Riding with Vancouver’s Last Bike Couriers

I meet the bicycle courier outside a trust company in Vancouver’s West End. It’s the last day of the month, he notes, while fiddling with the U-lock securing his bike to a parking sign.

That means he’s got deadlines — law firms will be rushing to get last-minute cheques to the bank. He’s got to be at four offices and a bank in the next 30 minutes.

The courier takes a running start, hops onto his bike, drops off the curb and then darts out of sight into an alleyway. It’s 9:28 a.m., I’m less than 10 minutes into shadowing one of Vancouver’s last bike couriers, and he’s already dropped me.

Forty years ago, hundreds of bicycle couriers traversed the city’s streets, carrying cheques, court filings and needed-it-yesterday documents. Then came the fax machine. And the internet. And e-transfer, Docusign and Uber.

Bike couriering took a dive. In 1998, there were 412 licensed bike couriers in Vancouver. By 2016, according to the city, there were just 82 couriers with licences. Today there are 10 (although any courier will tell you there are at least double that actually working on the streets).

The story starts to feel familiar: technological progress threatening jobs. The adoption of personal computers saw secretaries suffer . A steep decline in letter mail has seen Canada Post employment plummet. Artificial intelligence is threatening a wide range of white-collar workers, including software developers, accountants and customer service representatives.

But a nimble few bike messenger companies have found a way to buck the trend — including Vancouver’s Phantom Couriers, which leverages artificial intelligence, a flexible business model and a lot of hard-earned trust to outcompete the delivery apps. Its founder, Mark Huggan, has adapted a paper-based profession for the digital world.

“I do think it’s a dying, cool business, but I think it’s necessary,” Huggan says.

And at least for now, Phantom is one of the half-dozen companies keeping couriers on Vancouver streets.

That’s why, at 9:28 on a Monday morning, I find myself chasing down Eric, Phantom’s last remaining staff bicycle courier. Gripping my drop bars, I roll into the street and follow him up the alleyway. I’m barely able to catch a glimpse of his rear tire before he turns right onto Thurlow Street.

By the time I catch up, Eric is off his bike and in an elevator. I take a breath next to his bike — a vintage seven-speed GT Terra Karakoram, most likely made in the early to mid-’90s — determined not to lose him again.

Eric is not his real name. The courier asked The Tyee not to share his identity for safety reasons. He’s been threatened by other road users before and says he’s worried about a driver being able to Google him after a road rage incident.

“You make some enemies on the road,” he says. “Bus drivers, taxi drivers. It’s not all a friendly job.”

“Don’t put me in the piece,” a veteran courier told me while waiting in a bank line later that day. “I’m a ghost.”