"On a bike, you're basically impervious to traffic jams," he says. "I can calculate my delivery time down to the minute." Co-owner Phillip Ross says demand has ballooned beyond what he and partner James Nichols can keep up with. Ross says he has shipped custom-built cargo bicycles to customers around the country and even to Europe. Most are fitted just for packing and transport.
Curbside Creamery's Tori Wentworth dishes out free samples at a recent First Friday event held in Oakland's Temescal Alley. He can carry 200 pounds of coffee at a time — even uphill — and says he pedals 600 to 700 pounds weekly to Portland cafes, grocery stores and restaurants. And he says he can make his routine delivery circuit faster than competing coffee purveyors, whom he sometimes slips quietly past in downtown gridlock.
"It's that easy." Charlie Wicker, owner of , uses a pair of cargo bikes for all deliveries within the 6-mile radius of urban Portland, Ore. He even has the capacity to pull over anywhere to brew and serve coffee. He says riding even a heavily hot rolled steel coil bicycle in a congested city is swifter and more efficient than using a vehicle.