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Amazon trials bike messengers for super-quick deliveriesA New York bike messenger (by-nc-nd licensed by Xin Qiao:Flickr)

Amazon trials bike messengers for super-quick deliveries

Mail order mega-corp experiments with dispatching parcels the old-fashioned way
by John Stevenson
Tue, Dec 09, 2014 12:29
10

Mail order mammoth Amazon may have grabbed headlines with talk of using radio-controlled airborne drones to deliver packages, but it's also been testing a far more down-to-earth delivery system: bike couriers.

Amazon's aim is to get goods to customers within an hour or so with a planned new service called Amazon Prime Now. According to a Wall Street Journal source familiar with the trials, couriers from at least three New York City companies have been involved.

Riders have been dispatched from Amazon's new Manhattan base near the Empire State Building with instructions to ride to an address within an alloted time, take a picture of the building and return to base.

Since messengers will be waiting at the base between jobs, Amazon has reportedly built a lounge with table football, pool and air hockey; an arcade; and other amenities for riders waiting between deliveries. Riders are paid around $15 an hour and work eight-hour shifts.

Amazon Prime Now already has bike-borne competition in the Big Apple. According to VentureBeat, taxi-on-demand service Uber began its own cycling delivery service in April. However, unlike Amazon, Uber isn't selling the goods it delivers, or making purchases on a customer's behalf. It's effectively an app-powered incarnation of the traditional courier service.

But in some areas of New York and San Francisco another start-up, WunWun, is offering bike courier purchase and delivery of, well, pretty much everything that can be carried by bike. And delivery is free, though WunWun urges you to tip generously.

Regulatory issues may have stymied its plans for airborne parcel delivery, and Amazon has yet to explain how it proposes to get round the rules about flying radio-controlled aircraft near buildings for its Cambridge drone delivery trial, but the good old bicycle still looks like the best way of getting small items quickly across congested cities.

Amazon
bike messenger
New York
Uber
WunWun
John Stevenson

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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10 comments

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jhamlin38 | 9 years ago
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I live in Los Angeles. Amazon delivered me something the other week by a Taxi.
I bought a dog grooming post on Amazon that was delivered in a box the size of a standard cardboard bicycle box via UPS. the ups guy was riding a mountain bike pulled by a trailer!

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Leodis | 9 years ago
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In.

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antonio | 9 years ago
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Vertical lift off bikes?

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earth | 9 years ago
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"But in some areas of New York and San Francisco another start-up, WunWun, is offering bike courier purchase and delivery of, well, pretty much everything that can be carried by bike. And delivery is free, though WunWun urges you to tip generously."

An old favorite of US companies - not paying the employees. Slavery never ended.

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bikebot | 9 years ago
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I also hope that when Amazon start installing lockers in dozens of central London underground stations, they'll will use the underground itself for deliveries.

Most of their packages are tiny, put them in a big holdall and send delivery people out at off peak hours. I wouldn't be surprised if they're already planning this, they certainly seem to be considering options beyond yet more vans.

I suppose we should give a small round of applause to TNT for putting postmen on bikes after the royal mail took so many of theirs off.

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Dr_Lex | 9 years ago
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The comic nerd in me now requires Scott Pilgrim-like roller blade delivery service.

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Must be Mad | 9 years ago
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Far more workable than that silly drone idea

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bikebot replied to Must be Mad | 9 years ago
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Must be Mad wrote:

Far more workable than that silly drone idea

Context matters. If you see the sprawling suburbs that surround some of the more central and western American cities and towns, drones would work. They make zero sense for European cities, New York etc, but many US cities are largely unpopulated in the centre, they're just business districts.

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oozaveared replied to bikebot | 9 years ago
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bikebot wrote:
Must be Mad wrote:

Far more workable than that silly drone idea

Context matters. If you see the sprawling suburbs that surround some of the more central and western American cities and towns, drones would work. They make zero sense for European cities, New York etc, but many US cities are largely unpopulated in the centre, they're just business districts.

When I was a kid only James Bond had a phone in his car and even then we went "yeah right". By 1988 I had just such a proper handset like phone in my company car. Star Trek was even worse. It had flip phones that coulf fit in your pocket to talk to HQ. (yeah right again.) I got one of those called a Startac Motorola I think in 1992.

Drones will be coming and the reason is the advances in Li-Ion battery technology. The same reason why electric cars are coming. Small mass hi output power sources.

In other news when I was a kid I had a front light on my bike from ever ready that had a screw down on switch and took one single battery. Tiny bloody useless thing. Now you get a front light like mine (strada) that needs dipping when you approach oncoming traffic lasts 10 hours and lights up dark lanes very effectively.

Don''t dismiss the drones.

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mike the bike replied to oozaveared | 9 years ago
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oozaveared wrote:

......

..... Drones will be coming and the reason is the advances in Li-Ion battery technology. The same reason why electric cars are coming. Small mass hi output power sources ......
..... Don''t dismiss the drones.

It won't be the technology that scuppers the idea, it will be the law. The first multi-million pound law suit for damages caused by a drone will frighten the manufacturers away and then the legislators will step in.

And probably rightly so. Many of us can't even drive a simple car properly in two dimensions, what chance for anything more complicated?

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