Say hello to the lightest, easiest-to-ride, most approachable utility bike out there: the Halsted cycletruck from Minneapolis-based Civia Cycles. Now with a stronger and more stable front end. A cycletruck is a decades-old, compact design featuring a 20″ front wheel and a 26″ rear wheel. The low center of gravity over the little front wheel makes it easy to ride with heavy objects.
Above the little front wheel, a cargo deck attaches to the frame, not the fork. This independence between steering and load-carrying is another key to the cycletruck’s stable ride. That combination makes it easy to do most of your daily errands by bike instead of in a car. If a longtail or a boxbike is just more steed than you need, the 2012 Halsted ($1195 complete, $599 frame/fork) is an ideal alternative that’s also a breeze to ride and park. The 2012 model has a laterally stiffer, stabler front end than the 2011. Civia’s published recommended maximum for the front basket is 50 lbs. We can’t claim more than that, but we have in fact put several hundred miles on the Halsted with 90 lbs. in the basket–up and down hills, on pavement and off–without a problem. Another difference is color: the Halsted goes from gray to a sage green for 2012.
Rear racks, fenders, and child seats are typical features that our customers have us add to the Halsted. You can also mount a Wald Giant Delivery Basket to the cargo deck: it’s lightweight, inexpensive, and easy to cover or strap bungees to. A Patterson Metropolis 2-speed crankset ($300) can extend your gear range for extra-steep climbs, though we find this almost always unnecessary, as we can climb to the top of the nearest volcano (Mt. Tabor, 1 mile to the east) using the Halsted’s stock gearing…and with a 120 lb. load (plus the rider) on the Halsted without too much trouble.
Above: Portobello Vegan Trattoria bought a Halsted from Joe Bike for their daily pickup of ingredients they use to make food from scratch. The frame has mounting points for a sign like the one you see here. In fact, if you email Civia your logo, they’ll make a sign for you (around $75-100). Or make your own with a sheet of stainless steel, allowing you to add and remove signs magnetically.
There’s a quick, cheap, and completely effective way to turn your Halsted into a highly capable yet still quick and compact cargo carrier. You can easily carry another 100 lbs. in the rear, plus three separate loading surfaces, for about $75, by doing something like what’s shown below on the left, or on the right:
Build your own Halsted: Frameset, including cargo deck, $599. We offer internal gear and dyno hub options on the Halsted. Nuvinci’s bombproof n360 CVT rear hub with a weatherproof Shimano IM80 rear roller brake, for example, is a $400 upgrade. Add a Shimano Alfine dyno hub for $180 including parts and labor. The fork can accept disc brakes. Rear disc brakes are not available for the Halsted.
Civia thoughtfully built four sign-mounting points into the frame, and they’ll custom-print a two-sided sign for your business. You can see Civia’s own sign above.
Email info@joe-bike.com or call 503 954-2039 if you’d like to talk about the Halsted or other utility bikes.
Here’s Civia’s guide to the Halsted.
And yes, Bionx hub motors are available for the Halsted, starting around $1200 in addition to the bike.
Are CycleTrucks a new design? They’ve been around for about 80 years or so in Europe, North America, and elsewhere. Schwinn made cycletrucks in Chicago for many years, and even then it was nothing new, just very practical. An example appears below, sans front rack.
