Despatches: Bits and Pieces

Riders starting out in despatching can expect to net not much more than £100 to £150 a week when they sign on at learner rates. That's in a good company, the cowboys who have a lot more people than work may halve that. One DR firm is renown for only employing learners, getting rid of them when they start to demand a full wage. As they only pay for the work delivered they reckon it puts them well ahead of the game even if the riders don't know where the hell they are going.

With such low rates of pay the only way newcomers to London can find somewhere to stay, apart from doss houses and the street, is by sweet talking existing DRs. Quite a few have grouped together to rent out a house, the more obscure areas of the docklands, for instance, turning up three or four room houses for rent for less than £500 a month. Still expensive for newcomers but tolerable if you share a room.

For experienced riders things are picking up nicely. Someone who's been in the game for a few years and knows al lthe short-cuts through London, some legal others very dubious, can pick up £500 a week without needing to go right to the edge. That's net, but before the Inland Revenue has taken its inordinate cut. One guy I know, working like a navvy, is doing twice that!

The high profile of DRs in the capital - and who can miss the louder, crazier bikes? - means that the Revenue and SS are hot on the heels of delinquents. False names and dummy companies have long been means of both avoiding tax and claiming the dole (with all its rent/mortgage allowances) whilst working cash in hand. It does mean shuffling around from one company to another, with the paucity of work in the past not an ideal state of affairs.

Even honest DRs who pay tax may find themselves in trouble if they work for the same company all the time either as self-employed or through a limited company. The Revenue has the power, and like to use it, to claim that people who work for a company for more than six months are really employed by them and should pay tax as PAYE, which loses lots of allowances and means a huge increase in tax. It would hardly be worth getting on the bike. One DR company has already been forced to stop tax at source, others may follow suit.

Making as much money as you can before the whole scene goes down the drain seems to be a common lament, these days. You can see that by the way some riders charge along pavements and by the battle scars on the machines. One rider broke all records, getting his front forks straightened and a new wheel fitted in under an hour. He'd left his bike forkless in the gutter in Kings Cross and got back just as some hooligans were going to strip it bare! A cruising police car stopped them beating him up!

The same goes for keeping a machine up to scratch. One guy used to be meticulous about cleaning his bike at the end of each day. Looked so immaculate he took a lot of stick from fellow DRs but that didn't stop him in his admirable endeavours... when the third machine was nicked, when he was finding it almost impossible to find new insurance, then, and only then, did he take the hint. His new machine has never been cleaned; he was even seen rubbing mud into it to deter the thieves.

Bike robberies in the capital have reached incredible proportions. Anything newish needs to be both locked to something solid and fitted with a decent alarm system. Thieves who are let off with a derisory fine or just a warning, rather than life imprisonment in the oldest prison in the country, just laugh at the law and carry on regardless. [No change there then - 2019 Ed.]

One gang in a big van rolled up outside a DR firm where there was a long line of bikes. It was too much for them to resist, the burly characters practising their weight-lifting until someone caught on to what they were doing. About a dozen enraged motorcyclists descended on them, wielding tyre levers, big spanners and helmets. By the time they were finished the robbers had to crawl into the back of their van, leaving a trail of blood and gore. A week later the office was set alight...

One DR, after having his motorcycle nicked, was seen for a week pedalling furiously on a mountain bike. He reckoned that he didn't lose too much dosh as he didn't have to spend any money out and he seemed to enjoy screaming his head off at peds as he shot along the pavements, through pedestrian precincts and, if he’s telling the truth, right through a shopping centre. He was quite happy to get back on a motorcycle, though, as he fell into a deep sleep the moment he got home after all the exercise.

One of the funniest things seen in a while was a DR who suddenly found his rat Superdream alight. Flames licked around the bottom of the tank. As he was trapped between columns of slow moving cars he couldn't leap off. He ended up standing on his seat, still controlling the Honda. The cagers thought he was just pissing around rather than trying to save his wedding tackle. Finally, the Honda fell against a black cab just as the flames whooshed up into the air. The rider leapt on top of the cab as the inferno licked at his boots. A concerned cager spoilt the whole charade by rushing out with a fire extinguisher. The cab had a scorched side, the driver looking like he wanted to kill someone but the DR had legged it.

There’s a wide variety of machinery used in despatching, everything from ancient old rats that really needed to be put to sleep right up to new motorcycles that cost a fortune to buy. The clever DRs go for slightly used bikes that have an inherent toughness. Reliability is the most important thing, then comes comfort and then frugality. It's not much good having a bike that costs next to nothing to run if it keeps breaking down and is so uncomfortable that it makes you so mad you ride like a lunatic and keep crashing.

Kawasakis GT550 and 750 used to be the most obvious choice, for no other reason than they would run around the clock even when subjected to brutal neglect. Their ignition units can be a bit dodgy and they are heavy and ponderous for rapid town work, as well as being rather expensive on consumables and fuel (though the shaft saves on chain replacements and adjustments).

Increasingly popular are the Paris Dakar replicas and big trailies. Their upright riding position and tall seat (good forward vision) make them brilliant for town work, as does their punchy low rev power and relatively low mass. The roads are so full of pot-holes that long travel suspension is becoming mandatory. God knows how the poor buggers on the old rats survive. The one point to watch with these big singles is that, even when watercooled, the pistons are susceptible to wear. Given typical DR neglect and frenzied abuse expect pistons to fail between 15000 and 20000 miles.

One popular if unexpected DR bike is the NTV600, which has the same rock-solid reliability as the earlier VT500 (who mentioned clutches?), is narrow, comfortable and well powerful enough for hustling through Central London. They are also relatively cheap, given that Honda was nice enough to slash the price of its replacement, the NTV650. Most DRs rely on breakers to keep their machines going, although many also specialize in one model, buying up crashed or blown examples for spares. There are even people who keep running things like RS250s and MZ250s, both of which need an engine swap every 20000 miles or so. As long as that is done they have all the qualities necessary for successful despatching, at least in town.

Long distance despatching isn’t so common. It's usually only the very urgent stuff that needs to be delivered yesterday. Hiring a bike for a 500 mile round trip works out very expensive just to deliver a single package. At a first glance, then, it's a bit strange to see so many large bikes kitted out in DR livery but as well as fuelling the ego of the rider they do tend to last a lot longer than the smaller stuff.

The highest mileage I've come across is 321000 on an old Kawasaki GT550. It's still running but looking and sounding very tired. About the only original components on the machine are the frame, wheels and stands. Everything else has worn out, fallen off or been damaged in a crash but the owner has a garage full of rotting GTs he uses as a cheap source of spares.

That's all part of the fun of despatching, stretching machinery beyond its natural limits; using a bit of ingenuity to get the best out of a bike, that was probably designed in Japan with the intention of lasting for a year or two before it was time to trade it in for a new machine. It's still one of those weird jobs, where riding a motorcycle around and getting paid for it seems like a gift from heaven... until the rain starts falling, the cold and damp seeps into your bones, the bike starts falling apart under you, that parcel strapped securely on the back has done a disappearing act and the controller squawks insanely down the radio. 

Len Phillips