Advocacy & Safety - Pedalling Parcels

Wired magazine has a short artical about UPS using bikes in a German city: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,14251,00.html

Has anyone seen the UPS cyclists in your city? I know Salt Lake City, UT has two full time UPS cyclists, they only deal with next day & 2nd day air letters, drop them off in the AM, pick them up in the PM.

Sounds like a potentially kick-*** job. Only one question. What kind of ride would UPS provide? :eek:

Or would the ad for the job read " ...must have own transportation."?

Ok, 2 questions!;)

I actualy took a look at the UPS bikes in SLC, they were UPS brown, they didnt have a brand name on them, but i did notice a full XT groupo ... cant be too bad of a ride :)

Servus!

Bike delivery is nothing new here in Germany. I can get pizza from Joey's delivered on the back of a bike, my mail, parcels, etc. Stuttgart isn't far from me (81km) - I should go and take a look at the "boys in brown".

The bikes for the DeutschePost (German Postal) are particularly cool. They are specially made by Biria and have a special set of wheels up from that keep the bike from tipping over when the mailman (briefträger) stops to deliver mail. Huge baskets for tons of mail and built to last. These guys can carry over 150lbs of letters on their bikes!

On a side note - I have never ever seen the mail being delivered by truck. The big yellow trucks are for large parcels, not for measly letters. The mailpeople walk with their pushcart or ride a bike - when was the last time you saw that in the U.S.? I know my mailman quite well, he and I drink coffee sometimes in the morning and he asks me a thousand questions about life in America.

Pretty cool, huh?

Ranger Jake,

I can totally relate. I spent almost 9 years of my life in Germany. I can say for sure that there's loads of things I've seen there that I will prolly never see here in the land of "Unbegrenzte moglicheiten". As far as the german mail carrier thing goes, now that I think about it, you're right, I don't remember seeing any mail trucks. Mail was delivered by bike. Which is more conveniant really, considering many peoples post boxes are located inside the front door of an apartment building which is usually locked and you have to ring someone to let you in.

BTW, I lived in Augsburg and in a town called Herzogenaurach not far from Erlangen/ Furth/Nurnberg. :)

Just as a point of interest, my Briefträger uses a small van because over here in the old 'East' Germany, we still do not have any pavements or decent roads. They are mostly cobbled at best. At worst they resemble sandy Tank ranges (straight up!).

The Post do have a few bikes like Ranger was on about, but unfortunately these are few and far between. It is getting better though, but it will take a few more generations before the infrastructure of the East is comparable to the West, even with all the money pouring in.

In addition to all of the bicycle messenger services, there is also one pizza place that offers bicycle delivery in the Chicago loop. The bicycles have a trailer designed to carry multiple pizzas.

They don't offer such service where I live, but when I order pizza, I like to pick up the pizza on my own bike. I have this webbing that's somewhat like a bungee cord but it's a web rather than a single cord. Very useful for transporting a pizza around.

I have thought about becoming a part-time pizza delivery person on my bike. I don't know if it would work in my neighborhood though, the way it's so spread out. But maybe in the city a bicycle could get there faster.