Limobike Tales

[Warren t claim]

My Suzuki GS450E, with only 7000 miles on the clock, seemed an ideal device on which to earn a crust. I'd worked as a DR some ten years earlier, so knew enough of the basics to drop a line of informed bullshit on potential employers. After a couple of days phoning around and having interviews I'd found a job. The usual self-employed basis, no paid holidays, sick leave, etc. I'd figured out that if I worked my balls off I'd come away with about £350 a week in my pocket. That assumed nothing went wrong with the GS and didn’t take into account that after a year’s despatching the bike would be practically worthless.

Just commuting into work I'd found little to complain about with the GS, but doing ten hours in the saddle every day was an altogether more serious matter. For instance, its clutch is light and gearbox slick, but after a few hours my left wrist was complaining with fierce shooting pains and my left ankle felt like it was going to fall off, leaving me cursing the need to keep swapping cogs to keep my momentum up. The seat made me feel like I was eighty and about to fall apart with piles.

By dinner time I wanted to go home and sleep the rest of the day off. What had been to me a ferocious pace, and a minor miracle that I hadn't got lost as some areas, like the Docklands, had changed out of all recognition, to the controller was such pathetic slowness in getting jobs done that he threatened me with the sack if I didn’t speed up. Much to the amusement of my fellow DRs, who despite the recession were to a man equipped with big GT750s on which they defied physics by taking off from the office on one wheel. Their maniacal grins and blank eyed dementia were enough to have traffic wardens cringing in fear and cagers shaking in terror.

After a quarter hour break for a dubious hamburger I was back on the toad, the idiosyncratic radio adding to my woes. Half the time it made the controller sound like a demented parrot, the other half he apparently couldn't hear what I was saying. Either that or he was taking the piss: twice I rolled up to collect a parcel only to find one of the veteran DRs already strapping it on to their own machines. The third time it happened I beat the other DR there by half a minute, but we came close to blows over who should do the job. I eventually won by sidestepping him and hurtling off down the road. He’s never spoken to me since!

The traffic was also mad, the only way to keep up with it was by thrashing the GS through its excess of gears and riding on the brakes, the front disc glowing red by the time the day was over. I was spared the indignity of being sacked by the narrowest of margins. My net income for the first day was £41 after expenses.

The next morning my body had been so punished that I could hardly move out of the bed. I knew if I turned up late that would be the end of my job, so forced my frame off the bed and under a hot shower. For sustained town riding I soon found that higher bars, thicker grips and a K&Q seat all made the Suzuki much more tolerable.

The next few days I really got into the swing of hustling the bike through Central London, though at the end of each day I really needed the attention of a Thai masseur, though I doubt if the Inland Revenue would allow the cost as a deductible expense. The IR actually descended upon the company two weeks after I started and took away a couple of the DRs who couldn't prove who they were. This meant we had to work harder and harder and I was only allowed off the bike to pick up and deliver jobs; eating Mars bars as I went along.

Being the summer, the weather was so nice that even when stressed like that I still found myself enjoying the challenge of earning more than £300 in a week. After a month most of my muscles had adapted to the rigours of despatching and the GS needed little more than a clean and oil change every weekend. It was one of the tougher motors to come out of Japan and seemed to thrive on an excess of throttle abuse.

The first time it rained I fell off. The first dose of water had released all the accumulated dirt and grime in the toad surface, making it feel like I was riding on ice. I had anyway been meaning to replace the worn Michelins with something better but hadn't found the time nor energy (I usually didn’t ride the bike on weekends). The front wheel slid away from under me, slowly enough for me to try to wrestle with the handlebars but that just produced an almighty lurch which probably added to the violence with which I was thrown off.

This happened at a slow speed but in the middle of traffic. I barely missed having my head run over by a black cab (I guess he was too slow to get me) and the GS whacked the kerb, and flicked over on top of some startled pedestrians. I don’t think they, bruised and burnt, were too amused by the fact that I'd escaped without any injuries. Nor that they had provided a soft landing for the Suzuki. I lost over an hour whilst they were disentangled and the police made threatening noises.

The controller was almost hysterical by the time I'd finished describing the accident. Everyone who's been despatching for a while had their own store of anecdotes, some of which were so unlikely that hardly anyone, not in the business, believed them but it’s one of those areas where truth is often stranger than fiction.

