Replacing a car with a Tern GSD or the like

Hiya,

Has anyone on here done that? Like to share experiences?

We have 2 cars, and it bothers me. We do need often 2x vehicles for either personal transportation, kid transportation, shopping etc. But of course it does not have to be a car. Almost all of these journeys are within 10kms of the house.

Me and the missus have previously used e-city bikes rentals extensively for personal transportation, but never gone big with a long tail for taking shopping and/or a kid.

Would love to hear from anyone that’s made the shift.

You have helped over the years for me to buy a T5, then 7 years later get rid of the ‘velle and replace with a Skoda Superb estate (was a very good decision on both occasions). Keen to see what experiences to share of dropping a motor and using a cargo bike for shopping and kids.

ta muchly!

(EDIT: we will keep the superb, it’s the second car that would be replaced)

GCN have done a few videos on them, Simon Richardson has one and takes his two kids on it.

GSDs are amazing fun to ride, it’s such a versatile bike. Downsides are that it’s kind of bulky and cumbersome to wheel up and down steps so ideal storage would be a garage or a big shed where you don’t have to manoeuvre it around indoors too much.

Have a look at Tern’s Twitter feed as well, they often retweet stuff from owners about what they’ve carried and so on.

We are 1 car plus a radwagon with 2 kids. Bike has replaced car in small-medium sized food shops, has meant more flexibility in who does school and nursery drop offs and pickups, not just who has the car. We strap kids bikes to it and ride somewhere, then they ride when we get there so we can go places different without them being knackered before we get there. Been great for us at addressing those moments where we’d previously said we could do with a second car

Tern GSD owners – how’s it going

We’ve also got a GSD. Obviously depends where you live, bit for us it’s absolutely the fastest way to do the majority of our journeys. School run, shopping, nipping across town, weekend family jaunts.

There’s plenty of cheaper options that in my mind would offer all the same benefits in terms of using your car less.

Ironically the thing we still use our car most for is our dog, who won’t go on the Tern. We could get a trailer but haven’t yet, just feels a bit too much faff and yet another bulky thing to store.

Storage is the main thing to consider. We keep ours in the hallway and have grown to live with it. If we ever move house I’ll make sure we’ve got a garage or dedicated space at the front of the house.

Best of both worlds. E-Enduro bike with rack and panniers 🙂  Can’t do a huge shopping, but makes for more journeys,but always nice to ride somewhere, even if thats only to thee supermarket and back.

Take the rack stuff off and you’ve something to play on offroad.

I think maybe a Tern or such style bike next time around. Can carry a lot more stuff, though I see most seem to come with a single battery, and for big cargo loads, in city traffic with hills etc, 2 batteries would really be better

We have a Tern GSD. It’s our 2nd vehicle. We didn’t want a car having sold our Yaris years ago. It’s used for short shopping trips which means we don’t have to take our T6 out. It’s brilliant! We love it. It makes the mundane jobs fun and enjoyable. We can get all of our shopping in the pannier bags and the motor is more than powerful enough to get back over the hill with the bike loaded. We have the captains chair which means we can pick each up from the train station if necessary but we don’t use it that often for that purpose. The seat holds a euro crate in place which is good for carrying various other things. Yes, it’s expensive, but it truly is our second vehicle.

Depending on where you are, some councils and organisations have them to hire. There’s one near us in Ilkley for example.

Dropped one of the cars for a Babboe e-curve. It got used every day for nursery and school runs, and family trips into town but rarely to replace the other short car journeys. It’s a bit small for 4 kids but if I only had 1 or 2 I’d definitely get a longtail. Very convenient in a cycle friendly(ish) city like Cambridge, park anywhere, car free routes. Hardest thing is carrying kids and bikes when they all have a meltdown and don’t want to ride on their own. Eldest is 7.

Skoda Superb + cargo bike family here. Brilliant. We had a Radwagon, but sold it and got a bakfiets style electric. I liked the Rad but my wife found it unweildy (high centre of gravity, particularly noticable when wheeling it with kids on). She uses the new bike almost every day and car has never been used less.

