I pull to a stop outside McDonald’s on Russell Street in central Melbourne, my eyes darting around for a place to lock my bike. The clock is ticking. I fumble with the combination lock as I try to secure the bike to a nearby pole, then duck inside.
It takes what feels like forever to get someone’s attention; to finally pick up the order I’m here to collect. It’s my first delivery on my first day as a delivery rider and already I’m feeling stressed.
Eventually I get the order, stash it safely in my big red bag, dash outside, clumsily unlock my bike, and then I’m off to North Melbourne. The clock keeps ticking – I’ve got just a few minutes to get there if I want to make this delivery on time.
I pull up in the shadows of several imposing apartment buildings and check the address on my phone. I’m in the right spot, but it’s not clear which building I need to go into, or how to get in. I send a message to the customer asking for clarification. Their explanation doesn’t help. I walk-run around what seems to be the right building for a few minutes, trying to find a way in.
Inside, the signs are clear – no food deliveries are to be taken up to apartments. Of course, that’s exactly what the customer has asked for. The concierge tells me to leave the order on a coffee table in the lobby, and so I do, taking a photo to show that I have, in fact, made the delivery. Hopefully it gets to where it needs to go. Hopefully I haven’t cocked up my very first delivery.
Back outside, I take a deep breath and wonder what I’ve gotten myself into. Was the $5.78 I just made worth the stress?
Before I have a chance to ponder that question, my phone dings and another delivery offer pops up. I hit accept, unlock my bike, then dash frantically back into the city, trying to make it to the east-end cafe as quickly as I can.
***
An industry on the rise
If you live in a big city, you’ve surely noticed the proliferation of delivery riders in recent years, some on motorised scooters, many on e-bikes of various forms. It’s an industry that’s taken off in the past half-decade or so, spurred on by the emergence of various delivery apps and accelerated by lockdown measures during the COVID pandemic.
The prevailing view of delivery riders is not a particularly flattering one: riders who regularly flout the road laws – sometimes spectacularly so – on e-bikes that are more motorbikes than they are bicycles, and who have a tendency to invoke the ire of other city-goers with their often-selfish riding behaviour. And if delivery riders aren’t making the news for their questionable riding, they’re often doing so for far more tragic reasons.
The death of delivery rider Juan Ignacio in August 2024 was covered by all major outlets and was a wake-up call for many. Ignacio, a Chilean resident on a working holiday in Melbourne with his girlfriend, was hit and killed by a car driver in Port Melbourne late one night on his way home from a DoorDash shift.
Ignacio was the 18th food delivery rider killed in Australia since 2017 – a sobering snapshot of the reality facing delivery riders today. And as a new research paper from Australian researchers highlights, staying safe is just one of many challenges facing those who find themselves in this line of work.
Giving riders a voice
Plenty of research has focused on delivery riders in recent years, but little of it has been built around direct conversations with riders themselves. Led by Amelia Thorpe at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), this latest study is built upon interviews with more than 50 riders in Melbourne and Sydney, and complemented by hundreds of hours of video footage, shot both by riders themselves, and taken of delivery riders from the roadside. In an Australian context at least, it provides a near-unprecedented look at the realities of life as a delivery rider, and the biggest risks and challenges facing those who do the job.
As you might expect, safety was front of mind for a lot of the riders spoken to, with motorists singled out as the biggest risk. “They’re not very accommodating or patient with food delivery riders,” said one interviewee. “I can see that, I can feel it.” Distracted drivers – especially people using their phones – impatient drivers, drivers that don’t see delivery riders as actual people: all were highlighted as recurring concerns. “The public love to use the convenience of gig economy work when they’re hungry but there’s still this real culture of disconnect towards the workers providing the service,” said another interviewee.
Narrow lanes, roads in poor condition, the ever-present risk of dooring – these were all mentioned as additional risks to rider safety. And then there were the other challenges, bad weather being one of the most frequently cited.
