown off Highway 63 by a logging truck doing 70mph. I also use the bike to get to my deer hunting stand and to haul hand tools and a chainsaw into the woods when I need to work on the 4 miles of neighborhood trail I maintain.
In an ideal world, I would swap the front 26″ fork for a 24″ suspension fork to level the bike a bit more. Adding the Mastodon and the larger diameter fat bike wheel jacked the front up a bit more than I’d like. But I don’t have a 24×4″ wheel, and until I find a deal on one and a 24″ fat bike suspension fork, this will have to do.
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