It’s worth considering a front loader as an alternative to a long tail. I only say that because my preconceived opinions – that a long tail would be more maneuverable and easier to store weren’t exactly right. Having said that, a Tern is probably smaller than a Radwagon.

I nearly bought a surly big dummy but went with a flat bar tourer, panniers and just added a burley cargo trailor for about half the money.  Good for shopping, tip runs, if I need a car I ‘ll hire one locally, council hire an ev for 5 GBP per hour, pick up point just 2 miles away.

Only issue with a tern I can see is security at supermarkets, I ve taped up my tourer to make it look less appealing, the terns a bit of a looker.

Really enjoying it so far.

Two thefts and one robbery of Terns around here in the last fortnight. Thief was a middle aged guy in a high viz…

We’re just about to get a GSD for  school/nursery etc. Not yet committed to ditching the second car cos we do get some reliably challenging weather here in Inverness and want to see how things go. We borrowed one for a week in March and the weather was nasty but the kids INSISTED on taking the bike everywhere instead of the car, even when it was sleeting, so there’s hope that we can lose the petrol car.

Only issue with a tern I can see is security at supermarkets, I ve taped up my tourer to make it look less appealing, the terns a bit of a looker.

Yeah it is a concern (a motorbike was stolen outside our local Morrisons yesterday!) but because you’ve got a big motor and a load of storage we carry and use a Hiplock D1000, an angle grinder resistant Abus and an alarmed disc lock. Ok does mean you are restricted to a proper bike rack but so far hasn’t caused a major issue round here.

We went with the Tern as it’s really hilly round here, so means we don’t come back a sweaty mess after popping to the shops. Saturday I did the supermarket for the week, followed by the garden centre and then a late dash back out for two bags of compost. As p20 said, we love it. Van never gets used locally.

We had been knocking around the idea for a while and then our hands were somewhat forced when my Wife’s car unexpectedly died on us.

We ended up going with a fully loaded Benno Boost, we don’t need the ‘store upright’ feature and with the bigger wheels and chunky tyres I felt the Benno rode better, more capable.

We can get both our kids (8 and 11) on it but usually we are just running one of them about. First thing I fitted was a long dropper post, not only does it allow us to switch between my wife and I using it but it means you can get your feet flat on the ground with your bum on the saddle, handy for bracing the bike as nippers clamber on and for getting going again when you have a very heavy load.

We also fitted a hidden GPS tracker and some point I intend to fit a Knog scout as well as a visible deterrent.

We’ve only had it a few months but so far so good, we’ve done weekly shops, tip runs etc, we haven’t really missed having the extra car, we reckon it’ll pay for itself in about 2-3 years.

we were a single car + bakfiets style cargo bike for a long time, now on 2 cars just because I wanted something fun, and occasionally we both wanted to be 20 miles away from home.

A bakfiets is a slightly worse bike than a longtail, but a significantly better car. You don’t have to faff with panniers, swapping things in and out for different loads, and traffic gives you a lot more space. Part of my weekly commute involves cycling 6 miles with 2 kids, dropping one off at nursery, going 1 mile to the supermarket, picking up the 1/2 weekly shop (typically 20kg of food/drink), then taking the other kid + food back to the local infant school (4 miles) then a mile back to home with the shopping. All goes in the basket absolutely fine, I think a longtail would be more limited.

We haven’t done it (yet?) but did hire a GSD for a very reasonable £50/week recently from an accessible cycling charity in Cardiff. http://cardiffpedalpower.org

Not sure where you are, but it might be worth seeing if there’s anything similar near you and giving it a go?