The study authors note that delivery cyclists are “incentivized and often compelled to make deliveries during hot and wet weather, as evidenced by the high volumes of activity in the video footage.” It makes sense – adverse weather conditions make it even more appealing to rely on the convenience of having your food or drink delivered to your door. But bad weather makes a tough job even tougher, and less safe.
“There tends to be a bit more traffic and people definitely drive differently in the rain,” said one interviewee. “People tend to be rushing in the rain. That’s my experience. People do a lot more odd things in the rain – they’re a bit more unpredictable.”
Reading through the UNSW paper got me thinking. What better way to understand the challenges faced by delivery riders than by actually putting myself in their place? And so I got myself signed up as a delivery rider.
One day as a Dasher
After a bit of looking around, I decided to try my luck with DoorDash, an American company founded in 2012 that launched in Australia back in 2019. I created an account on the app, filled in some basic details, then uploaded pictures of my passport and driver’s licence to complete a background check. A few days later I got the all-clear. A few days after that, a giant, red insulated backpack arrived at my front door. I was ready to start ‘dashing’.
I put some MTB pedals on my trusty CAAD10 road bike – far easier to walk in MTB shoes than road shoes – and then, on a drizzly Friday morning in late October, I took the train into central Melbourne with my bike, my giant red bag, and got to work.
***
That first McDonald’s delivery was stressful enough – finding the right apartment, getting there on time. My second delivery introduces me to a different type of stress …
In a trendy cafe on Spring Street, a friendly woman behind the counter puts a breakfast sandwich into a paper bag and follows it with a smoothie of some kind. I get a pang of anxiety seeing her lower the drink gingerly into the bag – if she’s handling it that carefully here, how’s it going to fare on my back, on rough city roads, as I ride the 10 or so minutes up to Carlton? I have visions of reaching my destination and pulling a soggy paper bag out of the backpack, the customer’s drink spilled, their sandwich ruined.
I ride as carefully as I possibly can, staying in the saddle, keeping my torso still, keeping myself as upright as my road bike will allow, only my fingertips on the handlebar.
Remarkably, when I pull up at the terrace house on a lovely, tree-lined street, and pull the order out of my backpack, the paper bag is dry, the cup inside still perfectly upright. I leave the order on the doorstep and scamper away, again breathing a sign of relief and wondering whether the stress was worth $6.93.
A couple hours later, I’m about to take a quick break when a new offer pops up. I hit “accept” for a couple reasons: one, at nearly $8 it’s the most lucrative offer I’ve received all day, and two, I’m being asked to deliver some hair products, rather than food or drink. “This will be a nice relaxing one”, I think to myself. Wrong.
It takes an eternity to find Hairhouse in the bowels of the Melbourne Central shopping centre, pushing my way through crowds, my helmet still on, my giant backpack a constant danger to those around me. Eventually I find the store, grab the order, weave my way back up to street level, get on my bike, then make the trek out to Collingwood – the furthest I’ll get from the CBD all day.
I reach the gated apartment complex and message the customer to let her know I’ve arrived. “I’m sorry, I’m not home!”, she replies. She won’t be for another 3.5 hours. I find myself wondering why she’d have something delivered immediately when she’s not at home to receive it; when it’s not possible for me to get the package to her front door as requested.
I spend the next 10 minutes messaging her back and forth, trying to work out where I can leave her delivery. “You can throw it over the gate,” she suggests. “Surely it will be OK!” I settle on reaching under a fence, and stashing the parcel out of view, taking a photo to prove I’ve left it there.
All the back and forth with the customer, all the deliberating about where to leave the package – it’s hard not to see it as wasted time. Any moment I’m not delivering, or on my way to a delivery, is money wasted.
And when I do eventually stop for a lunch break, I feel like I’m on the clock then too. I need to eat, but as I sit on a filthy bench on the Swanston Street footpath and wolf down some sushi (spending a decent chunk of what I’ve earned to that point), every minute feels like a minute I should be spending looking for or completing orders.
