Heat doesn't faze bike couriers
by Jeremy Moore
Philadelphia Daily News, July 22,1998
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| Bike messenger Mike McCann, 22, with Philadelphia Express pedals at 16th and Market. (Daily News / Steven M. Falk) |
Stifling heat can't stop bicycle courier Dave Williams.
Even as the city slows down and chills out to survive temperatures in the 90s this week, Williams delivers 30 to 40 packages every day through Philadelphia traffic from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
"The object is to move as many as you can in the course of a day before you lose energy and interest," said Williams, who goes home after his day job to take care of his furniture business in Germantown.
And the higher temperatures don't seem to have slowed the downtown courier business in general, many bikers say.
"This is the time of year we wait for," said courier Brian Ray. "I'm not thrilled to be out here in the winter at all."
The number of couriers actually multiplies in the summer.
Williams, 38, said that about 150 couriers can be found riding in the summer, but in the winter that number drops to about 40.
Besides the temperature, couriers say they have to contend with heat-aggravated drivers this time of year.
"Folks are in a hurry to get where they want to go," said Williams. "They squeeze you out and the next thing you know you're eating somebody's door."
Williams said last year he got hit by someone's car door on the Ben Franklin Parkway.
"It pushed me out into the road, if there had been traffic at that point I would have been smashed."
And Stephen Reingold, 29, a courier from Spring Garden, said couriers get into traffic accidents every day.
"We ride around and risk our lives. Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes your number comes up." Reingold's number came up on Monday when he collided with a government vehicle on Chestnut Street.
Williams and other couriers call themselves private contractors. Williams works for Rapid Delivery, 13th and Chestnut streets, and gets 50 percent of the rate Rapid charges. Their charge is based on how heavy a package is, how far and how fast it goes. Williams said during the summer he averages a little more than $200 per week, but during the winter that amount more than doubles.
Despite lugging packages as heavy as 40 pounds under the hot, humid sky, couriers who congregate at 16th Street and JFK Boulevard say they'd rather be outside than cooped up inside an office.
"It's about being on my bike. Being out there in the street and getting to do what I want to do when I want to do it," Reingold said.
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