Also, when the kids were small I adapted a cheap tandem to carry both boys to nursery.  Got rid of that a while ago, but if I still had it I’d be considering using it as a long-tail.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxtXaAEo42OmdFRCaFZqSTdVMVk/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-gCVmPiLWyfAhkH_4QBTaYQ

weather was nasty

forgot to add, the other advantage of a bakfiets-style bike is that most of them have covers available, no need to wrap your kids up for apocolypse to take them to school, just drop them in and zip the cover up.

but did hire a GSD for a very reasonable £50/week recently

That’s one thing I would 100% recommend, try and borrow one first, if at all possible take it home for a week or so and see how it fits into your lives. Those few steps up to your house may suddenly be a big deal when your wife’s trying to get a 30+ KG cargo rig up them.

We were very fortunate to borrow a Benno for a fortnight and we really missed it when it had to go back, not sure I’d have been able to obtain spousal clearance for the big purchase if she hadn’t ridden one with the kids on it already and was confident she could handle it.

A full-size bakfiets was never an option as the space we had to store it wasn’t long enough, the Benno from nose to tail is almost exactly the same length as the 700c Dutch bike it replaced and is much easier to navigate tight spaces with.

Superb input, thanks all.

I am currently, on the sound advice of the missus, mapping out the situations when we need 2 vehicles, and if a bike would work.

Rental definitely something we want to try, not sure on options around Stirling (local charity Recyk-a-bike have either cargo trikes or compact ebikes, no longtails or front cargo 2 wheel fellas). Kinetics in Glasgow can offer me one for a long weekend, which is cool, but if anyone has any other ideas, I’m all ears.

P20, thanks for the link to previous thread, v helpful on options other than R&M or Tern.

Question for long tail folks – how easy is it to flip between carrying a person (e.g. teenager, or wife!), and max luggage capacity for weekly shops? I’m getting lost down a very exciting rabbit hole of accessories, but they seem mutually exclusive – either you carry people, or luggage.

We don’t need kid seats, youngest is now 11 and not a short girl, but do need flex to flip between the 2 functionalities. Taking the small dog places should also be possible, but thats a lower priority

My brother in NZ has two cheapo versions of a Tern – one longer back and kiddy seat set up and one more shopping bag kitted up.
They are used to take kids to school, do the shopping, head to the park, round to pals houses etc.
His wife has an e-scooter for days she commutes.
He has a leg-powered commuter.
They are nearing the point where the kids cycle themselves everywhere and so are looking to only have one of the ebikes.
Their car only ever comes out the garage for trips out of town.

We have considered it, but have a few concerns:
Storage: we have shed without power and narrow gate into our yard. There is a cost here.
Mrs_oab and I are radically different heights – and we would need to both compromise and recognise that we would only use it for short journeys so too big or too small is fine.

But the two killers for us were:
We walk to the supermarket and shops with rucsacks apart from a once a fortnight ‘big’ shop. We are too close!
We both need a car for work on a regular basis – mrs_oab being peripatetic around 44 nurseries in Stirlingshire, me as I often travel to lead training around Scotland and UK.

On the carrying stuff front: I just have a rear rack and panniers on my Benno, plus the front rack. BMX pegs for passenger’s feet, and there’s a handle on the back of the saddle for holding on. I have a couple of pieces of foam camping mat chopped up to use as a cushion for passengers, and I just leave them at home if I know I’m going to do a big shop. I have a bunch of different straps permanently in the panniers. You soon learn to get creative on the packing and box scavenging front at the supermarket (and also at guessing how much you’re actually capable of carrying!). I can pretty easily get a big box of beers on the front rack, plus a weekly Asda shop in the panniers and strapped onto the back. It’s a bit trickier if you’ve got a passenger and loaded panniers because they have to sit with their legs so wide, but we’ve managed so far.

Question for long tail folks – how easy is it to flip between carrying a person (e.g. teenager, or wife!), and max luggage capacity for weekly shops? I’m getting lost down a very exciting rabbit hole of accessories, but they seem mutually exclusive – either you carry people, or luggage.

It can work both ways but swapping stuff around is relatively straightforward. That said, the community bike I have access to (GSD) really only does cargo stuff, not kids so we’ve only tried out some accessory swapping once.

If you get a GSD, absolutely get the front rack too, that’s a huge bonus for small storage.

