Tips for Cargo Biking With Your Kids

When I started reviewing electric cargo bikes years ago, they were expensive, niche vehicles for a specific subset of eccentric people. Today, electric bikes are everywhere. But there’s one demographic for whom an electric bike is especially useful—parents.

Parents, especially moms, travel a lot. I have a full-time remote job and a 7-year-old and a 9-year-old. On any given day, I drop the kids off at school and pedal home to get on the computer. I stop by the store to pick up bananas on the way to drop them off at a playdate or volunteer at an event. Without a motor on my bike, I simply wouldn’t have the muscle power to carry my kids and tote all their stuff. I’d need a car.

An ebike changed everything for me. It turned my endless boring errands into windswept opportunities to simultaneously work out, take my kids on a joyride, and stop and chat with our neighbors. I love my electric cargo bike, probably a little too much. If you’re thinking about taking the plunge, here are a few tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way.

Don’t see anything you need here? Check out our guides to the Best Bike Accessories or How to Layer Clothing.

Updated September 2024: We added new sections on whether an electric bike is right for you and keeping your kids safe. We also updated our gear recommendations and checked links and pricing.

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Table of Contents

1. Is an Electric Bike Right For You?
2. Keep Your Kids Safe
3. Pick Your Ride
4. Straps and Accessories
5. Plan Your Route

Is An Electric Bike Right For You?

“Saving the environment!” you thought to yourself. “Getting exercise! Sign me up!” But before you invest in an expensive piece of equipment, I want you to consider: Do you live in a climate where you can expect to spend large amounts of time outside, or is your region frequently plagued with snow, rain, or unsafe heat? Several friends who have bought electric bikes in places like Texas are simply not able to bike children to and from day care when the temperatures are too high.

Second, do your local city, county, or state regulations prohibit you from buying or using certain types of electric bikes? Some cities don’t permit the use of a throttle; others might be speed-limited. PeopleForBikes has a quick primer on the laws by state.

Keep Your Kids Safe

It needs to be said: Do not let your kid ride an electric bike. It looks like an analog bike, but it’s not. It’s a vehicle with a motor. The American Academy of Pediatrics—the gold standard when it comes to childhood safety recommendations—has not issued recommendations specifically for electric bikes. But in general, the organization does not recommend that anyone under the age of 16 operate any motorized vehicles. Smaller children just don’t have the physical, mental, or cognitive maturity to operate motor vehicles at high speed—especially vehicles that are sized specifically for adults.

However, the AAP is pretty unambiguous that your children should be wearing a properly fitted bike helmet. My daughter wears a Giro MIPS helmet ($75); MIPS stands for Multi-Directional Impact Protection System, which reduces the rotational forces when your head hits the ground and reduces the risk of head and neck injury. I’m testing the Lazer helmets ($50), which fit very well and are reasonably priced. My children also wear safety vests ($11), and most electric cargo bikes have proprietary roll bars or handlebars that keep your kids safe and stable on the bike itself.

Pick Your Ride

Bikes are incredibly personal. Which bike is best for you depends on a number of factors, like your budget, how big and strong you are (sorry), and the terrain and traffic around your house.

Electric cargo bikes come in two flavors. A mid- or long-tail has an extended rear rack to attach seats or panniers, while a bakfiets, also called a Long John, suspends a cargo box between the rider and the front wheel. I ride a Tern GSD S00 (8/10, WIRED Recommends), which is a mid-tail bike. It has a maximum weight capacity of around 450 pounds, and it’s not very long. It can’t carry as much stuff and isn’t quite as convenient as a bakfiets, but I find it much easier to ride. If you live in a flat area with roads that are in good condition, then yes, you should get a bakfiets. I can carry our dog around in it and it’s great.

You have many options, depending on how old your children are and how many of them you have.

