We're handy guys, especially with duct tape and rope. We could rig a milk crate to a little rear rack for groceries or tape some foam to the handlebars to cushion the ride for a passenger. If confronted with a sport utility bicycle the 'old us' would likely say, "nah, I'll save the cash and improvise."

A longtime fan of the bicycle as a simple, efficient, fun, affordable, and clean means of transport, Ross Evans set out in the spring of 1995 to fill a gap in its potential. In his travels and work in the developing world, especially Central America, he noted that while bicycles were abundant—both new and from a steady stream of donated and secondhand sources in the United States—they weren't as useful to the populace as they might be. There was an obvious need for cargo-carrying capacity that the conventional bicycle doesn't offer. A passage from his design journal then illuminates his initial question: "What is the cheapest, lightest, simplest, most maneuverable, most adaptable, strongest way to carry cargo with a bicycle? in the Third World?" During the following four years, while pursuing graduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Latin American Studies, Ross worked on answering the question. With grant funding from several organizations, he traveled from Managua to Havana to Johannesburg evolving the design with input from headloaders, paper collectors, farmers and engineers. In 1998, Kipchoge Spencer joined him to launch a company to bring the product into the world.