Puckipuppy Husky Plus Electric Cargo Trike – Review and Test

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Updated August 15th, 2024

If you’re in the market for a heavy-duty cargo bike that’s built to carry significant loads and tackle long distances, the Puckipuppy Husky Plus might just be your dream ride. Let’s get into the features, performance, and some quirks of this fat tire tricycle designed for serious hauling.

Overview

The Puckipuppy Husky Plus is a fat tire tricycle cargo bike engineered for carrying substantial gear, such as photography or hunting equipment. Its design prioritizes durability and load capacity, making it a robust option for those needing to transport gear over long distances. With a folding feature and a generous cargo basket, this bike aims to offer both functionality and convenience.

Video Review

1 – Key Features and Specs

• Motor and Batteries: Equipped with a powerful 750-watt motor, the Husky Plus is designed to handle substantial loads and steep inclines. It features dual batteries: a 48 volt 18-ah battery in the front and a 48 volt 15.5-ah battery in the rear, providing a combined range of 90 to 110 miles, depending on usage.
• Speed: The bike has a published top speed of 25mph. As delivered, the top speed for both throttle and pedal assist is 20mph.
• Weight: The bike weighs approximately 108 pounds with both batteries. The batteries themselves account for around 25 pounds of this total weight, so the bike without batteries is about 75 pounds.
• Brakes: For safe stopping power, the Husky Plus comes with hydraulic disc brakes on both the front and rear wheels.
• Suspension: It includes a cushioned seat with a suspension seat post and a front suspension fork to ensure a smooth ride, even over rough terrain.
• Cargo Capacity: The bike boasts an impressive cargo capacity of 500 pounds, making it suitable for transporting heavy gear or accommodating a larger rider. It has a built in heavy duty basket between the rear wheels.
• Folding Mechanism: The Husky Plus can be folded, though its folded state is not entirely flat sitting on both wheels, which may limit its practicality for transport or storage.
• Lighting and Accessories: The bike comes with a large headlight, rear fender, and tail light, enhancing visibility and safety for night riding.

2 – Ride and Handling

The Puckipuppy Husky Plus is a really comfortable bike to ride with the big cushy seat with seat back, suspension seat post, and upright riding position. It is a great bike to cruise around on using throttle only. It absorbs almost any cracks, or bumps in the pavement. It is a great relaxed ride. The adjustable height handlebars mean you won’t have to lean down to reach the bars.

This bike is a tricycle so you can set up on the seat with no risk of the bike tipping over while not moving. This makes the bike good for people with poor agility and balance who can’t balance on a normal bike.

Corning on a Trike

Cornering is where the big difference between a standard bike and tricycle comes into play. Unlike traditional bikes, it doesn’t lean into corners, which means it corners more slowly and feels less sporty.

Steering through turns requires 100% use of the handlebars, which can feel awkward if you’re not accustomed to it. You can’t lean the bike to turn it like a 2 wheel bike.

When you go around a corner with speed it feels very different. Because you can’t lean into turns the risk of rolling the trike when going around a corner too fast becomes a real concern. I recommend starting slow and getting used to the handling of this bike before you try riding it fast anywhere.

The Husky Pro is good for people who can’t balance on a regular 2 wheel bike and want something more stable. There is a downside to that in that you must take it easy and go slow around corners.

The purpose of this bike is hauling a lot of gear and weight. It’s not meant to be a fast zippy bike.

Offroad Riding

The Husky Plus comes with 4 inch wide fatbike tires that have an offroad tread. It does have a front suspension fork. The bike is very good for riding smoother dirt roads that do not have a lot of deep potholes or trenches.

The bike will lean over if one of the rear wheels dips into something so I would not ride it on anything more adventurous than a dirt road. If you take it on a trail with rougher terrain I would proceed with caution and ride very slow.

3 – Power and Cargo Capacity

This bike has a 500 lb capacity which is more than just about any bike out there. You can throw a heavy rider on it and then throw some heavy gear in the back.

The bike is powered by a 750 watt hub motor and a 7 speed Shimano pedal driveline. The bike has 2 large capacity batteries that help reduce voltage sag under load.

Hill Climbing

We took this bike to some 10% grade hills to try out with a 250 lb rider. It was able to power up them at a steady 10mph on throttle only. I’m confident the bike would still make it up these hills with another 100 lbs thrown onto it although it would slow down a bit more.

Top Speed

The bikes top speed is 20mph out of the box. We were able to get it up to 20mph on both throttle and pedal assist as measured by GPS. One thing to note is that the rear battery has an on/off switch. With the rear battery turned off the bike has more voltage sag so top speed and climbing performance are noticeably reduced.

I felt like 20mph was more than enough speed for this bike given how it corners. It did not leave me wishing the bike could go faster.

Acceleration

This is a very heavy bike and acceleration is adequate but not fast. With throttle the bike will get up and go. It won’t leave you wowed with how fast it picks up speed. The hub motor has a chain drive to the rear axle giving it a bit more reduction.

