David’s Cargo Bike
People’s Choice Award winner at MADE Bike 2026!
This awesome cargo bike won first place in the People's Choice award at the MADE bike show 2026!
It was a super fun build! (Also, it took a long time!)
David lives in a hilly area, so he wanted to keep the weight down as much as possible. And he had some very specific requirements:
A suspension fork.
A cargo platform at the front of the bike.
Also, the cargo platform must swivel up out of the way for easier parking.A pinion gearbox with SmartShift electronic shifting. He chose the Pinion C1.6i, because it's the lightest pinion SmartShift option.
A dropper seatpost. Specifically, the RockShox Reverb AXS XPLR.
Carbon fenders, to save as much weight as possible.
ENVE gravel bars for the same reason.
Finally, a rear rack built to carry a kid in a Yepp child seat.
I did everything I could to accommodate all these requests, and the result is pretty great! The bike is so fun to ride. It comes in at only 46 lbs. And it’s beautiful!
Design
All of these constraints really drove the design to be what it is.
With a child seat on the back, it's not possible to swing a leg over the back wheel to get on the bike, so we needed to make the standover height of the frame as low as possible, so David could step through to get on.
Combined with the front platform cargo area, this led to the main boom tube design. The bike is built around this 2x0.065" tube as the central structural element of the frame.
The result is a low ___ standover, for a pretty tall rider.
Once we had settled on that main boom tube, I carried that design element through the rest of the frame, so the front and rear racks are both designed around long horizontal tubes with capped ends.
Steering
The articulated steering took some design work. This is actually my third iteration of steering geometry for this bike. After the first one failed, I sat down with a spreadsheet to work out the math to make the steering work.
Geometry
Despite being a cargo bike, this bike has geometry like a road bike. 73 degree seat and (forward) head tube angle, slight handlebar drop, 80 mm bottom bracket drop. The bike does have a very short trail, to give better handling when front loaded. The large volume front tire helps, but it definitely handles like a short-trail road bike.
Overall, the bike is very stable and comfortable. Mostly it feels like riding any other bike.
Paint
The paint is intended to be Miami Vice themed. We went through so many versions of paint design for this bike, but it turned out so well!
The colors are just perfect. They're both old muscle car colors. The teal is a Ford Mustang color from the 1960s, called Gulfstream Aqua. The pink is Dodge Panther Pink, originally available on the 1970 Barracuda.
Together, they have such a late 80s / early 90s vibe!
The MADE Bike Show
The bike started getting attention right away! Before I’d even finished loading in, John Watson from The Radavist stopped to chat with me about it. We took it outside and took some photos, and he said some very nice things about it.
After that first attention, the buzz just kept growing. From the moment the show opened, I had people coming by the booth just to see it. And photographers from different media outlets kept taking it away to take more pictures!
As the weekend progressed, I noticed that our booth seemed to be one of the busiest of all the builders in the immediate area (Rare Earth was next door; he was also very busy with a wild aero 32” drop bar mountain bike). We were getting so much attention, I started to hope that it might be in the running for an award. But I tried not to get my hopes up.
But even with all the attention from attendees and the media, I never expected to win best in show in the people’s choice award! I was completely awestruck as a cadre of photographers descended on my booth to award me the prize with show director Billy in the lead. To be honest, I’m still a little bit in shock.
I shared the podium with Charles from Fine Cycles and Ashley from Significant Other. I was honored to stand next to them!
Over the weekend, the bike was covered by:
The Radavist: https://theradavist.com/2026-made-bike-show-01
Bicycling Magazine: https://www.bicycling.com/bikes-gear/a73505257/made-show-editor-favorites-2026-tara/
N-Minus-1 Bikes: https://nminus1bikes.substack.com/p/2026-made-show-tech-gallery-part-2?open=false#%C2%A7fiddlehead-cycles-cargo-bike
Gravel Cyclist: https://www.gravelcyclist.com/videos/made-show-builder-bikes-e-to-j-2026/
And: https://youtu.be/rC57WE8REk8?si=MMt0mwEuaVs5Vq40&t=575Path Less Pedaled: https://youtu.be/mgB4zKszaKs?si=OKgzTGAbQwgx8ABQ&t=1870
And now for the rest of the pictures
Photo credit: John Watson, The Radavist