By Alex Frankel

Fast Company, September 1, 1998

"Instead of dispatchers telling you what to do, you tell them what youcan do," says Justin de Jesus, 25, one of Zap Courier's elite fleet.

Zap Courier is one of the fastest - and fastest-growing - bike-messengerservices in the Bay Area. Its fleet of 15 expert riders makes more than300 deliveries each day to clients including Levi-Strauss, Miller- Freeman,and Pentagram Design.

Still, Zap's founder, Chris Neal, 35, knows that keeping up with thedigital-era expectations of 200-plus clients takes more than sheer legpower.

That's why Neal jumped at the chance to adopt a state-of-the-art computer-aided dispatching system known as "free call." Rather than depend on "addleddispatchers" to field calls, troubleshoot problems, and assign deliveryjobs or "tags," says Neal, the free-call protocol pushes information downto the street level - literally.

Tags are called out in a constant stream over two-way radios to messengersin the field, who evaluate the job requirements to determine the best riderfor the job. That autonomy means real results, says Neal: "When a messengeris allowed to follow his or her own initiative and intimate knowledge ofthe street, the job just gets done faster."