I ride a front-loader sometimes with work and the tendency there is to just chuck stuff into it whereas a longtail encourages you to pack things a bit more carefully!

We keep kinda sorta maybe thinking about getting a cheapy e-cargo, like a Radwagon or Mycle, for the <2 mile journeys we fairly regularly do to the Co-Op for convenience stuff and do every couple of weeks to Tesco for the big shop.

And I know <2 miles is usually perfectly ‘normal bike’-able, but we live up an effing big hill.

Where are people riding these? Cycle paths or roads?

I love the idea of one but there’s not really any suitable cycle paths where we live, and the roads are pretty busy. I wouldn’t fancy putting my son on them while on the road.

When I lived in North London (suburbs), we had one car and a cargo bike (Surly Big Dummy). We could do local shopping runs on the bike no problem, and it could carry kids and do a biggish shopping trip. But it has all the accessories you could shake a stick at (thank you Xtracycle, brilliantly designed panniers that are permanently attached yet not in the way)

Since moving further south we have more than one car and still have the Big Dummy. The difference is that it’s now been electrified and it’s much better for it. I wish it had been electrified before, I would’ve used it more.

The kids loved it before and still love it now. Lots of random conversations with people asking what it is. I used it to drop a mum and daughter back home a short while back, it works great

Without question the only downside is the rain. You can’t really avoid getting wet.

Bit of a dependency on local amenities, I find the sweetspot for cargo bike runs vs using a car is anything that’s up to about 5 miles away or when there’s lots of traffic/limited parking

For the panniers I secured them to the bike with extra zip ties for security, found the biggest tote bags that fitted inside.  Inside supermkt I don’t bother with a basket or trolley, just fill up tote bags.  Self check out so I pack heavy stuff at bottom.  Pay, put totes straight into panniers.

I bought a Henry hoover in Sainsbury’s, they stored it for me while I returned with empty bike.

I ve got panniers front and back but yet to need front ones, Burly flatbed cargo trailer for the tip runs, wickes type runs.

Guy at Aldi on the Botley road had fantastic solution. Surly big dummy with 2 1970’s Delsey hard plastic cases attached to the running boards. It looked ace. Not sure how he got his shopping in them but who cares.

Question for long tail folks – how easy is it to flip between carrying a person (e.g. teenager, or wife!), and max luggage capacity for weekly shops? I’m getting lost down a very exciting rabbit hole of accessories, but they seem mutually exclusive – either you carry people, or luggage.

It is very easy to flip. The Tern captains seat and stocker bars are permanently fixed and fit a euro crate when not carrying passengers (at which point it takes 10 seconds to take out/put in the Velcro seat pad). The 52 L pannier bags fold up pretty flat when not in use so stay on all the time. Ideally we could do with the extended footplates so you properly had somewhere to put your feet around the panniers and I’d definitely get them if we weren’t using it in passenger mode just for short journeys. We have been to the shops together but then I’ve sat on the back holding a shopping bag on the seat back home (we don’t have the front rack which would be useful, but is worth bearing in mind that once p20 and I are on the bike, we are limited to about 20 kg additional weight, based on the 200 kg gross limit). I think you’d struggle to have passengers and do the full weekly shop all at the same time but you can certainly pick up stuff for a couple of days or so (the front rack would help).

Example of the panniers closed up with the captains seat framework left in place but used to pick up compost (I did put a bungie cord around before I rode off!).

Also join the Tern GSD Facebook group – it’s really active with lots of different examples of how people use them.

No question at all. Do it.

If you live within cycling distance of things and places, then i cant fathom for the life of me why you would take a car around when you could take a bike.

Ive not used a tern myself, though observations i have are:

• Bed looks a bit low, so a tall passenger will have their knees around their ears?
• Bed looks a bit short, Two is a squeeze? (Three is ok on our Yuba)
• 20″ wheels are undoubably more “crashy”, and you feel the bumps over the potholes and road features.

I saw one of my neigbours on her “mycle” yesterday, with a plastic shopping box neatly perched within the cage, and 4 pannier bags on. She must have had a weeks shop on board.

