It's an iconic image — the Hovis advert showing a delivery boy pushing a bicycle carrying fresh bread. It helped to sell millions of loaves, but is it just part of history? It seems possible, since ‘health and safety’ considerations are set to spell the end of 130 years of bicycle deliveries of Britain's mail.

Most of the nation’s 24,000 red posties’ bicycles, made near Stratford upon Avon by British company Pashley, are to be replaced with electric trolleys made in Taiwan, to be shipped out to neighbourhoods by van.

The Cyclists' Touring Club, helped by the Daily Mail and other campaigners, has poured cold water on comments by former chief executive Alan Crozier that the increasing weights of postal deliveries, caused by Internet shopping, mean new delivery methods are needed.

CTC campaigns co-ordinator Debra Rolfe said: “To overcome the problem of the increase in the number of parcels being delivered, Royal Mail needs to look at using cargo bicycles and tricycles. These are already used in the UK by courier companies like DHL and FedEx, and are the norm in other European countries.

“It is also ironic that Royal Mail says it will always consider its environmental impact and wants to develop low-carbon vehicles, when at the same time it is planning to stop using one of the greenest forms of transport.”

In Business was unable to track down an Oxford postie willing to be named or photographed. But one postman and anonymous blogger, ‘Roy Mayall’, said: “Bikes have been one of the main tools of the postal trade for over 100 years. There’s a good reason for this.

“Aside from all the environmental and health benefits, a bike is a beautifully functional piece of machinery. It’s a bike. It’s a trolley. You can go fast. You can go slow. You can carry weight. You can use it to sort the mail.

“There are lots of compartments. You can park it on its stand and walk. There’s an old maxim: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Ask any postie and they’ll tell you. We love our bikes.”

Stuart Wadsworth, 23, who rides a Pashley delivery cycle for G&D ice cream company’s three Oxford cafes, says it is his dream job.

“I love cycling anyway and it's nice to get paid for it. They've offered me shifts in the shop but I prefer to do the deliveries.”

One of the attractions of the job is that it allows him to keep fit, and he sees the heavier loads as an exciting challenge.

“You can get six ten-litre tubs in the basket at one time. It changes the steering slightly. The first time I did it I almost fell over, but you get used to it. It's not difficult.

“Occasionally there has been something heavier. I had a floor buffer the other day and it was very heavy.”

Like many postmen, he wears shorts in all weathers, though the company provides him with waterproofs. He believes it's a good advertisement for G&D's green image.

“Lots of people try to ‘stop me and buy one’,” he said. Usually he works a four or five-hour shift, though he spent nine hours at the Cowley Road Carnival in the summer.

“I spent a couple of hours dressed as a cow as well,” he said.

Sally Tee, of G&D, says bicycle deliveries fit in well with the company’s ethos. It needs to deliver ice cream made at its Little Clarendon Street branch, and pastries from Pembroke Street. Each cafe has its own distinctive bike, available for staff when not needed for deliveries.

“Because of the one-way streets, it's quicker, and there is the idea that we are being green,” But she can't use them herself: “I'm too short,” she said.

Gordon Piggott, who delivers vegetables from Oxford Covered Market, uses a cargo tricycle inherited from the former owner, Mick McCarthy, and isn't bothered by the weight.

“I don't do many and it's only a small area. We deliver to the Gardener's Arms in Jericho, which is vegetarian, and the bike's ideal for that. There are no hills in Oxford — it's all flat.”

Some 16 years ago The Oxford Times carried an article saying market traders’ local deliveries were threatened by colleges moving towards centralised catering supplies.

Since then, many of the market’s butchers and greengrocers have indeed closed, as well as the fishmonger where Mr Piggott used to work.

However, he said other market traders often borrowed his trike, or the Oxford Cheese Company bike, to make local deliveries.

“We all use it,” he said. “It's not hard to ride.”

Last month, Lush cosmetics shop in Cornmarket Street launched a new service for customers, who can now have goods delivered by bicycle courier ‘for a small charge’ within a three-mile radius of the city centre.

And now a new inspiring image has appeared for the Keep Posties Cycling campaigners to relish.

Hovis has signed Olympic cyclist Victoria Pendleton as a brand ambassador.

She has spent six hours recreating the iconic 1973 ‘Boy on a Bike’ TV advert in the hope of inspiring “a new generation of ‘girls and boys on bikes’ who enjoy cycling as much as I did when I was younger and maybe even inspire some champions of the future.”

At a time when branding is king, and with Barclays putting up £25m for the right to put its name on London's new hire bicycles, perhaps the humble delivery bicycle has not yet seen its last day.

o The Keep Posties Cycling campaign is at www.ctc.org.uk/royalmail/