By the time I call it a day later that afternoon, I’ve spent roughly 4.5 hours ‘dashing’, just under 4 hours of that on the move. I’ve covered 38 km in an area just a few kilometres across, and burned 710 kilocalories (2,970 kJ). I’ve completed a total of 11 deliveries – 10 food and drink orders, plus the one hair products order – and made a grand total of $76.34.
I’m exhausted by the time I sit down on the train and head for home. I might have just done one (relatively short) shift, but I feel like even that has opened my eyes.
A tough way to make a living
Days later, reflecting on the experience, I keep coming back to one persistent feeling: delivery riding would be a very tough way to make a living. Long days on the bike, long days in traffic; long days dealing with the constant stress of staying safe, keeping your deliveries safe, making those deliveries on time – it would all take its toll, mentally. And all for pretty horrendous pay.
In theory, the amount you can make is determined by how much you’re willing to work, but with a low hourly wage, it would be hard to make a decent living without spending a significant portion of your life working.
In my experiment I earned roughly $17 an hour which, if you do the maths, works out to $32,300 a year, for 38 hours of work a week, 50 weeks of the year. For context, the minimum wage in Australia is currently $24.10 an hour or, by the same calculation, $45,790 a year. Clearly this job doesn’t pay particularly well.
You could probably increase your earnings a little by skewing your workday to include the lunch and dinner rushes – rather than the traditional office day that I did – but still, it’s not a lot of money for what you’re putting in. In fact, according to the Transport Workers Union, who surveyed more than 1,000 gig workers, “two thirds of full-time workers earn less than minimum wage, and over three quarters have to work long hours to make ends meet.”
Add to that a lack of annual leave, sick leave, and other entitlements that most Australian employees receive and you’re looking at very tough work conditions. It’s no wonder that many riders interviewed for the UNSW study were calling for changes to employment conditions, including the introduction of an hourly wage (rather than being paid per trip), bonuses for doing deliveries in bad weather, and more.
I’m not shocked that most riders surveyed for the UNSW study spoke about the risks posed by other road users. I’d consider myself an experienced and confident rider in inner-city conditions, having commuted by bike for years, but even for me, a day spent riding the city streets, and staying perpetually vigilant, was mentally taxing.
At one point, a passenger in an illegally parked vehicle flung open their door in front of me. A moment’s inattention there could have been disastrous. Many other motorists gave far less room when passing than they should have (and are legally required to). And of course, the more time you spend riding in such conditions, the more exposure you have to scary moments like these. It often feels like a matter of time before something goes badly wrong; a question of “when” rather than “if”.
While Melbourne’s bike infrastructure has slowly been improving over the years – and bike lanes do exist in much of the city – there are still many streets that you wouldn’t call bike-friendly. Super-narrow bike lanes often force you right up close to passing traffic, if there’s even a bike lane at all.
No surprise then that most study participants called for better infrastructure. “More bike lanes would be the single best thing,” said one interviewee. “If that could happen, it would make riding feel a lot safer.”
Just as I’ve spent plenty of time over the years riding in city traffic, I’m also plenty experienced riding with a backpack. But that big, red bag I was riding with introduced its own particular challenge. While it’s not super-heavy even when loaded up, the size of it is such that it obscures headchecks, making city riding feel even less safe than it already is.
And then there’s the issue of navigation. While directions are displayed handily in the DoorDash app, with upcoming turns announced via audio, it sometimes wasn’t clear when setting out which direction I needed to be heading in. Local knowledge certainly helped a bit, but even then I found myself going the wrong way a few times and needing to turn around. Sometimes the app even sent me the wrong way down one-way streets, including down the same street twice. It all just adds to the stress.
As stressful as I found it, though, the day was also exhilarating. At times I felt like I was completing sidequests in a videogame of some kind, watching my (meagre) earnings stack up. I enjoyed that feeling. But constantly being on the clock; constantly feeling like I was chasing my tail – that wasn’t nearly as enjoyable.
