The ARGO Backstory
By: Scott Taylor
When I saw my first cargo bike, I panicked. It was an old steel frame just about to be restored for a guy who bought it off of Craigslist for something like $800. My mind immediately wandered...I imagined taking my kids to the park, getting the best parking space at the grocery store and maybe just not driving so much.
This cargo bike (also called a Bakfiets or Box Bike or Long John) had been brought to my now-closed bike shop, Salvagetti Bicycle Workshop, to be fully refurbished. And seeing, riding and thinking about is sparked my mind for what the future held. I knew that my bike shop should carry cargo bikes.
I immediately tried my hand at finding just the right cargo bike for my customer (and let’s be honest, for me). The cheap ones were just that: cheap. By cheap, I mean scary; they were unsafe for rider and for cargo. I will not name names, but I saw them and rode them in person and knew immediately that it was a NO. The fancy ones were built for extreme usage, like hauling appliances and for courier services. Again, I have ridden them. And I cannot say one bad thing about them, except they are simply more than I have ever needed. So the cargo bike I was looking for was for outings with kids, to go to the dog park and make errands fun, without being crazy expensive. After an exhaustive search for a good solution, I gave up. I simply could not find a cargo bike that was a happy medium.
(Fast forward a few months and lots of thinking)
I carry a notebook with me everywhere for sketching ideas and writing down thoughts. One morning, while sitting in the bike shop parking lot, I figured out a solution that I had been working on… The system finally showed itself to me. It was a way to easily turn a person’s current bike into a cargo bike. Within a day, I had reached out to two people with skills greater than mine in wood and metal fabrication. And the three of us started getting designs together within a week. We started very slowly by making a system that worked. And that system evolved to a detachable system. Then I started the patent. We showed a few people and they wanted one. So did I! And that’s when we decided to take the project to Kickstarter. And it continued to evolve to be what we are now shipping.
This is the ARGO, it turns the bike you already have into a cargo bike. It is purpose built to bring more fun and adventure to your life.It packs in 90% of what most cargo bikes are used for at about ⅓ of the price. It stores easily. It can be brought with you and your family on trips. And it feels like your bike that you already love, just a little longer and more capable.
