Fresh Air! Speed! Poverty! Servitude!
Bike couriers have the most exciting career it's possible to be totally exploited in. The founders of Chicago's first messenger collective think there's got to be a better way, and so they've braved the gritty streets to build a business in one of the most competitive, bare-knuckle industries around.
CHICAGO READER / JUNE 2006
Rene Cudal was the last to quit. The Friday after Labor Day 2005 was the day he’d marked in his calendar, but he procrastinated all morning and afternoon, dreading the moment his boss would put two and two together. Finally the boss went home. Cudal called him that evening and gave him two weeks’ notice.
A bike messenger quitting isn’t so unusual–messengers will tell you they all develop a strategy to extract themselves from the job, which is defined by a high risk of bodily harm, low wages, and few or no benefits. Michael Carey, Cudal’s boss at On Time Courier, was a former messenger himself. But Carey, a big, block-shouldered man with a reputation as both a polished salesman and a hard-line intimidator, didn’t take Cudal’s news well. “What’s happening?” Cudal remembers him saying. “What are you doing? Starting your own messenger company?”
Cudal was in agony. “Well,” he said, “yes.” …