Oh yes, thought I, that’s the job for me. Wind in the hair and cash in the jeans. Well, I went despatching and shall endeavour to enlighten those doing the same as to the pitfalls. I rode down over a weekend in March. It was supposed to be a Saturday afternoon but following rain, sleet, snow and torrential blizzards and a puncture, my good self and a lady friend trundled into Ealing on a Sunday lunchtime.
I had about two hundred quid, no waterproofs, job or place to live. The bike I intended to despatch on was a near immaculate Z650 that was still in Hull following the complete inability of a mate to supply the parts needed to see her on the road in time for my move. But being a good egg, he'd loaned me his Yoshi GS870 - a mistake of, as then, unforeseeable enormity on his part.
The first thing you learn about London is that every prospective landlord wants hundreds of quid deposit on his seedy property before you can put your Ashmans through the door. Ealing’s a bloody stupid place to move into anyhow straight off as it’s pretty expensive and exclusive. After a couple of hours phoning about we secured a place at £70 a week. Small and shared but clean, that’s about the going rate. One week’s rent as deposit and one week in advance saw off the best part of my savings. Well, no-one said it was going to be a bed of roses.
Getting a job despatching is easier than getting arrested on a Saturday night. In the winter 90% of the firms will take on learners; summer's more difficult. I can’t say who are good and who are bad on the circuit, but firms who offer beginners guarantees have got to be good news, because the nice new A-Z you're just bought only seems to refer to London after about two months of getting lost. You wish you‘d bought one with all the one-way systems marked. Not half you will!
I started with a Heathrow based outfit and spent possibly the worst month of my life. If I took more than five minutes to do a job he fell out of his pram and started screaming down the radio. The Suzuki I’d borrowed had a very severe personality disorder and took delight in shedding various bits of itself at the most terrifyingly inopportune moments. You've got to have a reliable motor. After a couple of weeks of this GS, I picked up an RS on some very agreeable credit terms for 230 quid. Still the most popular mount is the old maggot, one chap at our place had put 120000 miles on his with nothing more major than two new camchains.
Anything over 650cc is getting a bit heavy for eight to nine hours in traffic. It depends on your firm whether they do mainly distance stuff or city work. I ride a tired old GS550 now, but I’m looking for a cheap CX or VT. Strong motor on the GS but the bike lacks the punch to avoid the antics of mad taxi drivers.
Anyway, my first couple of pay checks fell somewhat short of the money promised in the adverts. The first was about £100, the second £150. Most firms give a computer printout detailing every job you’ve done, so you can check that you’re not getting stitched up. Needless to say, the outfit I started out with didn’t provide such things. I don’t think they had a mains power point, never mind a computer - in retrospect I think I may have been taken for a ride.
Another misleading part of despatching jargon is the pence per mile business. To the potential rider a firm offering 60p a mile is more attractive than the next offering 50p a mile. In actual fact, it depends on where the firm’s based and how much work they’re going to give you. The real money is made when you have more than one job on board destined for the same area as you get paid the rate for each job.
As a guideline, be very, very suspicious about any company offering more than 70p per mile and similarly stay clear of offers of less than 50p per mile (unless they're based a fair way out, like Slough - in these cases you'll make your money in and out of town because of the sheer distance travelled). Those wishing to make a quick buck are in for a great disappointment, though. It took me 3 or 4 months to start making £250 a week and the best part of a year to make the kind of money talked about in the pages of MCN.
Silly money is possible with experience. If you’re good and with the right firm (and keep slipping your controller a bottle of vodka now and then) £500 for a five day week is no problem. One week, during the heaven sent postal strike, a cheque for well over £800 was collected by one particularly suicidal rider.
Talk to any despatch rider of a couple of years standing, and he'll likely as not tell you that he’s sick of it. Riding a bike 50 hours a week in the pissing rain is no fun at all. Anyone who disagrees has a serious mental disorder. It takes the fun out of biking. The last thing you want to do of a weekend is get back on the bastard. You just want to throw it in the garage and forget about it on a Friday night. Although I can still be seen screaming about on a Sunday just for kicks.
I am now terminally impatient when riding a bike - it gets to you like that. I recently took three weeks off over Christmas and was completely unable to resist overtaking everything in sight and parking where I shouldn't. You haven’t argued with a policeman properly until you’ve got six jobs on board, it’s snowing and there’s this joker in a very silly hat trying to tell you that it’s just not cricket parking on a pedestrian crossing in Oxford Street.
"I'll quit this winter, do something else,” is a popular refrain in most DR rest rooms in London. Conversations are most usually 10% postcodes and 90% swearing. It’s a stressful job, infuriating and at times demanding. Next time some tart I with a cut glass accent treats you with the contempt that you obviously deserve, console yourself by reminding them that you earn three times as much as they do and that you look much better in the morning. But sometimes, when the sun shines and you've got three jobs on board, heading off down the A24 you think it’s not such a bad way of making a living, after all.
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