I thought I was in fairyland when for a month I made over £400 a week. A couple of times I had so many parcels on the bike that there was hardly any room to sit and the rear shocks were so compressed that they threatened to let the mudguard and the tyre attempt to fight it out for their survival.

It was on one of these runs that a huge A2 envelope flew off the back. I knew something had gone because it had been trying to dig a hole out of my spine and the flurry of car horns were even more intense than when complaining about the way I thrust the Suzuki into what they considered to be their sacred bit of road space. By the time I'd pulled over, run back and retrieved the package it had been run over a couple of times, with a big, tyre sized, crease on the one side.
Luckily, there was another package for the same delivery, allowing me to hide the battered one and obtain the signature saying it was delivered in good condition. God knows what the contents were like.

The worst thing I ever had to deliver was a huge box of bearings that had to be strapped on top of the top-box, but not so securely as to stop it from wobbling from side to side. It was so heavy I had to have help lifting it up! The effect of having this mass way back and high up was to put the GS into permanent wobble and wheelie mode. To say I was terrified was the understatement of the year! I wasn't that surprised when the police pulled me over and gave me a stern dressing down. Arriving at the factory in Acton, the bike fell over as the mass whirled it around on the sidestand. The box whacked the ground, split open and sent packages of bearings flying every which way. I lost almost an hour overall during that job!

The controller, even after I'd been there for six months, was entirely unsympathetic to any complaints about the way the job turned out. He'd been a DR himself and viewed with deep suspicion and cynicism any excuses; was rarely surprised by even the most obscure reason for delays. Taking a day off sick, even though they weren't paid, was taken as a personal insult. At least he knew his job well and keep us screaming all around town for most of the time.

The GS has now done over 40000 miles but the engine seems fine, only a full complement of replaced chassis bearings, quite a lot of corrosion and a slight reluctance to start are showing up its abuse. As for me, I think I'll keep at the despatching lark for at least another six months, as I found myself even enjoying the winter, for all its freezing weather and heavy rains. After a while everything either clicks into place or you go after a new kind of job.

[Warren t claim]

Whisper it quietly, over the last couple of months the DR business has improved considerably. Once again I'm spending more time out on the road rather than sitting around swapping insults with my fellow DRs. The combination of the past recession, police and SS raids that would make old Adolf come in his pants and heavy costs have cleared out the ranks of DRs. Less people chasing more work is very nice, thank you very much.

Having written that it'd probably encourage UMG delinquents to grab their helmets and bikes, heading for London in search of quick and easy money. Which is fine if you have a nice bike, can afford the insurance and have a reasonable line in chat with which to persuade cynical, money grabbing despatch company bosses.

Quite a lot of the latter have closed up shop, as well, because the minimal profits that were coming in during 1991 and 1992 soon convinced them they would be better off in the double glazing, used car or taxi business. I can still dine out on tales of one entrepreneur who sold his business just as it was about to go down the drain... he'd listed our bikes as an asset of the company when in fact they were our own personal property. The cheap lease on the office was just about to run out which he'd claimed was freehold...

Even worse, he disappeared owing us lots of wages which the new owner, not knowing anything about them, was more than reluctant to hand over. Within a week the company no longer existed, everyone except the original owner way out of pocket. As a lot of the money was paid under the table, away from the eyes of the Inland Revenue, no-one was willing to shout too loudly about their lot in life.

I was only down a couple of hundred quid but with a mortgage and hp (on a new GT750) to pay every month, a week or more out of work would've sent me seriously into debt. A couple of hours on the phone, with the usual lies about the length of work experience and earning ability, soon saw me ensconced in a new DR firm.

New riders usually have a hard time with the existing despatchers, especially when there wasn't much work going around, but I knew four of the nine other riders from past exploits on the London circuit. We were soon all chatting away like good old mates, exchanging tales of mad cagers, delinquent machinery and mind blowing police tactics.

A minority of riders still insisted on riding around like lunatics on old hacks with rotted exhaust systems. The noise combined with a riding technique that, more often than not, involved parting pedestrians like the red sea, had annoyed upright and uptight citizens to the extent that any two wheel vehicle was deemed fair play for the plod when they weren't setting up road blocks to catch terrorists. Which was about the only time we had any peace from them.

