Tuesday, December 31, 2013

End of Year recap - and what a year it has been!

2013 was a real blast and for us has to go down as one of the best years we have had, so much stuff has happened and what's more the best thing about this year is the stuff we have planned for next year. Overall one of the most pleasing things for us is there is a real feel about stuff happening in Hereford, yeah there is still a bunch of people winging about how terrible stuff is and how the world is going to end next week but most people, it seems, have been gathering themselves and building projects back up. There is a great feel of stuff that is happening and of community involvement. We think people have come to terms that the Council and the Government are no longer people dishing out money and that starting projects and businesses means having a quality product or goal and thats what will see it through as being a success. There is a lot more good quality stuff about at the moment.

We recently heard about a great community bread scheme in Hereford that has has a little bit of lottery funding, it appears to be a bunch of people who are just dead keen on getting good bread into homes in Hereford, I've seen them meeting up in a local pub, pouring over bits of paper, all smiles and not one of them bothered about making a fortune out of the project, it is great to see a community pulling together to run something like that and the gains are of course way more than a loaf of bread for everyone, there are friendships made, communities strengthened and time shared, those are the foundations for progress and it is great to see more stuff like that happening in Hereford.

It is also noted that particularly in cargo type bikes there is a real swell of interest in Europe and indeed in the UK. There is even a guy in Hereford who has bought a cargo bike for his own use! We plan in 2014 to launch our own Cargo Bike Hire project, we've had some great funding for it and have spent most of the year waiting for various permissions to be granted so we can place a bike in a local community for them to use. We are really excited about it and can't wait for other people to be using cargo bikes. If you are in Hereford and you do fancy using a cargo bike, get in touch, we can lend one to you before the project goes live. 

So in a nutshell 2013 has been great (more about it below) and we have a great feeling about 2014 and the general energy people have for communities and doing stuff in Hereford.  Here is to a great year!

2013 a recap...

We started the year with some great news about funding to enable us to develop a project to put cargo bikes in communities, we got some funding from various different pots and the CTC were one of them, they wrote this on their website.

Then things got cold, it snowed for ages and was below zero for a couple of weeks, stuff ground to a halt but not us, truth be told we had a great time:

As things brightened up we sponsored a couple of things, gave free advertising to local businesses and sponsored the equipment for a bunch of soldiers riding the length of the country for a very good cause.

Mothers day came round and we were once again out on the streets loaded with flowers spreading the good will!

As always a lot of people used us for their special days, weddings, proms, stags and hens..
 A couple of good friends got hitched and it was a pleasure to be involved.

Some Hen parties were more of a handful than others..
But our favourite has to be our very own Ben Matthews getting hitched to a girl he met whilst riding a pedicab!
 
As summer rolled on we began a set of sponsored city tours, we pedalled non stop every Saturday for 10 weekends, taking on new staff to run the project and giving hundreds of people a historical insight into Hereford and also information about the new developments and the future of what might happen.
Our parcel delivery went through the roof, thousands of parcels delivered by bike, lots of stuff ordered on the internet which travelled, by air, lorry, van and then finally by bike to the front doors of sometimes surprised customers!
Our very own Tom 'The D-burger' Donaldson escaped work for a week to represent the UK at mountain boarding, he did everyone proud and brought home a bronze, putting him 3rd in the world!
We broke some bikes
We helped other people get bikes fixed..
We featured in magazines
We got even busier! Expanding our range of postcodes covered for a number of large delivery companies.
We experienced some really rubbish weather
Bought some new bikes
Took Santa to switch the Christmas lights on
Opened a bridge


And of course got plenty of punctures

We got up to lots of other stuff too, too much to write about really. But as we mentioned, next year is the one we are looking forward to, lots of very interesting projects coming!

So from us, we wish you a Happy New Year. Make and keep some good resolutions and break the rubbish ones!

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

What we got up to in October..

October has been a great month, we finally finished our Summer Tour programme at the end of September and it was a great success, other than one day we were flat out for the whole summer season which was brilliant for us and for people in Hereford. But as the seasons move on things pick up in other areas for us. 

