When a bike merchant makes a judgement on a bike I always wonder if their motivations are pure, whilst you garner a lot of respect on here Charlie, I do wonder if you make more profit on dummies? The reason I say this is that I do not think there is anything like a gulf between the functions of a Ute and a Dummy, other than price and niche factor. And I know a buyer for a big bike chain who told me this was so when I asked him why lots people don’t sell Utes any more…
The ute is so cheap I cannot imagine anyone wants to sell them when they flog the niche dream of the dummy or yuba.
My ute has changed my life completely, I haven’t carried fridges or water bowsers on mine (yet), but I have carried other bikes, mtb frames, bags of sand and building materials, all my tools, massive parcels. It will fit two kids, and all my camping gear for a couple of nights. Without the kids on it I reckon I could easily go away for a couple of weeks. I carry a hell of a lot more than I ever would on a normal bike and its got me using the bike every day and selling our 2nd car. Thats life changing without having to get a 2nd mortgage to buy a dummy.
It seems pretty versatile to me, I can carry three kids and still fill both my panniers.
It does easily carry all the sister jeans cool factor of a dummy. In my town I’ve only seen one other Ute and people stop and ask me about it all the time, you can hear the woosh of knickers hitting the ground when I cycle past a a group of students, (male and female, bonus. Since buying the ute all the parts of my body that need to grow have done so, and the bits that need to shrink have also.. All for 525 delivered..
Limitations compared to a dummy? There are only three I can think of:
1) Shorter wheelbase than dummy or yuba so I imagine that you can carry even bigger stuff on one of them. So you are limited as to how and where you place big loads, too far back and it will wobble like hell, to the point of unridableness, but then I’ll bet I could find a big enough load/poor placement on a dummy that would make it unrideable.
2) No platforms under the panniers so you rely on the strength of the bag, although I have plans to solve this.
3) Crap centre stand, so loading big stuff takes a helper or a wall to lean against. Although the hebie one for 20 quid I showed above goes a long way to fixing this, and I have plans afoot to solve this too, related to my lower platform idea.
Advantages:
1) I can fit it in my car without having to take any wheels off.
2) Cheaper – and it comes complete, not like a BD, Yuba or Xtracycle where you pay an arm and a leg for the base model and then umpteen pounds more for any accessories.
3) It isn’t really so different from the other cargo bikes that it’s essentially good enough for what most people want it for. I’m happy to stick to using my car for the once a year need to move fridges.
