It is cold this Monday morning, many streets and cycle paths in Hamburg are covered with a layer of snow and ice. The gritting services in the Hanseatic city can hardly keep up. Not a good idea to get on a bike now – but that doesn’t apply to Christian Rusche (44). “Of course we will continue to deliver goods. We have been doing this for twelve years, even in snow and ice.” This isn’t a problem with three- and five-wheeled cargo bikes, says the founder and boss of Cargo Cycle, the first pedal-powered freight forwarding company in Hamburg.
Despite a stubborn cold, some pride can be heard in his words. Even after more than a decade, the entrepreneur and vehicle designer is still interested in the idea of a CO₂-free vehicle Delivery traffic not happening in German cities. “This is still my passion and the whole team is here with heart and soul.”
In front of us is the “Nanuk Megaliner”. “Green transport. With muscles and electricity” is written on the cover of the cargo bike. “One of the largest in the world,” assures Rusche. The little monster is almost seven meters long and can carry 500 kilograms. Because it is about one meter wide, it can be driven anywhere where bicycles are allowed. There is space for three Euro 3 pallets in a row on the loading area.
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Vehicle designer and Cargo Cycle founder Christian Rusche financed his studies with rickshaw rides
Photo: PR
Two mega cargo bikes replace a 7.5 ton truck in city traffic
Rusche designed and built the huge cargo bike, and the fourth one will soon go into service in Hamburg. Cargo Cycle moves two of them on behalf of its customer DB Schenker in Hamburg, and the international shipping company operates another in Coburg with its own driver. Cargo Cycle also runs for the logistics service provider Dachser in Hamburg – on the last mile, two “Megaliners” replaced a 7.5-ton truck. The Ziegler logistics group has two “Megaliners” in use in Belgium. Other logistics companies have inquired. One in Wiesbaden, for example, wants to deliver Ikea furniture with the “Megaliner” in the future because it has found in tests that at certain times “many more” customers can be delivered this way than with a van.
Cargo Cycle provides that Heavy duty bike is still working and is constantly working on improvements. The “Megaliner” costs around 27,000 euros net, including the battery and tarpaulin. The production of smaller cargo bikes has increased the logisticsStartup however, set. Rusche doesn’t like to talk about the order backlog – for competitive reasons.
In Hamburg, DB Schenker fills one in the Wilhelmsburg district in the morning Electric truck with cargo and drives it to the transshipment point in Altona. There the drivers repack the freight onto the cargo bikes and then pedal it to customers in the Hamburg city area. In the evening the bikes circle back to Altona and refill their batteries. Depending on the battery chosen, one charge is sufficient for up to 100 kilometers in urban areas.
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For icy transport: Cargo Cycle also delivers fresh fish to restaurants and hotel kitchens for the “Deutschesee” in Hamburg using solar-powered freezer boxes on the cargo bikes
Photo: PR
“We are very satisfied with the use of cargo bikes in Germany,” says a company spokeswoman to manager magazin. For more sustainable logistics solutions, DB Schenker is not only pushing forward the electrification of its vehicle fleet, but is also using cargo bikes. Especially in the city center, the “XXL Cargo Bike,” as the shipping company calls it, is “ideal” for last-mile deliveries of goods. Overall, Schenker still operates a manageable number of around 100 smaller cargo bikes in Europe. Because of the individual shipment structure, which also varies from office to office, it is said that the use of cargo bikes is not possible everywhere.
DHL is making major electrical upgrades in the last mile
Competitors are also increasingly relying on CO₂-free delivery: The parcel service DPD transports around two million parcels in Germany every day and aims to have reduced CO₂ emissions on the last mile by 80 percent by 2030 – primarily through the use of electric vehicles, explains a spokesman upon request. The market leader DHL delivers parcels electrically in half of its delivery districts; by 2025 the rate is expected to rise to 70 percent. However, this says nothing about the number of packages (there are 6.2 million across Germany every day).
There are currently 55,000 vans on the last mile, 25,000 of which are purely electric. The number is expected to rise to 38,000 by the end of 2025. Each of these vehicles saves an average of four tons of CO₂ annually, says DHL spokesman Alexander Edenhofer. Transport between cities or large depots is still predominantly handled by conventional trucks, he admits.
Letter deliverers, who also deliver small parcels, are almost entirely electric: most recently around 13,500 e-trikes and around 5,700 other e-bikes. The delivery staff delivered 2.3 million such packages every week using electric cargo bikes. This means they save 0.4 tons of CO₂ per year compared to traditional parcel delivery by car, explains Edenhofer.
“There is a lot more demand than we can handle.”
