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Bicycle messengers of BG.

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blueee:
pickup truck deliveries are much more profitable, much less tiring

LeonLikesToRock:
Being a courier seems like a fantastic way to be broke and pretentious. Maybe the couriers around here are just tossers.

_tom_:
That was a great read Zoidberg. Being a bike courier sounds way too much like hard work for me though. I'd soon get sick of having to ride my bike for a living I reckon.

Sebastian:
We’re kind of on the other side of the industry, in relation to Zoidberg’s company.  Whereas Zoidberg’s experience is pretty typical for any given messenger at the peak of the 'messenger era' (and is still pretty prevalent in the international cities with a lot of messenger work like London and NYC), I think a large part of the industry as a whole is moving toward a different, maybe more flexible model that allows for a larger diversity of work.

My company is part of the newer wave of rider-owned courier services that have sprung up in the past 5 years or so, in response to some of the phenomena Zoidberg was talking about like slimmer workloads, rider pay decreasing, unfair treatment of riders, etc. etc.

All of us rider-owners fully realize that we’re not really going to make a ton of money off of doing this; in other words, everyone in our little hemisphere is here for the “right” reasons, because they like the freedom and experiences that this job provides.  This attitude, I think, gives the riders themselves a little more room to make a decent living and have some semblance of job security.  Plus the community is pretty tight-knit, everyone keeps in touch, sees each other at races, and some people even switch cities/companies for a week or two at time just to get experience in other cities.

All of our riders are independent contractors paid on commission, which, like Zoidberg said, means that if you’re not in the saddle with a pick-up in your bag, you’re not making money.  This can be a massive bummer if it’s a slow day, if you’re injured or having mechanical problems, or if it’s just one of those really shitty days where you’re getting low-return runs all over the fucking city.

Some of the more successful rider-owned companies are moving away from this model in favor of hourly pay and benefits.  This is really cool, but it’s also more than us smaller companies with really tight margins can afford.

Many of us aren’t doing some of the higher-risk stuff that Zoidberg’s firm is doing, like medical, mostly because of the prohibitive cost of insuring yourself for work like that.  Many of the rider-owned companies, most notably TCB in SF and Cut Cats in Chicago (along with a lot of others) do only food delivery for restaurant clients under contract.  Some of the other older firms like Godspeed, 4Star (also SF and Chi) and some newer ones (like Clementine out of NY) are still doing 100% parcel.  Then there’s a bunch of companies like us, especially in smaller markets, that handle both. 

In our city, which isn’t cranking out 30-minute urgency runs like NYC or London, the peak hours for food and parcel fit together pretty nicely.  This is also the reason why the larger cities tend to have two non-competitive specialist rider-owned companies; it’s difficult to mix the two if these peak hours aren’t more or less separate.

The pay for food delivery is typically between 7.00-10.00 USD per run.  About half of this is commision from fees, and the other half is tips. For parcel, it varies depending on urgency and the type of package, but it starts at around 5.00 USD commission (after the company takes its cut) all the way up to 15.00, 20.00, 25.00 for super-urgent runs or large bulky stuff.  We have a Bullitt cargo bike parked in a garage space nearby for anything larger than what we can fit on a cargo rack or in our bags.

Regarding dispatch (or “controllers”): we have none. Our system is largely self-dispatched.  Work is submitted to a central system by our clients, which all couriers on the board have access to and can claim runs via smartphone.  With the right guidelines and policy in place, I think this is a more egalitarian way of distributing work because, 1) it doesn’t play favorites as a dispatcher might, 2) it still rewards the good couriers for being quicker and more efficient, and 3) it allows the riders on the street to work together to distribute work rather than a dispatcher, which is great because dispatchers tend to get really disconnected from the nuances of routing and such after spending too much time behind a desk.  It still takes some regulation on our part, as some riders will wait in the wings and just cherry-pick high return runs if you give them the chance, but it works really well most of the time.

