A bike messenger quitting isn’t so unusual–messengers will tell you they all develop a strategy to extract themselves from the job, which is defined by a high risk of bodily harm, low wages, and few or no benefits. Michael Carey, Cudal’s boss at On Time Courier, was a former messenger himself. But Carey, a big, block-shouldered man with a reputation as both a polished salesman and a hard-line intimidator, didn’t take Cudal’s news well. “What’s happening?” Cudal remembers him saying. “What are you doing? Starting your own messenger company?”
Cudal was in agony. “Well,” he said, “yes.”
One by one over the past three weeks, Cudal’s partners Jack McLaughlin, Josh Korby, and Mike Morell had resigned from On Time to get to work on their own company, 4 Star Courier Collective. There are more than half a dozen courier companies in Chicago run by former messengers, but 4 Star would be different: it would be worker-owned and -operated, the first messenger coop in Chicago and only the third in the U.S.
Fresh Air! Speed! Poverty! Servitude! (Chicago Reader)
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