Remove the box and bags as easily as you would a pannier bag, and youve got space for two kids.

we have a younger kid, so have a Hammax seat in one position, which takes up space preventing a box fitting, but depends on how old your kids are.

For pure cargo, i would suggest a front loader is better, but if you want passengers of a reasonable age a longtail is best.

Go electric if you can at all afford to. lugging an extra 50-100kgs up a hill on your own (on a bike that weighs 40kg empty) is wholly unresaonable and anyone who does it is crackers.

In regards switching from nipper duties to shopping duties and back again, we have one of these.

Thule GoBox

It fits pretty neatly inside the raised rails on the back of the Bennoand is rigid enough to not move around too much, a single bungee over the top is enough to keep it in place.

Fold it up when  not in use then unfold it and put it in the shopping g trolley, fill it up and then, after you’ve paid, drop it straight into the back and off you go.

No kids and no longtail, but still rattling around Reading on one of those Ofo bikes not with quite few ‘upgrades’ to make it a bit more cargo-esque. Proper tires, reinforced front basket, pannier rack, more dynamo lights.

I’m sold on the idea, OH isn’t and never uses it, or her e-bike TBH. So as long as you’re both sold on the idea of it 365 days a year then it’s great.

Future plan is to build something similar but not step-thru based around one of the tonsheng motors and a pannier rack mounted battery in order to combine the shrug off everything nature of the Schwalbe Marathon Plus’s with the ability to get around a bit quicker. It’s fine as it is for shopping, commuting etc, but riding more than ~10 miles for example running errands to the other side of town rather than just the town center it starts to show it’s weight.

Even in non-electric 40lb Chinese mass produced CBSO form it’s still quicker (~5 miles) into town than a car.

I’m not sure you have anywhere other than Kinetics to choose from but Ben is decent and you’ll get good backup.

Stirling is ideal for a cargo bike tbh, the new cycle routes look good and as long as you have access to the centre you automatically get access to Sprinkerse which covers most bases.

I can confirm, as a 5’9” passenger on a Tern, your knees are not round your ears. It would however be too cosy (and over the weight allowance) for two adults. 20” wheels are a bit clattery but the stability is excellent which feels more important with load – we have both ridden it offroad and yeah it’s not a full sus but it’s fine.

Front loaders do look excellent but didn’t work for us re storage and parking them up easily.

Storage: we have shed without power and narrow gate into our yard. There is a cost here.
Mrs_oab and I are radically different heights – and we would need to both compromise and recognise that we would only use it for short journeys so too big or too small is fine.

We actually find it easier to bring the battery in the house to charge it and then you can be sure to unplug it when it’s done.

p20 and I are very similar heights so don’t have the latter issue. However there is a huge amount of easy adjustment on the Tern front end and seat post that I think would get round most cases in a couple of minutes.

Go electric if you can at all afford to. lugging an extra 50-100kgs up a hill on your own (on a bike that weighs 40kg empty) is wholly unresaonable and anyone who does it is crackers.

I don’t think electric is necessary, but wide range gearing is if its hilly where you live (hub gears work well but some setups have fairly limited gear range). that said, I managed to get my 7 speed nexus cargo bike up ditchling beacon with 2 kids onboard. No dabs but it wasn’t quick 😀

have a look to see if there’s any cargo bikes for sale near you on ebay – the owner may let you rent it for a weekend if you’re interested in buying it.

<p>Give synergy cycles in auchterarder a call (or maybe their gleneagles shop) as I think they have a demo bike you can borrow.</p><p> </p><p>Did you know the energy saving trust do interest free loans for e cargo bikes as well? I’ve just had the paperwork through for ours – took about 2 weeks.</p>

Cheers for both of those tips, looking now 👍

For regular cargo carrying (50kg+), you want one with a low slung box (ideally in front of the handlebars). It’s just more stable.

Defo rate the Tern’s. Well made, good electrics. Buy new if you can and get a good lock.

Obv, it’s more hassle than a car. But not much.