8. How much money do you make?

1.Hermes:
"There are a large variety of pay structures in the New York messenger world. Some messengers are paid hourly, some by commission, some have a sort of combination of the two. Point being: given a 40 hour work week a messenger will make $350-$500 before taxes. Some few will earn up to $800 regularly each week, but they are working long hours (like 50-60 each week). The amount of money messengers make is of course, dependent upon how many deliveries need to be done, which is in turn determined by many factors. It seems like the weather sometimes. In general there are tendencies (in the Summer it's slow, then in the Fall business picks up, in the winter it's normal but there are fewer messengers on the road so each has more deliveries, and the Spring business picks up again), but like the weather sometimes there are bad seasons, bad years, and of course just bad days. It's tough to predict. Is it enough to pay the bills? (Yes, but not too much more. Most messengers are probably spending 50-60% of their earnings on their food and bills)"

2. TONE: (8/5/00)
"It all depends on how much YOU work and how much actual work YOU get. At my old company I would work from about 10am to 5/7pm doing about 20-30 runs a day, which means $100-$130 each day. At the end of the week my check would vary after taxes from about $320-$550. It's certainly not a steady paycheck, but it's definitely beats minimum wage. The only thing you have to deal with are shitty working conditions. It really takes a certain mentality, character of mind, and breed of person to be an NYC messenger. You just have to decide if it is worth it. The last company I worked at was Kozmo.com. There everything was different. Instead of business to business I delivered from one base to mostly residences. I made $10 an hour, $1 a run, plus any tips I might get. At kozmo I also had medical and dental benefits. Benefits are totally unheard of in standard bike messenger companies. It's actually an interesting phenomenon in the industry. Usually at Kozmo my check was over $400 or just under, but the tips push me over. During the summer, like any messenger company, business is slow, so Kozmo had cut a day off everyone's schedule. In the end it all balanced out with Kozmo just a little better... otherwise I wouldn't have kep working there until they were about to go out of business. Maybe they did so because they were actually treating there couriers in a more legitimate & professional manner."