Uh, uh, I have to admit that in the past I would've fitted perfectly the above mentioned profile. It wasn't that I wanted to be a juvenile delinquent (too much dirt, hassle and angst to wish that on anyone) but that the only way I could get rolling in the DR game was by starting out on an old hack without any insurance, tax or MOT. It was either that or go on the social; I was only getting on my bike and working my balls off, just like the politicos demanded.

Back in the early eighties you could get away with such rampant neglect of the niceties of law and order. Perhaps it was because it was when I was so young I couldn't legally have a jar in the evening, I found this period of life most invigorating. The police even let me off a few times and never seemed too bothered when | didn't turn up with the requested documents.

I was working sixty hour weeks but earning lots of dosh. Within a couple of months I had graduated to a perfectly legal, nearly new motorcycle that wouldn't rise an eyebrow from even the most dedicated cop. Some people take to despatching like a duck to water. I was one of those happy creatures who would throw themselves out of bed and on to the bike with a disarming grin and enthusiasm. Making money from riding a motorcycle all day long always seemed like a gift from heaven.

I'm still pretty much that way despite the depreciations of the past couple of years. What worries me about the youngsters, these days, is the only way they can get in the game is by loading themselves up with debt for the bike, insurance, clothes etc. Once in that state there's not been enough work around to let them get ahead of the game. Perhaps I'm just showing my age, but it's not a profession, under tnose circumstances, that I could recommend to anyone.

I don't know why the police have to be so hard on bikers, all we want to do is make a reasonable amount of money. If all DRs were banned, then parcels would take much longer to deliver and all the vans needed to do the work would soon lead to even more clogged and fouled streets.

Well, OK, I occasionally have to take to the pavement, ride the wrong way down one-way streets and ignore protestations of peds who are clogging up crossings, but that's nothing compared to cagers who cut through junctions as if they were the commanders of their own personal universe; cab drivers who go berserk if they are even gently cut up, and bus drivers who just drive, usually straight past crowded bus stops, as if their foot is permanently trapped on top of the bloody juice pedal.

At times, especially in the rush hour, I feel like I'm amidst a bunch of insane lunatics who have nothing more on their minds than knocking me off my Kawasaki. Only a few days ago, some jerk in a Merc ran me into the gutter so forcefully that I ended up churning up chunks of pavement with the stands. We finally came to a halt abreast of each other, he leaned across his passenger to leer triumphantly; the thought of a mere motorcycle getting ahead of him in the traffic apparently more than he could bear. So used to this kind of situation had I become that I carried an aerosol of bright pink paint which I surreptitiously applied to the side of his car as he moved off. He'd probably have a heart attack when he pulled up at his destination. And quite right, too.

There I was, trying to convince you all that I'd grown out of my juvenile delinquency phase... er, well, I never attack first, I always wait until sometimes strikes the first blow then seek revenge, usually with a little sleight of hand so as not to become involved in a bout of fisticuffs. Maybe they learn their lesson or maybe they go berserk the next time they see a biker. Who knows?

This kind of madness reached a zenith when the work was thin on the ground and we had nothing much better to do all day than lounge around devising revenge on people who had crossed us. It passed the time and produced some quite imaginative schemes. We once bought a sack load of potatoes, went around sticking them in the exhaust pipes of cars. We must've done a couple of hundred in a day, not that it made much difference to the intensity of the traffic jams.

Now that there's a lot more work about we have to get our heads down, work our arses off to rake in the cash. You need a pretty clear head and grasp of reality to work out how to do multiple pickup and drops so as to do them in the shortest possible time. It's also quite dynamic in that the best laid routes will be interrupted by the controller demanding I rush off to an unlikely place for an urgent pick-up just as I was planning to howl off in completely the opposite direction. Once or twice a day I can get away with ignoring him by blaming radio static but more than that is pushing things.

As is refusing a demand to run up to Manchester in the depths of winter. I work mostly in London, having found that temperatures outside the city are usually 10 degrees colder. My lungs have grown used to the inner city pollution and complain when subjected to a sudden, freezing dose of fresh air. Not that it counts for anything with the controller, invariably there are a couple of times a year when I'm sent forth from civilization to dice with the barbarians up north. One of the perils of having a large motorcycle which is classed as a tourer.

I suppose I should welcome the variety and the chance to get free of the traffic jams, but the GT and I are used to each other's ways in crowds of cars, know how we're going to react to even the maddest machinations. Some DR's prefer smaller bikes but I like the security of the having a big, solid machine under me (but not on the OE Jap tyres).

