Our receptionist is away today and i've just had to book a courier to take a CD from London Bridge SE1 to Piccadilly W1. I specifically requested a bicycle take this, but I was told it had to be via a motorbike due to the distance. I explained that it was only a small parcel containing a CD and was not worried if it would take longer by bicycle as it wasn't urgent, but after a lengthy discussion he told me it was because all his riders were "lazy and unwilling to travel that distance".

C'mon guys, defend yourselves :)

Exactly.

I can understand that they have very few riders and don't want to send them west with just one parcel. Maybe they have no clients west to bring the rider back to the city? Maybe they needed work for a motorbike who was heading west...But them blaming the riders is wrong.

I lost that battle and booked the motorbike, but I'll suggest to our company that we use a different courier company.

Hops, you've been poorly treated and there's not much excuse for this happening in the current climate.

If you don't mind I would recommend you check out www.gobetweenscouriers.com - they'll sort you out without a fuss.

I'd almost never recommend City Sprint!
I do think you need to spill the beans here, Hops. Which firm was it? I can't think who the hell it could be, though it sounds the type of bullshitting excuse Mark Cheveaux would instruct his droogs to parrot to clients.
In days of yore I could understand it. Certainly nobody on a pushie at West One when I was there in the late 1980s would ever do a London Bridge to W1 (West End circuit never went further than St. James's or Covent Garden) and there were good-ish City circuits in the 1990s (ADC's for instance) where pushies wouldn't go that far. In this day and age, however, that's a bit lame.
Usual bullshit though - the management / agency parasites (masquerading as a courier firm, in spite of them employing no couriers) calling the shots and lying to clients; the couriers, who pay the slags 50% of their dough to act for them, saying bugger all about it.

Back off Basie.

Unsurprisingly Zack you do lie. Have 10 muppet points.

"If City Sprint has any sense"???!!!
You might as well write, "If firms formed a trade association..." or "If couriers formed a union....."
Anyhow, that would surely constitute "Use of initiative" - something expressly forbidden under the McDonald's constitution. (The last time I saw a "riders' handbook", "DO NOT USE YOUR INITIATIVE" was still there in big capitals.
How anyone can possibly defend City Sprint is beyond me. They don't sum up everything that's wrong with the industry and they're nowhere near as bad as the likes of CDS, Courier Systems, Post Haste and Premier, but they're still an arrogant bunch of incompetent twats who don't have anyone in the office who can string two words together when talking to a client and are run by people who know nowt about the courier game.

Their insistance on their riders giving them of £300-worth of free advertising every day is insulting.
Their "The rate payable to the sub-contractor shall be the rate deemed appropriate by the company at the time" clause - meaning they can (and do) cut rates any time they fancy - ought to be illegal.
Their discounted prices scheme to pain in the tits clients like PWC and E&Y, with those dicounted bills arranged by paying lower than agreed rates to riders, stinks to high heaven and their distance jobs from "the hub", which pay shag all, are also a offence against the industry.

Isn't the clue to the company in the thread name "associated air" who have about one bicycle (rather like us)...then again I could be very, very wrong.

Yawn!
Look at the sites, Rummy.
Whether it's that Quadbikes lot or any other bunch who have people riding around towing adverts on bikes, the least they'll charge you is £350 per vehicle, per day.
I'm deeply shocked to discover that the schmucks riding the bikes don't get all that money. Who'd ever have thought it? Most of them get minimum wage - it doesn't alter the cost of the advertising, though.....which is, as I say, £350 - £420 per vehicle, per day.

As for other companies making riders who are generous enough to employ them as agencies wear livery, yes, they do... but it still doesn't make it right.
Close to being the most important and valuable thing we could do as couriers right now would be to get rid of all company logos immediately. As far as the punters are concerned, the courier firms would simply vanish from sight. The punters would still have to use couriers - no alternative - but they'd be far less inclined to believe the bullshit firms like City Sprint give them about "Our couriers this..." and "Our couriers that..."
What we need to do is make pnters understand that firms are just agencies, employing nobody.
You lot don't appear to grasp that.

As for Assocaiated Direct, if it's them, their rates are even lower than Courier Systems and CDS. The one pushie I spoke to who worked for them reckoned he was lucky to do much more than six or eight jobs a day. yet I spoke to a van driver yesterday - experienced bloke, was at Point to Point for yonks - who reckoned he was pulling £600 per week with them.
I have heard very bad things abou the buggers, though.

Oh my, mr count, there are a few logic jumps there indeed.

I'm sure you didn't really intend to say that the only thing that makes our company's clients belive that courier companies promises are valid is because we wear uniforms? Do you really think that some executive in charge of logistics is going to go for his lunch break one day and suddenly go, Holy Shit!! None of the couriers are wearing uniforms! This must mean that we can no longer trust the courier companies!

I don't wear a uniform, but, to be honest I can see an argument that it might serve me much better to do so, as, being the normaly pleasant and easy to get on with courier that I am, wearing a uniform might convince someone i'm delivering to to look up my company and possibly use them in the future meaning that there might be more work for me. I'm not much of a big picture sort of person though, and would much rather keep riding in my own clothes (which actually fit me properly).