This bike is not easy to start from a standstill by pedaling in anything but the lowest gear. If you are in 3rd gear and up just use throttle to get it going. If your on a hill, I would also twist the throttle as soon as you start pushing in the pedals. I would not ride this bike without motor for any distance at all. It takes a very high effort to pedal with no motor assistance.

4 – Range

This bike has dual batteries with a total of 33 ah capacity. We rode the bike for several hours climbing hills and testing out full speed. We never see the battery go below the 75% level. This bike should have a range of 90-100 miles on pedal assist and 60-70 miles with throttle in real world conditions.

5 – Cadence Sensor

A cadence sensor is used for motor control. It has 5 levels of pedal assist. You need about 1/2 turn of the pedals to get the motor to kick in which is good for a cadence sensor response.

The cadence sensor allows the bike to easily ghost pedal in a low gear up to the speed set by the pedal assist level. This makes for a relaxing ride where you just want to do a little bit or work without having to push hard to get the bike to respond which can happen with torque sensors.

6 – Controls

The Husky Plus is equipped with a user-friendly control system. The left handlebar features an up/down button, a power button, a light switch, and a horn buzzer. The right handlebar includes a twist throttle, shifters, and brake handles.

The color LCD is okay to read in bright daylight. It is a colored LCD with black background. It’s just bright enough to be easy to read in bright sunlight.

Notable Issues:

Switch Block Movement: The switch block is easy to rotate on the handlebar, no matter how tight you tighten the mounting bolts. This can be fixed by putting a few wraps of electrical tape underneath so the 2 screws have something thicker to tighten it against.

Handlebar Slop: There’s some side to side clunk in the handlebar height adjustment. It doesn’t really affect riding the bike at all. It is noticeable when your stopped.

7 – Brakes

The bike has 3 hydraulic disc brakes for stopping. There is 1 for the front wheel and 1 on each rear wheel. Stopping power is adequate from 20mph with a heavy rider on the bike. It does not stop super fast. It gets the job done. The brakes are adequate for the speed range this bike is meant for.

The left brake lever has a parking brake catch for holding the bike when your not riding it. It’s a small spring loaded catch that you push in place while squeezing the front brake. It stops the bike from rolling. This is a nice feature if you stop on a hill and do not want the bike to roll away because there is no kickstand on a trike.

8 – Cargo Basket and Accessories

The highlight feature of this bike is the rear basket. It is 18 inches wide, 16 inches long, and 9 inches deep. It is very heavy duty looking. It mounts to a platform built into the rear frame. The bike comes with a basket bag that is held in place with hook and loop and is easy to mount and remove.

The bike also comes with lights and fenders to round out the accessories. The front light is larger and brighter than what normally comes on an ebike in this price range.

9 – Folding Frame and Portability

The Husky Plus weighs in at 108 lbs. You can remove the batteries but that will still leave you with a weight somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 lbs. This is not a light bike no matter who you put it.

The trike configuration means this will not load up onto any standard bike rack. You will need a pickup you can roll it up onto the bed or a small trailer to transport this trike. It also needs more space to store because of the extra width.

Folding Frame

The bike has a folding frame and handlebars that fold down. This could be useful if you need to transport it in the back of a pickup that isn’t long enough for the unfolded bike. The bike is awkward and heavy to fold. It is still very large in the folded state.

The below image shows what the Husky Plus looks like in a folded state. You can see how one rear wheel lifts off the ground.

10 – Assembly Ease

Assembly Time – 2.0 hours

Assembly of this bike involves mounting the front handlebars, front wheels, rear rack and rear fenders. It is very well packed in a large box. The box has a large steel reinforcement in the bottom of it to protect the bike.

The only place I had problems with the assembly and instructions were attaching the rear fenders. There are 2 bolt holes on each fender bracket. If you use 2 bolts the fenders will hit the rear tires. You need to use only 1 bolt and hole on each bracket so that you can mount the fender higher up and get it to clear the tire.

When mounting the fenders to the fender brackets, put the bolt so the bolt head faces toward the center of the bike. This will allow you to adjust them. If you put the bolts the other way with nuts facing the center of the basket, you will need to remove them after mounting the basket to put them the other way.

The below image shows the incorrect way to install the bolts.

The below image shows the correct way to mount the fenders so that they can be adjusted to clear the rear tires.

Extra tools required

We needed an additional hex wrench for attaching the display to the handlebars. The included 3 way wrench is too large for these bolts.

We needed a 10mm socket with an extension to get the headlight tight enough to stay in place. The provided tool and screwdriver can’t get the bolt tight enough.

Recommendation – Buy or No Buy?

Overall, the PuckiPuppy Husky Plus is an excellent choice for carrying serious gear. It offers a comfortable ride, impressive range, and substantial cargo capacity. However, if you’re looking for speed and agility, this bike may not be for you.

See our guide to the best folding ebikes and best fat tire ebikes for other good options.

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