I had a few crashes in the early days, when I was young enough to roll with the fall, but during the past four years I haven't been separated from the seat of the GT. I have hit a couple of things, both immobile, when I've been forced off the road, and moving, when cars have done some sudden daft thing that not even a veteran DR could conceive. Which just goes to show, however long I do this job something new shows up to surprise me. I wouldn't have it any other way.

[Warren t claim]

I've been at the despatch game for nearly two decades. Started out as a way to make some money out of my favourite hobby. A few years on, having more or less mastered the art, I was into serious dosh, mortgages and marriage. I was relatively lucky that when the last crunch came I had paid off most of the mortgage, owned a relatively decent machine and could survive on a modest income.

Some youngsters were in serious trouble, not helped any by vicious raids from the Inland Revenue and SS. They could only service their huge loans by riding rat motorcycles for 60 hours a week, paying no income tax and claiming the dole in at least one name. When they finally met up with reality they were utterly destroyed. All they could do was flee the country.

So, come the early nineties, there I was with all my experience, a nice enough Honda VT250 and an income that was about a third of its peak. It was pretty obvious that the 8000 mile VT had at least a year's worth of life left it in. If I indulged in a bit of native cunning, as was my normal practice even in the good times, I could probably get it to run for three or four years. Just a matter of picking up a couple of engines from crashed bikes and using two decades worth of discarded cycles that were littered around the garage and house.

I'd bought the VT cheap from a civilian who couldn't take the jittery handling. It was still on the OE Japanese tyres it came out of the showroom with. The merest hint of rain turned the poor thing into a vicious, violent and vile handler. It only took a few yards worth of wild slides to figure out that it was time to hit the tyre shop... a set of Avon Roadrunners utterly transformed the feel of the Honda.

This V-twin is perplexing in its complexity with water-cooling, four valves, DOHCs, etc, etc but runs extremely well up to the ton and then dies a death. Vibes are minimal and torque sufficient. The engine layout means it's narrow enough to charge through tiny gaps that would turn a C50 owner psychotic. Cut and thrust lunacy was slightly limited in tight traffic by the heavy feel of the steering. After a twelve hour day the last thing needed is a mad, maniacal wrestling match.

One advantage of a mere 250 in current circumstances is frugality. 60mpg or more was OK by me, as were consumables that lasted for well over 15000 miles a set, even when they were often the cheapest I could find. The only thing I had to keep an eye on was coolant level which could disappear faster than beer at an Aussie rugby meeting. A couple of desperate times I had to empty my bladder into the coolant holder.

The disc brakes always seemed fierce enough to suit a bike of twice the capacity, but were sufficiently sensitive to avoid locked wheels in the wet. This was just as well as the chaotic traffic in London was running wild. I knew some DR's who'd gone completely psycho under the stress of the crazy cagers.

One chap had taken a hint from Happy Henry, whacking cars with a tyre iron huge enough to rip the rubber off tractor wheels. He hasn't yet got it chrome plated but we reckon that it's only a matter of time. Another had acquired a fake revolver and would shove it through the window of petrified car drivers. It often seemed as if I was in the midst of urban warfare rather than trying to merely earn a living.

There were still some good times, though. The long summers and relatively mild weather for the rest of the year, meant there were quite a few fast runs out of town with a blazing sun and blue sky for company. Even the cagers snarling up the roads filled me full of pity for their utterly pathetic lives rather than with anger for the way they slowed down my progress.

The one long traffic jam that represented London at peak times was rather a different matter. I never, unlike many fellow DRs, became at expert at pavement excursions. The one time I tried the front wheel caught the kerb, the bike flicking itself and I horizontal. I landed well but was lucky to avoid being run down by a grin toting Negro behind the wheel of a red bus. The VT shrugged it off, tough little bugger, even though it bounced off more than a few cars.

No, in that kind of really heavy traffic, where even a bicycle couldn't get through, all I could do was grin and bear it. With the relative scarcity of jobs there wasn't much point rushing around like a juvenile delinquent; many an hour was spent lounging around reading library books when there was no work available. It beat listening to tall stories from equally aged DRs that I'd heard before.