Can we have an ignore feature please _targetbot it might be easier than actually ignoring CB.

Yep, it's Associated Air or Associated Direct whatever they call themselves.

If we were a bigger company booking more bikes I would definitely suggest to our MD that we switch to City Sprint. I know that they will guarantee to send a push bike if I request one and that they'll be going in the right direction. I know this as they are everywhere. I see their bikes all the time (wearing the uniform, you see), plus our rates would probably be cheaper if we booked loads of work...

...but we only book 1 or 2 bikes a day, sometimes less when we're not busy, most of the time going from SE1 to W1. Occasionally we'll send one to the city. More often than not our parcels are not mega-urgent. This is why we are happy with AA/ ADL.

However, what I am not happy with is their pathetic excuse that their riders are too lazy to cycle to Piccadilly from London Bridge. Bicycles should be used for this distance.

Nhatt, I cannot believe someone of your intelligence can write that. It just sums up how drug-addled and braindead couriers are.
More work for you? There will be no more work for you, babe... just more work for your company.

I spoke to one of the best salesmen in the industry a couple of weeks ago. How many new accounts do you think he got for his company in the last year? Two. How many jobs did those two accounts book in his period of commission? Five or six - and they were all van jobs. Oh, yeah - he's pinched plenty of accounts from other courier firms... but what good does that do you?
If he was an insurance salesman at Prudential, he'd be getting people to switch their insurance policies from Legal & General or Churchill... but he'd also be bringing in new business from people who didn't previously have insurance in a certain field. More money coming into the industry. Courier company salesmen do not do that. Awareness of the availability of a sameday courier service amongst businesses in Central London is just about 100%. There's o more new business out there.

That salesman's salary and his commission ultimately comes from your wages - just like the courier firms' cut of the docket. You create the wealth and earn the money by moving goods from A to B. The courier firms create no wealth and earn no money - they're simply middlemen, taking a 50% cut rather than the 15% or 20% that every other middleman in th eworld takes.
Why do you pay a salesman a percentage of your salary when he brings in no work? Do you honestly believe it makes a difference to you if Acme International plc or Smith Jones Brown & Co. move their 50 bikes a day account from City Sprint to Addy Lee or from E-Courier to Lewis Day? It may make a difference if they move to CDS or Courier Systems (or Associated Direct), but with most frims it makes no difference at all. Whoever nicks the Acme or SJB account will immediately take on more riders to cover the work.

Nobody looking at the courier industry from outside can beleive what goes on, once they understand that couriers don't work for the courier firm. The average businessman is genuinely stunned that
A) courier firms can take 50% of the docket (The average businessman cannot understand what they do for that percentage) an
B) that couriers do what they do for the courier firm - given that couriers have absolutely no interest whatsoever in their current firm retaining the patronage of their clients.
The average businessman sees a tail wagging a very large dog.

I agree, Nhatt, that the MD of Goldman Sachs - assuming he isn't swinging by his necktie at the mo - wouldn't give a damn if he discovered that Goldman Sachs send him Brazzos who earn £3 per hour. However, most businessmen - once made aware of the circumstances of the relationship between couriers and courier firms - do tend to look at things differently and will be far more likely to question the sales bullshit they're given.

However it's done, we have to make the firms start behaving as what they are - parasitic agencies. Necessary parasitic agencies, but parasitic agencies nonetheless. Advertising the buggers doesn't help anyone but the parasites.

You are a condescending so-and-so, CB, but your analysis of the business model is pretty on the nose.

However, the only way to change the way courier companies behave is by concerted action from the riders.

I think the trick with CB is to ignore the sarcasm and look at the facts.

I think twitch and overdrive should sort their differences out in the LBMF boxing fundraiser.

I think it stands for London Bicycle Messenger Fascists. Overlaw started it up after he became unhappy with the LCEF and the way it's dictator, Drizzler was contollerengering it.

Twitch you fat bastard.
you ate my f*cking bananas.

What can be taken on a cargo bike that can't be on a moped just as fast (or faster)?

@ festerban

anything over 20 kgs, for a start, or bigger than a box of copying paper.

At the House of Pistard compound The Pistette can carry 11 slabs of beer before she starts complaining, then we just shut the door so we can't hear her.
What's this thread about anyway? I only started reading it from where Twitch ate Overdrive's bananas.

Aw didums,did the nasty overdrive upset you.
i'd meet you face to face but you aint got the balls.

but did over drive get his banana?

Hmmm ok, I didn't realise you could carry so much. But, however, where's the fun in riding a cargo bike all day, no fixie skids on dem muthafuckas Still, a cool idea in my books but I wouldn't ride one of those fuckers round all day, you can't really take them on the pavement or go between the gaps between buses/ go down the middle of the road, I reckon you'd spend half the time stuck behind a bus or taxi breathing in shit

If you are forced to breathe in exhaust fumes all day then fuck the money, dunno what it's like in brumsville but in London I reckon there's no way you'd be able to ride a cargo bike around all day without spending 25% of your time behind a vehicle