dent insurance. Some messenger com- 
panies blatantly miscalculate pay- 
checks. They refuse to compensate the 
messenger for dispatchers’ errors or 
they penalize riders for lateness. 
Despite the drawbacks, the pay can 
be good. Although many messengers 
make less than $150 per week, good 
ones earn close to $250, and ace riders 
earn $350 or more. At least one rider, 
by nibbling nuts and dried fruits 
throughout the day and seldom stop- 
ping to rest, makes $500 a week. Good 
messengers do close to twenty-five runs 
per day. Most earn $2 per run, or about 
half the gross fee. Rates vary according 
to the distance of the run, the size and 
weight of the package, and whether the 
client requests a “rush,” that is, imme- 
diate delivery. 
Part-time riders are almost always 
docked 5 percent of their week’s earn- 
ings for each work day they are absent. 
Thus, a rider who works one day a week 
receives as little as 30 percent of the de- 
livery fee. Messenger companies en- 
courage part-time riders, both to 
guarantee enough personnel to handle 
the volume and to lower the base rate. 
But the good riders, particularly the ace 
riders, are given preferred treatment. 
They receive a higher percentage of the 
gross and they get the most profitable 
runs— those that are shortest and clos- 
est to one another. At least one compa- 
ny tries to minimize the exploitative 
aspects of the industry by providing a 
flat rate of payment that applies to all 
riders. This company also provides 
compensation for job-related injuries 
and gives carte blanche to its riders to 
talk back to difficult clients. 
Earning a good living at messenger- 
ing is by no means easy. Despite a fren- 
zied effort on my part, I was consis- 
tently unable to earn anywhere near the 
middle or higher income range that the 
better messengers earn, so I quickly 
abandoned any idea of messengering as 
a career. My age (thirty) was not a fac- 
tor. Although most messengers are in 
their twenties, some of the better mes- 
sengers are in their thirties, and a few 
are in their forties, fifties, or sixties. 
Most people who become bicycle mes- 
sengers do so because they are desper- 
ate for a job, and they give the work up 
after a short while just as I did. Only a 
small proportion continue to ride on a 
long-term basis. 
Long-term messengers share certain 
character traits in common. Like the 
heroes of the West, they are mavericks, 
resentful of conformity and rebelling 
against it. Often, they are loners who 
have run into trouble while pursuing 
more conventional careers. For them, 
the excitement of bicycling helps to 
counter the reality of defeat. 
Andy is a former psychiatric social 
worker who abandoned his career after 
his plans for improving home care for 
patients were thwarted, he felt, by his 
coworkers’ lack of motivation. Andy’s 
boss, Hank, lost his job doing quality- 
control research because of his dis- 
agreement with the “proper” corporate 
attitude. Both maintain they are unable 
to deal with situations that require sub- 
mission to authority: 
Hank: I never got along with bosses. 
Even when I get along with them, I nev- 
er really get along with them. I always 
think of myself as an amiable, compli- 
ant, even somewhat passive person. But 
conflicts inevitably arise. 
Andy: By the way, forget it. 
Hank: I’m not amiable? I’m not 
compliant? I’m not passive? 
Andy: No, you’re amiable. But 
you’re neither compliant nor passive by 
any means, and you know it. 
Hank began working as a messenger 
at age forty-two. Today, eight years lat- 
er, he is the owner of a rapidly growing 
Using a client's phone, a messenger 
checks with his dispatcher to get 
additional assignments. Messengers 
are often selective, since they 
profit most if the runs are close 
together and can be combined. 
