Uber Rush Is Using Bike Messengers for Fast One-Hour Deliveries
Corporate bike delivery is by no means a new idea, but rideshare giant Uber thinks it has something special with its new courier service Uber Rush. Provided you live in one of the service’s three participating cities—New York City, San Francisco, and Chicago—instead of hailing an Uber to travel across town to pick up the jacket you drunkenly left at the bar, you can now send one of Uber Rush’s fleet of bike messengers to retrieve it for you in just an hour.
Unlike Postmates, Amazon Prime Now, and the long-defunct Kozmo bike delivery services before it, Uber Rush doesn’t involve an actual purchase or transaction on the consumer end—merely a delivery of an already-owned or purchased product, similar to a traditional bike messenger service. Users can track the progress of their delivery in the app.
“No one is getting this particular thing just right—this is, you have an item and you want to move it across town as fast as possible,” Uber New York City General Manager Josh Mohrer told Bloomberg. “We think we can deliver faster service for less money.”
The prices are indeed low for rush courier service: $6 for the first mile in San Francisco plus $3 per extra mile, $5.50 for the first mile in NYC plus $2.50 per extra mile, and $5 for the first mile in Chicago plus $2.75 per extra mile. Uber didn’t respond to inquiries about how much of that goes to the messenger, but reportedly 75 to 80 percent per delivery.
Just as cabbies weren’t pleased to have Uber’s drivers cutting in on their taxiing turf, longtime bike messengers aren’t impressed with what Uber Rush will mean for their business. Joseph Buchanan (lovingly known as “Nerf”) has been a bike messenger in Portland and San Francisco for 10 years now and works for a legal company that provides him with benefits. Although Uber Rush’s site says it's looking for experienced bike messengers, Nerf says he doesn’t think any of San Francisco’s messengers will apply to join Uber Rush’s team.
“We've all been talking about how little the pay seems and how no one wants to be ‘independent contractor’ status,” Nerf says of working for Uber Rush. “For companies like Uber Rush and Postmates, it's a lot of kids that haven't been trained by any experienced messengers and don't realize they're not getting a living wage or tax problems they might have down the line. There's also the fact that Uber Rush doesn't provide worker’s comp, which is extremely important, especially to rookies. Then when you get to how little they're charging, it hurts the industry and sets us back. We can't compete.”
Check out Uber Rush’s new video to promote the service.
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