I can certainly see why delivery riders break road laws. When you’re constantly in a rush, needing to get to a pickup, needing to make a delivery, there’s a very real temptation to break a little rule here and there. I certainly felt that temptation myself. Running red lights is one thing – and I did see plenty of that – but even just riding the wrong way down a one-way street because it saves a few minutes, or riding on a footpath briefly, or joining pedestrians at a crossing; it can all make a tangible difference with minimal downside. That’s not to condone such behaviour, but I do feel I understand it better now.
The UNSW researchers frame this behaviour as a positive adaptation to a dangerous and stressful environment. “Roadside observational and naturalistic footage showed a disparate, disconnected network of bicycle lanes that forces cyclists into traffic lanes,” they write. “In high-volume traffic situations lacking bicycle lanes, participants see pedestrian spaces as a viable refuge. The risk of fines for riding on footpaths is often seen as lower than the risk of injury or death on dangerous roads.” It’s hard to disagree with that.
There’s another downside that I got a taste of first-hand on the day, and that I imagine would be a true challenge of the job: the fact that it seems to be a rather lonely profession. While you do get some human interaction when you pick up your order and (oftentimes) when you drop it off – and while most people were nicer than I was probably expecting – those interactions are fleeting. Most of the time you’re out there on your own, fighting the clock, fighting not to get knocked off your bike by stressed, distracted motorists.
Based on my limited experience, interactions with other delivery riders seem minimal as well. Despite running into a few other riders while waiting for pickups, most interactions consisted of a friendly nod. Everyone’s on the clock. If you’re trying to maximise your earnings – and make your deliveries on time – any time spent chatting feels like time wasted.
I can imagine this lack of proper social connection would be tough if you’re new to Melbourne – many delivery riders are migrant workers – and working long hours just to make ends meet. For that reason, the new Gig Workers Hub in North Melbourne is a great initiative. Advertised as “a space where riders and drivers can come together, meet one another, and feel supported,” this hub can hopefully give riders some of the social connection and support that could help make a tough and potentially lonely job a little bit easier.
There are positives to life as a delivery rider, though. The freedom to work whenever you like, and for however long, shouldn’t be underestimated. Those in the UNSW study that spoke positively about their job also mentioned the joy of being out in the city, and getting to explore while working. That was an aspect I enjoyed too.
And while completing deliveries in the driving rain or hot sun would be miserable, on nice days, just being out on the bike and getting some exercise is its own reward. While my delivery day started out wet and cold, it later turned into a beautifully warm and sunny day. Getting to pedal gently through the quiet leafy streets of Carlton between orders was a wonderful way to spend an afternoon. Likewise cruising alongside the Yarra River on Southbank in the spring sun.
Respect the riders
I can’t claim to fully understand the life of a delivery rider from just one short day in the role, but what I did see gave me a much greater appreciation for the work they do. From what I’ve seen it’s a tough, stressful gig if you want to do it well – hard work for minimal pay – and one where the rider’s safety is constantly under siege. I now have much greater respect for those that do this work for a living. And while I was always keen to see more (and better-protected) bike lanes in Melbourne, I feel that even more keenly now.
If I was going to do this job more seriously, I’d certainly get an e-bike, and I’d change the hours I worked to make sure I covered the lunch and dinner peaks. I’d probably also use multiple apps to ensure I always had an offer coming in, and so I could always choose the higher-paying offer.
It’s not a job I’d like to do for a living though. The constant stress, the safety risks, the poor pay – it doesn’t have much appeal. And yet, as a one-day thing, I really enjoyed the experience.
The hustle, the thrill of completing a delivery on time, the ability to get some exercise while working, getting to see parts of the city I’d never seen before – there was a lot to enjoy. In fact, I’d be lying if I said I’m not tempted to get back out there again at some point.
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