Lots of our last mile delivery work is for major companies who drop parcels to us in the morning so we can dispatch them. That volume is running at double what it would usually which is pretty bonkers so it feels like we're either flat out on the bikes or flat out in the workshop repairing stuff and taking the strain!

Over on our facebook page we featured a few things:

The CTC did an article about Pedicabs and featured us rather prominently..


The British Weather threatened to test our waterproofs..


And we took delivery of another bike...


Keep trucking!


Friday, September 20, 2013

More stuff we've been up to..

Interesting map of some of the last mile postcodes we cover..


Last few weeks of our city tours...


Poppy the dog had a barking good time..


We featured in the CTC magazine this month!


Tuesday, September 3, 2013

stuff we've been up too

So.. a lot of things are getting covered over on our Facebook page but we'll keep you updated on them by posting up some screenshots of the pages, just in case you can't log in to FB.

Here are a bunch of recent posts:







Saturday, August 17, 2013

City Tours!

Our tour programme is up and running, this time subsidised by the Old Livestock Market Development.

Tours run from 10-4 and take just over and hour. We'll take in some sights of Historical Hereford and also head over to the Old Livestock Market to show you some of the future of Hereford. There will be viewing platforms and our guides will be able to point out some interesting things about what's going on!

You can jump on a tour at the Coffee Cart in High Town between 10 and 4 every Saturday, there are seats to wait for the next one and A-boards to clearly display the next tour time.







Thursday, August 1, 2013

Tour guides need cool t-shirts hey!

Cool tourist info t-shirts for our team this year, featuring our sponsors!


Wednesday, July 31, 2013

City Tours Start this Saturday!

We had a great evening training up our new tour guides yesterday. So we are all set for our summer run of tours starting this Saturday.



The tours will run for 9 weeks and are fully subsidised (yes FREE!) by the Old Livestock Market. We are also working in association with Visit Herefordshire and the Coffee Cart. Visit Herefordshire are providing a pop up tourist information hub in High Town and the Coffee Cart are allowing us to run our tours from next to their Cart. 


Tours run from 10-4 and take just over and hour. We'll take in some sights of Historical Hereford and also head over to the Old Livestock Market to show you some of the future of Hereford. There will be viewing platforms and our guides will be able to point out some interesting things about what's going on!

We hope to see you on board soon!

If you want really up to date information about what we're doing, don't forget to check our Facebook page - www.facebook.com/HerefordPedicabsAndCargo we post all sorts of things on there.



Thursday, July 18, 2013

Ben Matthews - gets Wed

Director of the company Ben Matthews got married a couple of weeks back. He met his beautiful wife Heather through some work we were doing with Pedicabs and a local theatre so it was excellent to be involved!




Thursday, July 4, 2013

Special Occasions!

We've done loads of really great events this year, proms, weddings, stags and hens and we've had a blast doing them, we figured you might like to see a few pictures!



Summer Tours

Bit of not so secret news for you, we'll be running some historical city tours this year, every Saturday in August and September from High Town, taking in a bunch of historical sights and hopefully we'll be able to make a trip to the new development so people can have a squiz at the futre of Hereford.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Mountain Mayhem

Pedicabs are teaming up with a crack mixed squad of male and female MTB legends to form TEAM Eagle/Pedicab who are going to tackle Mountain Mayhem this weekend. Its a 24 hour mountain bike race, 5 of us will take it in turns to do a hot lap around the course completing as many laps as we can. Should be a good laugh so if you see any of us up there give us a big cheer. 

We'll be the awesome ones having and amazing time!

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Community Cargo Bike update..


Exciting news! 

We are getting very close to being able to announce when the scheme is going to start in Hereford. 
We have been very busy - here is some of the stuff we have been up to…..

We have the bike.
We are doing lots of things to the bike to make it ready to be hired.

We have decided on a location for the box the bike is going to live in.
We have permission for the box to live in the location. 
We are not telling you where until the licence is in our hands! 