The VT proved amenable to 20000 mile service intervals as long as it got regular oil changes around the 1000 mile mark. The most I got out of an engine without a major strip was 62000 miles. Impressive, I thought, for such a high revving 250. One engine wore out its pistons and bores (letting me know by locking up solid), the other threw pieces of cam lobe all around the mill. Both happened in heavy traffic when I was, for once, overloaded with parcels to deliver.

Some of the DRs with rat machines had blow-ups every week, leaving them stranded miles from their deliveries. They often ended up in a vicious circle in which the boss refused to give them much work because of the unpredictabiity of their machines.

That meant there was no way to buy anything better and the next bike would turn out to be an even bigger rat. A couple ended up seriously injured when the machines seized in the traffic, leaving them to be mowed down by the cagers. Rumour was that the car drivers actually cheered!

In both cases of engine demise the gearboxes had become tres nasty, nearly finishing me off several times when I suddenly found the bike stranded in neutral with screaming cagers converging for the final kill. This kind of combat zone at my advanced age was rather more than terrifying. Frantic footwork and enough prayers to put a devout fan of Allah to shame somehow managed to save me from becoming hospital fodder.

The present engine has done a mere 34000 miles and has a gearbox that still works in a predictable rather than Russian Roulette manner. The cycle parts cost next to nothing to fix, since when anything major went wrong I merely replaced it with something vaguely similar from my collection of parts. In twenty years I've written off six bikes and blown at least 15 engines, so there's a huge assortment to choose from.

I always put on a new set of Avons before the old ones get down to the bare carcass... experience has taught me that it pays to fit decent rubber. Especially on the capital's treacherous roads, which when they aren't covered with spilt diesel, engine oil or gravel are often as not a churned up mess that should've been repaired months before.

And, it's difficult to keep a constant eye on the road surface as well as clocking the antics of the car drivers and peds. Taxi drivers have been mentioned before as being especially psychotic but I've found them relatively skilled - it's only when you actually bump into one of them that they go very wild. From time to time, especially in the winter months, I have become so sick of the game that I've tried other jobs.

Whilst 20 years experience does mean I can get a job with one of the better DR firms (the stories about the snakes would fill up the whole of the UMG...), it means that in any other field of employment I'm no better off than a school-leaver. The best job I picked up was as night clerk in a Paddington hotel - until the police closed it down because of the way dubious ladies would hire the rooms for an hour at a time. So, I've always come back to despatching.

It does seem to go in cycles. A couple of really good years when the money's better than most, then a year when it's tolerable, followed by a couple of desperate years. By my reckoning things should be looking up by the time you read this. Bloody well hope so, anyway!

[Hooli]

Great reads Warren, shame Stuie didn't hang about here as he's an ex-courier too.

[brandersnatch]

Reading those articles it seems to me that some of them were dispatch riding on a different planet to me. All this talk of bouncing off cars and having accidents every week sounds a bit ‘romantic’.
Accidents happen obviously but taking into account miles done combined with amount of riders it’s fairly uncommon. I’d say that, mile for mile, couriers have fewer crashes than ‘civilians’.
There’s a learning curve. First off you tend to tear around like a madman. Pretty soon it dawns on you that the most important thing is to deliver the parcel and get paid. Accidents, breakdowns, speeding tickets etc. all affect your profits. Most couriers ride sensibly and well. There are exceptions obviously.
Bob, or Crash as he’s known to most, is one. In his sixties now he rides like a child. He’s been a courier since god was a boy and had learned nothing. He crashes on a regular basis. When he worked for Addison Lee he wrote off three of their GT550s in a week. He works for a company whose excess for most riders is £500. Bob’s is £2500.

[DodgeRover]

I can remember reading the wheels falling off one!
I remember another about a bloke who bought a series of unlikely bikes from Italy then sold them after 3 months dispatching on the foreign plates.

[AutoshiteBoy]

Where are these stories from? They're very good.

[Eddie Honda]

Where are these stories from? They're very good.

If you're paying a Frenchman

The following story I've copied from the online UMG archive

That's the Used Motorcycle Guide to you.

[Warren t claim]

Where are these stories from? They're very good.

If you're paying a Frenchman

The following story I've copied from the online UMG archive

That's the Used Motorcycle Guide to you.

http://yewemmgee.blogspot.com/

[Eddie Honda]

When I was going round town there was The Rider's Digest.

http://www.theridersdigest.com/