Stockholm is full of junkies. Tell me you're claiming there aren't any in messengering because I could almost swallow that.

Anyway, aekeroo? Who did you work for in Melbourne? I was on a motor with Central Express for a couple of years.

Hey ,

I said keep it clean. If you got issues take it off line or PM the other party. This is not a she said he said thread.

I disagree that all you are is a delivery boy, if I thought that I will go and deliver food.

Messenger in NYC has ridden above the "delivery boy" stage, we had busted our butt for years to prove more than that.

I remember seeing guys who were lawyers, investment bankers, PHd degrees and thought WTF r u doing here . The I thought the same WTF am I still doing this trash.

I got more out of messengering than most of any delivery boy in NYC. It is a life style not a boy's job.



so here we go again remember the topic!!!!

Who wants to be a messenger? Do you think you are up to the challenge?

Tell us why?



old shcool and active messengers can chime in but no stupid trash. Keep it clean and to the point.



NO MOD SQUAD ON MY WATCH!!!
focus on the topic again.



S/F,
CEYA!

anyway y do you care if anyone wants to be a mess?
and stop acting like a drill sergeant.

This is not a drill anything. I just asking a general question and I posted it.

why do you care I asked ? You can PM me the answer if you wish.

S/F<
CEYA!

Thanks to all who replied.

Mods lock the thread. I'm tired , really I am! :(

S/F,
CEYA!

why I still want to be a messenger:

Because today I felt like a god. I haven't been riding much lately (only 2 days/week working on the road and have been fighting a cold) but today I was feeling better. We were short staffed due to the upcoming turkey genocide, so I took on two routes (about 60% of our business is scheduled daily or weekly runs and we organize those into routes, plugging on-calls into existing routes.) I anticipated that most of the day would be low-weight, so I rode my fast fixie and she wanted to fly. Lights turned green on our approach, and if they were yellow they hung on just a little longer to let us through. We had a few rediculous calls (like the 12 mile r/t rush) that I was able to handle with ease, finishing my routes 1.5 hours ahead of schedule. Then I got to end the day with home deliveries of city planning commission packets to homes in the hills (13 deliveries to all the rich neighborhoods.) All told I worked 4 hours and pulled in about $350...not too bad.

i said i have been a posenger (i look like a messenger, but arent one). i wear a messenger bag and ride my bike a lot in melbourne city doing things that I need to do. im not getting paid by anyone to ride around, its just faster than using the trams. i wouldnt mind doing it when i go back though. is it possible to schedule messing around study?

probably not unless you want to make absolutely no money at it. unless you're doing night school.

it depends on different factors. i began messing F/T when i had no coursework and just before the winter (when it is generally thought that you are not just a fair-weather courier only working for the summer). it was possible for me, because i was in grad school where i either went down to 4-days/week or had no coursework (only research). i also had a dispatcher that was very understanding, so my pay remained good and the same (or pro-rated to 4 days), which i supplemented by working as a TA. i believe it would be much more difficult to begin P/T and expect to regularly get good runs/calls (= good pay).

I like money... what can I say. Nothing wrong with making an honest living working in an office for 35 hours/week so I can spend indiscriminantly on my bike habit.

Seriously, nothing takes the fun out doing something you love like getting paid to do it. I languished for years as an amateur musician- and loved it. It wasn't until I started receiving contracts that it turned into a tedious bore.

i think nothing alleviates the tedious bore of work like getting paid to do something you love. i guess i am not sure how "honest" work is if it does not truly make an individual happy and/or represent one's personal beliefs and values? otherwise, the work is a compromise (in various respects).

there's a fine symantical line here... i love riding my bike. i don't love going into offices, apartment buildings i could never afford to rent in, etc, to talk to people who probably would rather not see me, then pick up or drop off a package i don't really care about. someone mentioned it before; messengers do not get paid to ride, messengers get paid to pick up and drop off. picking up and dropping off is boring at best, infuriatingly frustrating at worst. if i could get paid just to ride, that would be fantastic. i'm not that fast. as i said before i don't regret a moment of my time as a messenger, but these days i am very much of the opinion «if you can do something else, do it.»

anyone can get bored doing anything, its a choice you make, consciously or not. its all in how you look at it. you could look at it like "hey someone who needs a package delivered is giving me a great excuse to ride my bike and get paid." that sounds good to me.

First of all, props for keeping this thread interesting and worthwhile.

I want to be a messenger because I like to ride and right now I don't have a family to support so I'm at liberty to be poor. I think I have what it takes, but do I have what it takes for 8 hours a day five days a week? Probably not...

i love to ride my bike, ride daily all kinds of weather and love it, know my way around the city well and i feel like i'm pretty fast (for 36 lookin at 37 in a few weeks), plus i'm strong and have stamina, and i feel like i could maintain, but…

i don't want to be a messenger.

reasons:
i love what i do. i'm an art director and an editor and that **** is fascinating to me. there's a diversity to it and a fullness and i don't see the same thing elsewhere. i'm not sitting in some cubicle mad at it.

i like to ride. would i like it as much if i had to? dunno - haven't been there, but seems to me like if riding my bike were my job rather than my hobby (a remedy to work related bs, not a cause of it) well maybe i wouldn't feel the same. maybe i would. iunno - can't call that, but i'm glad i get to ride simply for pleasure every day.

i need the dollars and the insurance and the stability of this type of job. i'm getting older, have obligations and responsibilities, and i'm also grudgingly coming to accept that i'm neither immortal nor invulnerable. boring, yeah, but the sad truth.

nyc taxis can kiss my a$s, period.

still and all, respect due to all people putting it on the line to make deliveries. me, at my age, where i'm at in my life, i'll stay paying messengers and keeping em in work, not being one.

