Quite accidentally, I recently found myself in the role of "geezer" - giving advice on the subject of messengering and/or single speed bike setup. It takes little more than espresso and a curious post on Craigslist to get me started on some subjects, so I decided to codify them. (You know, these adsense links are really starting to pay, I'm up to eighty-five cents a month.) We'll start with the job itself and next time get into some bike specifics.
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So you've seen some twenty-something kid whiz by, carving through a red light smoother than canned peaches. Maybe they were bunny-hopping two sets of railroad tracks at speed, or decelerating from 25 mph in a heart-stopping nose wheelie. Maybe you're a student, or a barista, or waiting tables, and you think "that looks fun." It is. It's nice to have single-digit body fat and be a "professional" athlete. Some girls dig it while others find you stinky and dirty. Adrenaline and endorphins are quite addicting, and you may find yourself pulled into it, again and again.
Get a few things straight. Unless you're elite or you go independent, the pay sucks. Even when it's good, it still sucks if you plan on having things like a house or a vacation in your lifetime. If you're lucky, you'll buy the best gear, only to systematically destroy it. You'll get hit repeatedly, and bystanders, drivers, cops, judges...none of them really give a crap. If you work hard winters, you could spend a month's pay on clothes, and you'll still get wet and cold.
Still interested? You'll start off clueless, but if you last a couple months, you'll probably become a poser. You will ride like you own the city, and do stupid things like fly blind around corners, use the sidewalks as your own velobahn, thread every gap at top speed, and scrap with any driver that dares not premunize your line. The sooner you get over this, the better. The forementioned citizens of your city think that all messengers ride like this and would just as soon see you bleeding in the gutter; impressionable children will mimic you and get creamed. And you'll look like a tool. Advance yourself a little further down the evolutionary line and control your anger, among other things. Your skin will last longer, and so will your gear. The cooler, experienced guys ride the same bikes for a year and barely get a flat. The guys who ride like this get creamed, destroy their gear, or get locked up. Coming from one who's been both.
With that said, here are ten things I wish I knew back then:
1. Wear a helmet. It may not look cool, but you *will* get in lots of little accidents. You will feel really stupid when you finally hit your head, especially if you can't walk or talk. I've heard every line about it restricting your vision, being too heavy, making you sweat, disrupting your flow, but it's all BS. You wouldn't catch a motorcycle racer or an F1 driver not wearing one, so just deal with it.
2. Get health insurance. Make sure you either have worker's compensation through your employer (if you're an employee, you'll have it - if you're an independent contractor you will not) or get some basic health insurance. If you're in your 20s (and don't tell them you're a messenger, or that you smoke) it could be as little as $45/month. Actually, this should be #1 on the list. I had to pay $13,000 in old medical bills before I could buy a house, and I knew a guy who got hit and put off going to the doctor for so long that his hand had permanently curled up like a chicken foot. Seriously. You won't be able to get basic cable in ten years if you rack up hospital debt.
3. Assume all drivers are blind, angry, drunk, incompetent, or stupid. Control your anger, or you will be a raging asshole by 10:30 am. Let it all slide off you. If someone dicks you over in traffic, make sure they're not psycho before you go off on them. You'd be surprised what people will do when you disrespect them. I've had people drive up on the sidewalk after me, drive the wrong way on a one way, stop the car in traffic and chase me on foot with a stick, etc.
4. Don't ride like a pro wrestler on crack. You really don't look that cool. If you need to go fast, flow, don't force your line. Nobody, not dispatch, your client, _nobody_ really gives a shit if you're a minute quicker. These rules can be suspended if you have to get to the bank by 2 or court by 5. Those are the only exceptions. I'm not saying you have to go slowly, you just need to learn how to go fast without annoying the shit out of everyone.
I once had a truck driver pull up to me and say "Don't be an asshole" and it got me thinking...he was exactly right. Of all the things that have been yelled at me (get on the sidewalk, I'm gonna fucking run you over, it's against the law to do xyz, put some pants on faggot) he was exactly right, I was just being an asshole, grabbing my line and expecting people to give me the respect of not running me over. Later in my career I adopted a policy of not dicking over the same car (or clump of cars) twice. It paid off dividends; people would see me drafting in traffic, cutting lights, catching a tow off cars, and actually pull up and give me tows, slow down to let me draft them, or wave me through ahead of them. As long as I didn't hold up the same 2-3 cars for blocks on end, they'd give me more respect. When people told me to "Fuck off" I replied with "Thanks, Havagoodone!"
