When we saw the image, above, of a hacked cargo bike Susan Dworski spotted on a Venice California beach, we thought of our old friend Peter Hoffman, chef of Back Forty and Back Forty West (formerly the great Savoy) in NYC. When his kids were young, he’d ride his odd-looking custom-made cargo bike to Union Square Farmers market; it had a huge front-wheel carrier, that allowed him to tow his kids AND a load of produce.  Although we’re happy to know about the iterations of custom cargo bikes you can have master bike-maker George Bliss of Hudson Urban Bicycles in NYC make you (check out the video), we love that there a multitude of other ways to go, as with the brilliant, multilayered and cheap bikes below.

Shopping carts may be among the most useful, all-purpose items wheels around…

….wonder who invented it…

THAT bike made us look back into the archive of cleverly-hacked bikes. This appears to be a shopping cart frame embellished with chain link fence:

Then there’s the wheelie bag, which also offers simple cargo bike possibilities, as we discovered years ago when we spotted this fab rig:

It has all sorts of compartments and, because it’s a folding bike, stores away in a small space…

All sorts of carriers can be affixed to the back wheel structure:

Milk crates work front or back:

And then there are just plain old bike + bungee cord combo, that works if you are really good at balancing things…