Admittedly, the absence of a central dispatcher restricts our ability to pick up new clients on the spot. We’ve more or less gotten around this by providing job submission forms on our website, that anyone can access, that link to our mainline email account.  The Shift Lead, usually myself or my co-owner, plugs those one-off jobs into the system as necessary, and also handles any customer phone calls via our Google Voice number (which can we can set to forward to as many riders' cell phones as we need).

Zoidberg is totally spot-on with a lot of the pitfalls about being a courier.  No one is ever in as much of a rush as you are, and naturally just assume that they are the only thing you need to worry about at any given time.  So you’ll get people that take their sweet fucking time meeting you or getting payment together, for example.  You can start tacking on Wait Time charges after a certain amount of time (usually 10 min), but that initial 10 minutes is a fuck-ton of wasted time that can set you back for the better part of an afternoon if you’re not careful.  Security can potentially be massive unreasonable dickheads as well, although a lot of them will let you through no questions asked when they see you’re just trying to do your job.

Being efficient is way more crucial than blasting through intersections and getting all Premium Rush and shit.  It's way more about being combining runs effectively, staying organized with your work, knowing the patterns of the city, finding the shortest route between A, C, D, B, and A again, than it is about being breakneck fast.  But being a strong rider does help a lot, too.

Drivers, of course, are very frequently the worst.  In many cities, it’s the cabbies, buses, and aggressive drivers you have to worry about; in my city, it’s the timid drivers that freak out and slam on the brakes when you get within 5 feet of them.  At least the aggressive ones are somewhat predictable.  Then again, I've had a bunch of weird driver-related shit happen to me at work, from getting knives and guns brandished to me to dudes trying to run me into a curb.  People get heated.  But most people are pretty cool.  I've never actually been hit, and the couple times I've gone down were pretty minor, and the fault of drivers / pedestrians not paying attention in general rather than me taking risks.
 
Cops around here, thankfully, are remarkably tolerant of the liberties we take with traffic laws, as they see the same couriers pretty much every day and for the most part understand that we’re professionals who know what we’re doing.  Not the case in bigger cities, I know messengers in NYC and Chicago have been getting massively fucked lately with traffic violations.

Of course, you also have to deal with bad weather, injuries, constantly being tired and hungry (although we’ve found a way around that with contractual shift meals from our restaurant clients), and all the other things that come with working what a lot of the time is just basically a highly physical blue-collar job.

All of the good things you’ve probably already heard, which I’m assuming is why you’re looking at couriering in the first place.  You hang out wherever and do whatever the fuck you want when you’re on standby.  You have no real master other than your (relatively loose) contractual obligations to complete whatever job you’re carrying at the moment.  You use your own equipment and you don’t have to wear a uniform, unless you’re working for one of the few companies that actually employs rather than contracts riders (at least in the US, sounds like it’s different in the UK).  And obviously you get paid to ride, which also means you can write off a shitload of bike-related expenses on your taxes.

All in all, you really have to love riding a bike to make couriering a decent and productive venture for yourself.  It can be a really rough, shitty, and ultimately super discouraging job at its worst, and one of the most satisfying and liberating ways to make a living at its best.  Some of the guys I’m acquainted with from the industry have seen and done some pretty incredible things as a direct result of being a courier.

Sebastian:
Oh, and regarding pitching yourself to a company, from my perspective:

As long as you show up with a decent bike (preferably with a cargo rack like a CETMA or something) and present yourself as a reliable person with a decent employment record, I'm already interested.  One of the negatives, for us, about this job being so flexible is that it tends to attract some massive fucking flakes as a result.  So if you've convinced them that you're going to show up every day and be relatively trustworthy you've already done yourself a huge favor.

The turnover rate for rookies is on your side here, if you're even just a little persistent you'll probably be in. Unfortunately the summer tends to be the slower season, at least for us, so they may be staffed up.  If they are, try again in October.

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