• For a child 1-2 years old: Your child can safely ride in a bike seat from the time they can hold their own head up steadily. Ours started riding in a bike trailer around 1 year old. For very small children, start with a bike seat buckled into a bakfiets.
• For a child 3-5 years old: If you have only one child, you can turn your regular bike into a family bike. We used a Thule Yepp seat ($230) on a rear rack for six years.
• Do you have multiple children? I put both of my children on the rear rack, but you can also mount a child seat on your handlebar stem. This lets you keep an eye on your tiny tots as you ride. We like and have used the Thule front-mounted seat ($200) and the Mac Ride ($229).
• For a child older than 5: Maybe your child is old enough to practice pedaling with a seat attachment ($335) on the back of your bike.
• How about a bike trailer? I wouldn’t recommend a bike trailer for dense city traffic where it might be more difficult for a car to see your kid. But they’re useful for storage, or if you’re worried that a child seat will throw you off balance. You can also attach trailers to the back of your longtail.

Straps and Accessories

Your kids will be way more inclined to get on the bike behind you if you make it as comfortable for them as possible. Here are a few things that have kept my kids happy:

• Play music. Nothing makes kids as happy as playing music while biking to school. I clip a Tribit Stormbox Micro 2 ($60) on my handlebars, but we have more recommendations in our guide to the Best Bluetooth Speakers.
• Pad the seats. Most bikes have proprietary accessories that will fit their racks well.
• Keep their feet out of the way. It looks cute, but dangling feet are very uncomfortable for little ones! And tiny feet kicking yours as you pedal can be dangerous. I have running boards on the bottom of my rack for my kids to rest their feet. If the proprietary accessories are too uncomfortable, cruise around Etsy to find very similar items.
• Keep the rain at bay. I finally caved and purchased a Storm Shield ($230) for the rear rack to keep the Oregon rain off my kids as they ride. Smaller windscreens ($52) can work well too.

If you’re transporting children, you’re also probably transporting sports gear and weird oversize cardboard art projects. You can get a bike basket, but my front rack is the Tern front hauler ($140), which is incredibly versatile. I can tie my kids’ backpacks down with bungee straps or lie a skateboard or giant pizza box down across it.

That brings me to the most important bike accessory: straps. Lots and lots of straps. Every decent cargo bike rider has a rat’s nest of straps sitting in a bin in their garage. I also keep a few in the bottom of my pannier at all times. Here are a few straps that I find indispensable:

• If you have a front rack or basket, get a bungee pack ($27). This is the strap I use every day to tie down spare helmets while my kids ride on the back.
• 15-foot cam buckle straps ($20), of the kind you use to tie down surfboards or rafts, are useful for bigger and heavier items. Just pull on the strap with the full force of your weight to cinch things down as tight as possible. The tighter things are, the less they wobble.
• These Voile ski straps ($8) are the duct tape of cargo biking. Did you pick up some random little thing while you were out that you now have to get home, like an extra kid’s life jacket or helmet? Is something sticking out of your pannier that looks like it might get caught in the spokes? Just put a tiny strap on it on one of your racks.
• Don’t throw your dead bicycle inner tubes away! They’re durable, stretchy, and free. If you have anything large or oddly shaped, you can stretch a bike tube over it quickly.

Plan Your Route

Now you’re kitted out, but still worried about how to get to school without everyone in your family getting hit by an 18-wheeler. The first place I would check is your preferred map app. Both Google Maps and Apple Maps let you plot out routes with a biking option to take advantage of side roads and bike lanes. You can also toggle on the Bicycling Layer in Google Maps to find routes.

Still not sure? Try checking Strava’s Heatmap. It shows areas of aggregated public activity. If there’s a route that’s popular with cyclists near your house, you will probably see it. And don’t forget to check with your local bureau of transportation, which may have free bike and walk maps. These will undoubtedly feature more scenic rides than more useful commuter routes, but it’s worth taking a look.

My final tip? Start a bike bus. Having a biking buddy holds you accountable—you’re way more likely to muster up the gumption to get on your bike instead of in a car if you’re meeting someone else. When you’re riding, a car is way more likely to see two people instead of one. Plus, you get to make a friend and ride bikes! What could be better than that?

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