The need to move deliveries to zero emission methods is all the more pressing. Online orders are ever increasing whilst local regulations come in to tackle issues on air pollution and congestion, such as Oxfords Zero emission zone starting in 2020, and globally the IPCC report citing we have 12 years remaining to reduce our impact. 

But this isn't a doom and gloom post, we think you can feel good about ordering online this year as there's a good chance your presents will arrive by cargo bike in Oxford!

Our current fleet of cargo bikes has reduced co2 emissions by an estimate 12 tons of co2 in 2018 on our last mile deliveries alone, delivering nearly 50,000 parcels!

We have surprised, inspired and brought joy to unsuspecting customers across the last two years by delivering their online orders and arriving by cargo bike! 

This is great, but we're keen to be more ambitious in 2019. We deliver only about 20% of one national parcel carriers deliveries into Oxford. To deliver the further 80% of mostly larger parcels requires something more.

After months of research and development, this week we're launching cargo trikes to begin testing if these could be a solution for local residents, business's, schools and offices to receive their online orders while improving air pollution and congestion at the same time. 

The best part? Everyone wins. Consumers on the whole want to improve their local neighbourhoods and communities, yet don't want to give up the convenience of online ordering, so what if you could do both? When you look at fashion retail, for example, you can now order from Next by 9pm and it arrives the next day. This is possible to arrive easily by cargo bike faster and more reliably due to not getting stuck in congestion without pumping out harmful diesel fumes from vans. 

On the topic of improving communities, even though you order online, you're still helping Oxfords local economy. As cargo bikes have a limited range of about 15-50 miles we require a local depot to operate from, so a portion of your online delivery fee comes directly back to us and back into the local community.

In order to meet consumers’ growing demands for online delivery, we need radical thinking in dense urban environments like Oxford city centre in how we meet this need though.

A word of warning however: Without improvements to cycle infrastructure in Oxford, it will severely hinder our ability to meet these growing demands. Without the ability to filter past congestion with our wider cargo trikes, this prevents us getting those urgent online orders to you fast, reliably and most importantly in zero emission way

Gone are the days of five to seven day deliveries, anything you want is at the click of a finger delivered to you wherever you are in minutes or hours, not days and we at Pedal & Post want to meet the challenge of making this even faster yet future proofing deliveries against the growing climate crisis.