Ekdog

There are more and more two-wheeled businesses popping up around my town.

The other day a Rumanian guy got on the train with a knife sharpener on his rear rack. I've also seen a window washer and a handyman who had all of his tools on his bike and a sign advertising his services. There are also several bike courier companies.

Are there any such start-ups in your town? Have you any ideas for setting up a car-free business?

wolfchild

I just don't see how anybody could make enough money on two wheels and still maintain a decent lifestyle. People who ride around on bicycles doing business usually do it to supplement their small meager incomes and not as a full time job, or they do it because there is nothing else available or they don't have skills and motivation to get a better paying job.
AFAIK there are no businesses on two wheels in my suburbs other then few people riding around and raiding garbage cans and collecting cans and bottles and then returning them in exchange for a little cash.
Toronto which is next door to me has some bike couriers but all of them make minimum wage or less, not a good way to live.

B. Carfree

We have a small business called Pedaler's Express that consists of several young people doing deliveries. It's entry-level wages with a fairly high turnover. A new business started by a few people just started up this year. They do grocery deliveries all over town. Then there's the six-person mostly pedal-powered bike thing that people rent for $300 to ride between the breweries. I'm not sure it counts since it has an electric assist and the ride is the purpose.

We also have a food warehouse that supplies many of our small local grocery stores. They do their deliveries on a recumbent cargo trike with a trailer. The trailer has an electric assist; it goes about 25 mph on the flats with a half-ton of food.

Then there's my contractor neighbor who will drive his van full of tools to his job site and leave it there for weeks at a time. He then rides a bike between the job site and home. Whenever possible, which is almost all of the time, he has the lumber and other supplies delivered by the lumber yard so he won't have to haul anything. It's not really a bike-based business, but it's nice to see. He is pushing 70 years old and is thin with ripped muscles, unlike my other two contractor neighbors who always drive and are in their forties and obese.

Roody

In summertime there are ice cream carts around here. I doubt if people use it as a sole job, but it would be an enjoyable way to make some extra income on a bike in the nice weather.

catonec 

There is an awesome bakery in my town. Everyday the owner rides his bike though all the surrounding neighborhoods, pulling an enclosed trailer, barking "frreeessshhhh bbbbrrreeaaaddddd".

Does that count? Either way its pretty damn convenient for me.

Ekdog

It sure does count, and it reminds me that my baker uses a road bike with a trailer attached to it to make deliveries. Oh, and there are quite a few greengrocers who use bikes.

Artkansas 

There is a pedicab in town. But that has 3 wheels.

Machka 

Years ago, back in Canada, students used to ride bicycle ice cream carts and sell ice cream. High school students would often get the job for some extra spending cash ... plus they were young and fit.

But quite some time ago, they seemed to disappear and were replaced with ice cream trucks/vans that drive up and down and up and down the streets with loud merry little tunes playing. There may still be a few of the bicycle carts around, but I haven't seen any in years.

Artkansas 

The ice cream truck here does a mind-bendingly awful earworm of "Turkey in the Straw" accompanied by a non-synchronized loud cowbell. It takes 20-30 minutes to get through my apartment complex and can be heard all of the time as it snakes between all of the buildings. My only defense is to play house and trance music from YouTube over my best headphones, loud as I can take it. The noise covers the spectrum so it masks the ice cream truck and doesn't plant a bad song that plays in my head all day.

Machka 

I know!! I can hear the tinny tunes being blasted all over the places from miles away. I have to wonder about the driver ... how he/she doesn't go mad. He/she has probably got headphones on and is listening to ACDC or something at full blast.

B. Carfree

My son was telling me how difficult it is to explain to his friends and acquaintances from around the globe that in N. America we have people who drive around the city just to make sure everyone has enough ice cream.

As far as the music, by mid-June I've had about enough of the creepy version of "The Teddy Bears Picnic", which is the ice cream van music of choice around here.

I-Like-To-Bike

Nobody from the East, especially Philadelphia will ever forget the Mister Softee ditty:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Softee

enigmaT120

Some guy in Salem was delivering coffee to businesses via bike or trike. I don't know if he's still doing it, nor do I remember the name of his coffee company.

Ekdog

There must be lots of bike-based businesses in Oregon, especially in Portland.

B. Carfree

There are a fair number in Portland. However, I suspect many of those exist simply because of an abundance of people who will work for extremely low wages and having a bike-theme is good PR (which is a good thing IMO. (The bike thing, not the low wage thing.)). The son of an old friend was making ends meet by delivering meals for a restaurant by bike. Many of his recently graduated friends work in similarly low-pay jobs while they either launch a music career or seek out employment in their fields of study (waiting for the old folks to retire).

Ekdog

Why are these jobs low paying?

B. Carfree

The low wages I take as fact from the youngsters I know who are living on them. The why of it is just my opinion:

Just how much are people willing to pay to have a meal, or other good, delivered as opposed to just picking it up? It's not like a delivery person can do a huge volume, especially when delivering food, so even if people would pay an extra $20, that's not really going to translate into much better than minimum wage levels of income when one factors in down time. And don't forget that these delivery bikes spend half their miles dead-heading.

Portland has another factor. The wealthier folks, the ones who might pay more for such a service, tend to live in the hills. That really slows down a delivery bike and further reduces his/her volume. Fortunately, the folks in the hills seem to not see how cool bike delivery is, so they don't much call for it. However, I'm told that the ones who do are generous tippers (perhaps from experiencing the climb themselves).

Ekdog

An electric-assisted bike might be a good way to tackle those hills.

B. Carfree

There could be capacity issues. If it can only do a few hills before needing a recharge, then it's mostly dead weight that slows the delivery rider down in traffic. Of course one can always add more batteries, but at some point it doesn't look like bike delivery any more. They also lose cool-points for not being totally human powered, which may affect the PR aspect.

Ekdog

You seem to be grasping at straws.

B. Carfree

How so? The electric assist rig that does local delivery for a food warehouse definitely loses its bike appearance in order to have the capacity to do a half-shift (They have two; one is always charging). The only electric assist bike that I have seen in use would have trouble going up the hills of Portland more than twice before it would be out of juice. So, the choice seems to be to be an electric-assist bike with inadequate charge or a pedal-assist car, which is definitely not what the cool kids in PDX are after. In other locales, either choice might be fine, but those places have different cultures. If you've got a different view, please share, preferably in a non-insulting manner.

Ekdog

Who's insulting?

Are you saying that the only reason people set up these kinds of businesses is because they're good for PR and they're "cool"?

Roody

From what I've read about Portland, there are low paying jobs in other sectors, not just bike-related. One reason is economic. A lot of young people have been drawn to Portland even though the unemployment rate was already high. The resulting labor surplus has likely depressed wages, especially for younger workers. Also, many of these young people might accept jobs for which they're overqualified, in hopes of landing a better job later.

Roody

I would imagine it's also cheaper for a young service company to employ bicycles and cool young people instead of steadier workers in cars. I imagine a lot of these companies will fail if they're unable to scale up as demand for their product or service increases. Bikes are great for a tiny bakery in a hip community, but eventually they're going to need trucks if they want to grow.

B. Carfree

Actually, one of the tragedies in PDX is that there are jobs that pay well available, unlike many other places, but the young people who have been flocking there are not qualified to take them. We have a shortage of materials scientists and electrical engineers but a surplus of philosophy, journalism and music majors. These young folks are creating a bounty of micro-businesses that are doing surprisingly well, but they don't have the high value-added features of microchip design and it's hard to replicate a Community Supported Agriculture program in a way that creates lots of living wage positions.