Christian Rusche, founder and boss of Cargo Cycle
As a bicycle transport company, Cargo Cycle fears neither the large nor the small competitors. The start-up hasn’t worked for the big parcel delivery companies for a long time because they paid “far too little”. The young company can obviously afford it: “There is much more demand than we can handle,” says Rusche. In addition to the Megaliners, Cargo Cycle operates seven other, smaller cargo bikes in Hamburg. According to Rusche, who financed his studies with rickshaw rides for tourists, the start-up’s cargo bikes cover a total of around 52,000 kilometers emission-free in Hamburg per year. Overall, the CO₂ savings amount to seven to nine tons annually. Added to this is the time saving: depending on the volume of goods and traffic, a customer saves one and a half to three hours a day with a truck delivery, the entrepreneur calculates meticulously.
Cargo bikes could replace every second car transport of goods
However, that many goods come with one Cargo bike Rusche also knows that they cannot be transported. The bike logistics entrepreneur explains that he is “not an enemy of cars.” “Through our service, we try to free the roads of those vehicles that are not necessary for transporting certain things.” Proponents of bicycle logistics estimate that cargo bikes could replace up to 50 percent of the goods transported by car in a city.
The efforts of many municipalities to push cars back from the city center benefit service providers such as Cargo Cycle. These also benefit from companies looking for alternatives to emission-free logistics in order to achieve their ESG goals. The start-up boss relies less on political support and more on economic reason: “No matter what politicians do, the cargo bike will prevail over the last mile because it is 30 percent more efficient,” Rusche is convinced and points out on a study
of the Federal Association of Parcel and Express Logistics.
“The industry doesn’t actually need any funding.”
Christian Rusche, founder and boss of Cargo Cycle
Subsidies are on hold
That’s why the managing director reacts calmly to the federal funding of up to 2,500 euros for a commercially used cargo bike is currently on hold and could possibly be eliminated completely as part of the budget restructuring in 2024. In any case, the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (BAFA) is currently no longer approving any new applications, he confirms Bicycle Logistics Association Germany
(RLVD).
“The industry doesn’t actually need funding. Why should the state subsidize a vehicle with which I can drive the last mile more efficiently and quickly, and which is also cheaper than a conventional transporter – with which I as an entrepreneur can save money?”, Rusche asks. Cargo Cycle, which is operationally profitable but reinvests its profits, has never taken advantage of subsidies, says the entrepreneur.
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The Cycling Logistics Association, on the other hand, warns against letting the funding expire. Self-employed people, craftsmen and also smaller delivery services have had strong demand for the funding in the past two years. Until the temporary stop, Bafa paid out around 4.8 million euros in funding for around 3,320 electric cargo bikes and cargo trailers in the current year by mid-November.
Bicycle logistics lobby sees young companies at risk
If the subsidy were to cease, the young manufacturers of these bikes in Germany would be particularly at risk. These start-ups produced 100 to a maximum of 1,000 units per year. “Promotion is essential for competitive prices and the market ramp-up. Otherwise, many young, innovative companies, their suppliers and service providers are at risk of going out of business,” warns Tom Assmann, Chairman of the Bicycle Logistics Association.
Jonas Kremer, head of the business customer department at the cargo bike dealer Isicargo
, is currently in the middle of year-end business. “That has now collapsed,” he reports. Customers are being unsettled by the threat of a funding stop, which is currently slowing down business. According to Kremer, Isicargo is the leading dealer in Germany for commercial cargo bikes – and the boss is also the head of the German Bicycle Logistics Association.
Tax cuts instead of subsidies
For some players in the bicycle industry, however, the issue of subsidies goes completely against the grain. “If you take the classic route, you as a company would have to storm the associations and insist on funding,” says Thorsten Heckrath-Rose, head of the premium bicycle manufacturer Rose, in an interview. In reality, however, the complexity of the tax system, cross-subsidies, lobbying and the associated bureaucracy can no longer be tolerated. His vote: “Completely reduce subsidies and subsidies, radically reduce taxes in return, and abolish exceptions in the tax system.” The manager is convinced that “good solutions could be more successful in this way.” And this will then “almost certainly no longer be your own car in the inner cities”.
more on the subject
Rose has long been demanding a speed limit of 30 km/h in the city. Where there are no cycle paths, bicycles belong on the road on an equal footing with cars, he says. Then cargo bike traffic will continue to pick up speed “because there is finally more space.” In view of the prospect of traffic-calmed inner cities, craftsmen and logisticians would “increasingly rely on alternatives such as cargo bikes in the city” and would thus be able to offer “significantly more service hours that they would otherwise spend standing in traffic jams in a van or looking for a parking space,” says Heckrath-Rose.
Should (transport) policy steer so radically into the future? Cargo Cycle founder Rusche is keeping a Hanseatic low profile. He prefers to say with a smile where he sees Cargo Cycle, which currently has twelve permanent employees, in five years: further in Hamburg with 100 employees.