Everything is a compromise- unless you are living a cloistered existence and being entirely self-sufficient. I hear what you are saying, but money often corrupts doing something you love. One might say that by being a courier for major corporations, one is participating in whatever evils those companies represent. It all ends up being relative.

I find it interesting how so many old pro bike racers get fat after they retire... and many of them end up having nothing to do with biking after it is over.

I liked commuting 40 miles round trip by bike to my office job... I was still viewed as a whack job by many coworkers. It was probably my most loved ride- to and from work.

i haven't put in my $0.02 yet, so here it is...

i'd LOVE to ride my bike and get paid. i wouldn't mind the picking up and dropping off. i would mind not having insurance, yet having a lot of risk involved with the job anyway. i would mind rude people at stops and on the road. and as a student, i'd mind only being able to work a few hours and make even less...i don't like living off my student loans like i am now.

but, oh, it would be fun to be on a bike all day. if ever i can reconcile some of the issues i have with the **** aspects of messengering, i'd like to do it. but i don't know that that would happen soon.

<OT>
Since there are many people in the messenger community posting to this thread, there's something I've always wondered...

How has the internet effected the messenger industry? I realize that a lot of business is legal documents that need to be notarized etc, but I can't imagine that a lot of that stuff can't be done electronically now.

Of course everybody was probably saying the sky was falling when the fax machine came out...
</OT>

yeah, good points, so does anyone want to sponsor me or my whole gang, so we can ride around town, drink sparks, pillage and plunder, drink grog, wear eyepatchs, frighten children, drink sparks, and be surly? anyone, anyone?

I could be a messenger because....

I could deal with the abuse.... I used to teach school. No one gets abused more than public school teachers.

I could deal with the weather: layers...goretex...and spirit,

I could deal with the low pay.... I wait tables in the buckle of the bible belt. "Hell, i give god 10 percent, why should I give you more? Yarnt more inportant than god..." And my GF makes alot of money, I like being a kept man.

I could deal with the frenetic aspect of the job...waiting tables and teaching school....

I could deal with people trying to kill me... as I said, I taught school :D

I could deal with being the guy with the tools. When I taught in a small town in GA, I was one of the few people within 30 miles who worked on bikes. Kids would bring their broken Huffys on Fridays and I would spend at least an hour after school working on them

I could deal with attitudes with a smile.... waiting tables and teaching school

I like getting whistled at....girls and ,shrug" guys. I look at gay men like ugly women. Fine to be friends with, just wouldn't want to date any of them. It's nice to be desired by more people.

I could deal with no benefits, I will be on my GF's insurance soon. getting hitched. Hopefully for the only time

I can't deal with working in a cube, not being able to more during work, not being busy but not being allowed to relax, and getting drug tested ( I am completely clean but I feel it's an invasion of privacy, just my anarcho-capitalist mentality. I beleive it was Robert Anton Wilson in the 80's who said " In the future, men and women will no be judged by their content of their character or even their looks, but by their pee. Maybe it "Bob" Dobbs).

I am a messenger and I'm really struggling. Sure the work is fun, and I'm not too bad at it anymore. Still I only make $75-110 a day for 9 hours of dangerous, thankless work. Today I worked for 4 hours and made zero dollars. I just sat and waited for a call. I wonder how I'm going to pay my Rent in January if I make that kind of money.

averaging about$100 dollars is good money, i don't make that much,..i didn't look at wher you are living, but if you can't lift on almost $500 a week, i don't think you are living within your means...(no offence)

now to answer ceya's question
i love being a messenger. i like the cold days, i make plenty of money. some days are frustrating, but as with any job. i like the comradery and bike talk (bike nerd) i don't know. it just makes me happy. and that is something that a lot of people with there jobs...i don't really care for fridays, when everyone in elevators is like ""whoo! FRIDAY!" it's sad, really. oh well. do what makes you happy.

Ive been a courier in dc for about 4 months and did this for the 1st time a few days ago, it was an amazing feeling to roll over to a certain area of town and just have SO many messengers all working together in and out of allys all on our radios and ready to U lock a dude to a pole via his neck.

I could have answered this question; why i dont want to be a messenger with, "i have no good winter clothing and im broke because DC is expensive to live in..." but i came home for thanksgiving and my parents bought me a rad jacket and underarmor and a bunch of winter riding stuff... now theres no reason why i could see myself stopping anytime soon.

nonsense

i don't know... that really depends. here in new york i average about $100 a day or just over that, but i don't work -that- hard. a lot of guys make substantially less than that, and a lot of guys make significantly more. the range can be fairly wide, actually. the rub is, it's expensive to live in new york. $110 a day doesn't go nearly as far here as it did in Philadelphia. if i worked quite hard at TCC, i could make upwards of $150 a day... if i worked 'normally,' i averaged about $100. in philadelphia that's a lot of money. in new york it isn't. relativity applies to more than just high-velocity particles (or particle-like objects)!

but not in the same sense, of course.