Toronto's 85 Bicycle Couriers Have Skills To OutraceDanger
By Peter Cheney Toronto Star, March 20,1986 pA18
Like the Japanese suicide pilots of World War II, bicycle couriers area breed apart. You ride with them at your peril.
There are about 85 of them in Toronto, living on commissions and sheernerve as they work at one of the most gruelling an potentially lethal jobsavailable.
Joe Howlett, a 27-year-old bicycle racer and philosophy student, oneof the city's most experienced couriers, took this reporter along for theride yesterday.
Dodging traffic as we headed to the first pickup of the day, .Howlettgave a laconic analysis of what was to come.
"There's car doors and stuff," he said. "...it's a lotof fun,"
Howlett is a master of the frightening skills a bicycle rider must possessif he is to make money and survive.
His eyes flick constantly from side to side, up and down, scanning forhazards that range from trolley tracks to cement trucks, calculating moveswith the precision and speed of a broken-field runner.
Paid according to their production, couriers can earn between $10,000and $20,000 a year. Speed is of the essence.
Running from a Bloor St. W. office building, Howlett hears his numberannounced over the two-way radio he wears in a holster. He has been assignedto pick up a package on Eglinton Ave.
We speed to the ramp that leads to Mount Pleasant Rd., then zip downit like bobsledders, keeping close to the curb as cars zoom by at 80 kilometres(50 miles) an hour.
"Sometimes you can feel the danger," Howlett says later. "It'sright there."
From Eglinton we are sent back downtown for another pick-up, and wesoar down the long Avenue Rd. hill.
Knifing through stalled traffic, cutting down alleys and playing thetraffic lights like a pinball artist, a bicycle courier can take a packageacross town faster than anything else on wheels.
In a single day, a bicycle courier will ride between 70 and 100 kilometres(45.5 and 62 miles), and make up to 65 stops, picking up and deliveringpackages.
Howlett's mount is a stripped racer, painted black. It is a naked, purposefulmachine. There are no gears because they freeze up in the winter.
Because of its solid rear hub, the pedals do not stop moving when thebike coasts, giving the bike the frightening feel of a machine with a willof its own.
Each year Howlett wears out six bicycle chains, 20 rubber brake padsand three sets of tires.
The couriers ride 12 months a year. "The winter is pretty brutal,"Howlett says. "You get sick a lot. When you get home at night youfeel like you've had it,"
Understandably, the job attracts a number of bicycle racers, who seeit as an opportunity to keep in shape. It also attracts philosophy students,artists, disgruntled office workers,. MBAs, dancers and representativesof nearly any other group you can think of.
"You get skinheads, academics, you name it," says Hilda Tiessen,co-owner of Sunwheel Bicycle Couriers, the largest operation in the city,with 45 riders.
"What ties them together is a sense of adventure."
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