Start with the facts: Benefits of messengers Are messengers reckless? When is a license just another label? What is the disguised name for employee? Messenger Appreciation Messenger Memorial The IFBMA
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Low need could kill messengers Forget crazy drivers -- it's a business world increasingly dependent on e-mail that's making bicycle couriers an endangered species. By Daniel de Vise Miami Herald, November 23, 2003 Most everyone in New York City knows someone who has worked as a bicycle messenger. There are more than 1,000. In South Florida, bicycle couriers number approximately five. Meet Chris Jones. Age 25, tanned, tattooed and wiry, Jones logs 20 miles a day on his Cannondale mountain bike, pedaling court papers past bewildered drivers on a beat that stretches from The Herald building south over the Flagler Bridge into Little Havana. Bicycle messengers occupy a rebellious lower rung of society in America's great downtowns, weaving through business-suited pedestrians and taxicabs, a swirl of flopping hair, grit and sweat among the crew cuts and conformity. This is a transient industry. Jones took the job with Downtown Hub Inc. in early October. He doesn't figure to keep it for long. ''I was looking in New Times, and I seen an ad, and I race BMX bikes professionally, so I was looking for a workout,'' Jones said. ``I got laid off from my other job, and I needed to pay the bills, pay the rent.'' Fearless, reckless, lawless, rebellious -- bike messengers both profit and suffer from their reputation. Pedestrians curse them as they swerve by on the sidewalk; motorists resent their scofflaw ways on the roads; they reside at or near the bottom of the pecking order. New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., all have hundreds of bicycle couriers, many of them recent college graduates not yet ready to accept a sedentary desk job. Annual pay averages around $21,000, benefits are scarce, accidents epidemic. Bicycle messengers are an accepted part of the landscape in those cities. They are a curiosity in South Florida, a region that is positively toxic to cyclists. ''It's crazy. Absolutely insane,'' said Jones, drenched in sweat as he paused between deliveries in the office of Downtown Hub near the county courthouse. ``People don't know how to drive for nothing. There's no such thing as a turn signal. You almost get hit by a car four, five times a day.'' Jones used to do graphic design for a sign-making company. Now, he survives on adrenaline, water and daredevil wits. He wears no helmet, despite the risks and contrary to Florida law; many cyclists say helmets dull their peripheral hearing and vision and become unbearably hot. Founded in 1994, Downtown Hub operates in a small, mildewed office at 111 Southwest Third St. A bright red door opens up onto Municipal Parking Lot 36, beneath an overpass, a few blocks from the state and federal courts that are the company's lifeblood. Owners Sheik ''Ari'' and Narissa Muzaffarr started out as an all-bicycle operation. Today they field two bicycles, two scooters and a car. ''They just have to have a good bike and a good lock,'' Ari Muzaffarr said. ``A very good lock. That is the most important thing.'' The sprawling Miami market will bear only a few bicycle messengers. Exec 2000 Courier Systems employs two cyclists. Lightning Courier has one. A quick survey of companies found no bicycle messengers in Broward. ''You can't compare us to Chicago or Los Angeles or New York,'' cities that all support small armies of bicycle messengers, said Larry Schwartz, president of the trade group Florida Messenger Association. ``You have maybe 20 major buildings in downtown Miami. Fort Lauderdale, even fewer. Everything is spread out all over. Bikes and scooters really are not gonna make it.'' But within the dense courthouse district of downtown Miami, cyclists have a distinct advantage. They can weave through rush-hour traffic, cut corners and park where they want. They can also run stoplights, make illegal turns and go the wrong way down one-way streets. With so few bicycles on the roads, police hardly take notice. ''You get around faster on a bicycle,'' said Luís Hernandez, 20. (Such is not the case in New York and other bicycle-messenger centers, where the swarms of cyclists complain of frequent ticketing for minor traffic offenses.) Born in Los Angeles to Salvadoran parents, Hernandez came to Miami in 1990 and attended Miami Senior High School. After a year at Downtown Hub, Hernandez now works as a sort of senior messenger, dispatching the others and mounting his own Mongoose mountain bike when the orders pile up. Downtown Hub once employed as many as 12 cyclists and worked 150 jobs a day. Today, there are just two bicycles and roughly half the workload. The courier industry is in decline around the nation, mostly because their clients now send many of their ''packages'' as e-mail attachments. Sept. 11 also took a toll. ''The days of the document are over,'' said Schwartz, the trade group leader, who is also president of Baron Messenger Service in Miami. ``So you have to focus on a three-dimensional type delivery. It's got to be something that can't be e-mailed or faxed. Computer parts, medical specimens.'' Industry leaders don't know exactly how many couriers ride bicycles, but clearly their numbers are thinning. Breakaway Courier Systems in New York cut back from 150 cyclists to 120 in recent months, apparently a concession to the increasingly three-dimensional demands of the business. The company hired 10 new truck drivers to deliver larger packages, the kind that can't be e-mailed, according to an analysis of the courier industry in the Chicago Tribune. Employing truckers instead of bicyclists has an appeal: The trucker is less likely to be hit, maimed or killed. ''A company gets tired of hearing complaints or messengers getting hurt,'' said Bill Goodman, editor of Courier Times, a trade magazine. ``And they switch their modes of operation, either to motor vehicles or to walkers.'' Bicycle messengers remain vital characters in the urban landscape, particularly in cities with large, dense downtowns. Washington, D.C., has upwards of 500 bicycle messengers; San Francisco, 400; Los Angeles and Boston, about 100 each, according to scattered reports on the industry from newspapers in those cities. A Harvard study published last year found that bicycle messengers in Boston stand roughly the same odds of workplace injury as football players, but that most injuries go unreported and most couriers carry no health insurance. It's worth noting that a search of news archives for the past 20 years finds no documented case of a bicycle courier killed or maimed in a traffic accident anywhere in South Florida. The riders say this may be partly because they are so few. ''We might be careful,'' said Hernandez, 20, the Downtown Hub employee. ``But the guys in the cars are not.'' • Postscript: True to his word, BMX racer Chris Jones didn't stay abicycle messenger for long. He left Downtown Hub in early November, a few weeks after speaking to The Herald, for the safer pastures of the stock room at Banana Republic. He was replaced by Alexander Knott. For the truth see : The End of Bike Messengers? and The Decline of the Messenger Industry
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