5. Start from the ground up. Do the long cheap runs, the dead-ends way out of town, etc. If you do this for a few months and there's someone newer than you, THEN you can start bitching to dispatch. This is a big duh, but it ought to be said.
6. This one deserves to stand alone: Dispatch will move you up the food chain much quicker if you get your ass downtown and call in before everyone else EVERY day. If you work with a lazy or hung over crew, and you call in at 7:30 (not still in bed, but juiced up and downtown) you can make $40 before 9, and dispatch will reward you for making their lives easier. Half of all messengers call in at 8:55, sitting in bed, loading the bong, telling dispatch they are "downtown and ready to roll." This one should be up at the top of the list with "get medical insurance."
7. You may do all these things and dispatch will feed your ego, telling you that you da man. Then they will give you a $2 run far out to nowhere and give a coworker 4 of them in the same block. Deal with it, but not forever. Almost every courier starts out a shitty company, making shitty runs for shitty money. Then you look around and get in with a better one. Working is the only way to find out where to go, and a decent company won't want to train your ass until you know what floor to go to to file something in state superior court vs. federal. Don't bother trying at an elite company with 3 guys that have been there for 10 years, but somewhere with some turnover. The better one have a guaranteed minimum or base pay - usually 2-300 a week just for showing up, then around 50% commission on your runs.
8. Kiss the asses of security guards. Call them sir and maam. If they work at court, bring 'em a soda or something. I have bypassed a line of 15 pissy lawyers waited to get patted down to enter the building, and impossibly gotten a case filed after 5 pm. Yes, they are probably felons and they get pushed around and will take it out on you, but you will not win this one. You can get banned from the building, and it can be damn near impossible to get back in. Try landing a spot at an elite company and telling them you can't get into the Federal courthouse. You may as well move to a new city.
9. I've heard that one of the sweetest messenger jobs are delivering sandwiches or the like. Fewer security hassles, lots of tips, taxes paid, health insurance, free food. Even though it's not the 'standard' messenger gig, look around for something like this.
10. While you're doing something, think about what's next. This may seem obvious, but it was a big epiphany at one time. I remember sitting outside the First Boston building with about a year's experience. I was pretty fast, and I had my routine: rack and lock the bike (and my helmet, since I hated wearing it inside), stuff the headphone in my bag, walk 50 yards to the building, check out some eye candy on my way in, dig out the package, look up where it went, what floor, find the right elevator bank, etc. I came out and was killing time, and saw a "lifer" - one of the guys who looked ice cold and didn't bother to even glance at you until you'd been out there for a year. He bypassed all the "good" places to lock up, right up the door, freelocked his bike, made a beeline for the right elevator bank, and was back out in a minute or so. I realized that riding fast was only part of it, and there was this completely clean routine that I was overlooking. Of course you think about where to go next and what streets to take, but it made me do that on a microscopic level. Keep my lock opened and keyed. Know my next stop, right down to what door and what elevator, leave my helmet and headphone on. Ask security for the right floor as you walk by, instead of looking it up on the board. Hit the "down" button on the elevator as soon as you get off. Keep a detailed map taped to the back of your manifest board, and save floor numbers for your most frequent drops. Think about where you can use a free phone (yep, not many radios back then). It seems obvious in retrospect, but I noticed that instead of delivering a package every ten minutes, I cut it down to 7, then 5. After that I noticed how other riders would burn up time doing nothing, then complain about getting half as many jobs at the end of the day.
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I did it for 8 year in 2 cities, plus some "freelance" runs in Europe. I started at about $200/week and by the end I was working for 2 companies simultaneously, plus a few personal clients on the side, and I was clearing $700-1,100 a week. I came away with a couple $1000 bikes, $200 in the bank, $30,000 in back taxes and medical bills, a criminal record, a lawyer, and a probation officer. But if I won the lottery, I would do it damn near forever.
Next time: bike tips.
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