We have designed the bike/box release system and we are now testing the 'Magic Keys' which will be issued to people who sign up for the scheme.
We are working out the last details of the hire charges and access rates for our members. 
We have purchased a bulk load of tubs which fit the bike which some of our members will get for free depending on how long they sign up for.

We are now in the process of design, web design, booking system design and also making sure that we have the correct policies and procedures in place to protect the scheme and the members.

We are VERY EXCITED about launching the cargo bike programme and giving access to such a great bit of equipment to everybody in the community it lives in.

More information on the way when we can tell you!

Thursday, April 4, 2013

New carbon saving stickers...

New window and surface stickers designed and off to print. For each of our trade waste recycling customers so they can show their customers the difference they are making choosing us to manage their waste stream. They all get filled in by hand to identify exactly how much carbon has been saved.


Thursday, March 28, 2013

COMMUNITY CARGO BIKE UPDATE - GOOD NEWS!


It has been a while since we got in touch but there is a very good reason for that, you see we've been holding out for some really good news to give you!



We've got all the funding in place to officially start the scheme! So in the next few months the St. James area of Hereford is going to have a cargo bike which can be used by people to move their stuff around. It is really exciting to think that we'll be giving people access to the use of a great bit of equipment for a really low cost and that Hereford will be the trial project for something that we hope will grow much bigger.

Hereford Pedicabs and Cargo have invested a lot of time and energy into the creation of this project and we were over the moon when we were approached by 'Choose How You Move' who were keen on seeing if they could help us get the project running. Choose How You Move is an initiative which is funded by the local Council with an aim of engaging people with ways to move about the town which are both healthier and sustainable. For us it seemed a perfect fit with our project goal so we were happy to allow them on board to help us turn our idea into a reality.

We think that by summer or maybe earlier we will have the scheme running. There is a lot of work to do now that we couldn't do until we were sure the scheme was going to happen, but what it does mean is we can now answer some of your questions…...

Where is the bike going to live?
In a big secure box, it'll be big enough for you to put your bike into it if you need to when your are riding the cargo bike. We can't announce just where this will be yet but you will be the first to know! What we can say is it will live in the centre of St James in Hereford. 

How will the bike be booked?
We are creating a website for the project and it will have its own branding, it will also have a mobile app. You will be able to use the website or the mobile app to book the time you need the bike. Also if the bike is not pre booked and is in its box you should be able to use it ad hock before the next scheduled booking. 

How much will it cost?
We are still working on some of this. There will be an access fee to use the bike and a usage fee. Access fees will range from between 24 hours to 1 year, once the fee has been paid you'll pay a usage fee depending on how long you want the bike for. Your access fee will get you a certain quantity of usage for free. So for instance if you register for 24 hours access fee to the bike, you will be able to use it for 1.5 hours for free as many times as you want in that 24 hours. If you use it for longer than the 1.5 hours in one session there will be a further charge. The concept is to make it cheap to use the bike for a small amount of time and to get lots of people using it often. 

How will the bike be unlocked?
When you register with the scheme we'll give you a magic key. When you need to get the bike out of the box the magic key will know whether you have paid your access and usage fees and whether or not the bike is available for you to take on an ad hock basis. This stuff has taken us a lot of time to develop but it should make it super easy for you to use the bike. 

How much can we fit on the bike?
The bike is going to have  a big load space on it, also we think if people sign up for a years access we'll supply them with a plastic tub for free which is ideal for most jobs and fits on the bike. There are some interesting pictures of loads on bikes here - http://goo.gl/N1kJc

What can we use the bike for?
This is up to you and we have had some great suggestions. We know people that want to use the bike to take kids to school, people who want to use it to take rubbish to the tip and people who want to use it to do their shopping. It is up to you what you want to use it for. 

Those are all the updates we can give you just at the moment. There is a lot of work to do to make this a really simple scheme and we think it will be pretty easy for us to get it done quickly enough for the scheme to be a reality very soon. 

If you have questions just get in touch, as soon as we have more news we will let you know.

Kind Regards

Will Vaughan
Hereford Pedicabs and Cargo
will@herefordpedicabs.com