Cycle couriers

[Ovingdeaner]

Was anybody else one of these back in the day? I worked for On Yer Bike Despatch back in the 1980s(!)...what a job - cycling all day, striding into offices with your various packages (ooh er!) for the receptionist to pass her eye over...it was a new job then, and we felt like the bandits of the roads of London.
It paid me through Uni - I left with money in my pocket, unlike most of the other sad students with their mega-debts.
I continued after I left, too. The idea of a 'normal' job just didn't appeal at the time. (It still doesn't, but reality bites...)
And you could legitimately claim to be a professional cyclist. Ha.

 

[col]

Iv seen a couple of times , one of those was with a trailer, of a courier here, very unexpected but good to see, he has a sign saying "Another emmission free delivery".

 

[ComedyPilot]

Would love to do it.

It'd be liberating and I'd get fit in no time.

Trouble is there's not much call for it in rural East yorkshire, and I'd be shagged if I commuted to York, besides driving there would be hypocracy.

 

[dellzeqq]

there's less and less call for it in London. Even the skateboarding Soho runners are losing out to a private high capacity internet network.

 

[Ovingdeaner]

It was definitely a job of it's time. When I started there were not that many of us. Two years later the streets were swarming with cyclists with their radios and shoulder bags.
But as you say, the need for couriers died down when the internet, and all that new fangled stuff took off.
It was great while it lasted!

 

[vernon]

It was definitely a job of it's time. When I started there were not that many of us. Two years later the streets were swarming with cyclists with their radios and shoulder bags.
But as you say, the need for couriers died down when the internet, and all that new fangled stuff took off.
It was great while it lasted!

There's been several mentions of the demise of cycle couriering in the media recently. 20% downturn in trade over the past year I believe.

 

[montage]

Being a postman is the only other Job I can think of that gets you on your bike :S

 

[threebikesmcginty]

I worked for a newsagent when I was a lad in the 70s and delivered papers on one of his fleet of gawd awful rusty old iron steeds - an old Elswick Hopper butchers bike style heap of shite weighing about the same as a Volvo estate, so I too can claim to be not just a courier but a professional cyclist, oh yes £2.50 a week!