“Do you deliver when it rains?”

It’s a question we get asked surprisingly often. “Are you going out delivering in this weather?” “Are you going to stop doing this in the winter?” We know that it’s meant well, but it’s also a bit of an odd thing to ask. Would you express the same concerns to your postie?

It’s true that on a bike, you’re more exposed to the elements than someone delivering in a motor vehicle. And electric cargo bikes and rain might not seem like a good combination. But it works surprisingly well.

On an e-bike you can layer up for bad weather, without overheating on the climbs. The moving parts of the bikes are fully weather sealed (Our belt drive bikes don’t even need oil on their chains). And we’ve equipped them with rain covers to keep our deliveries as dry as possible. Last winter we were out in rain, wind and snow, even some days when other vehicles weren’t able to deliver.

Perhaps it’s because, here in the UK, bikes are seen as a leisure pursuit, something you do when the mood takes you. Which is fine - bikes are good for lots of things, and having fun is as valid a reason to ride one as any. But we’re trying to show that they’re a usable alternative to big, emissions-heavy vehicles for a lot of local deliveries.

If we switched to motor vehicles when the weather turned bad, we’d arguably be contributing to the problems we’re trying to address: pollution, congestion and man—made climate change. And the last one of these is a perfect example of a “feedback loop”. If we use fossil fuel technologies as a way of protecting ourselves against the effects of climate change in the short term, we run the risk of making things much worse in the long term. So yes, we deliver when it rains.