https://seattle.eater.com/2024/2/21/24079162/tony-delivers-seattle-delivery-app-fees-downtown
Tony Illes was working as an Uber Eats delivery person when an ordinance passed last year by the Seattle City Council came into effect in mid-January. The new rule required app companies to pay workers like Illes a minimum wage based on the miles they travel and the minutes they spend on the job. The apps say that this amounts to around $26 an hour, and both Uber Eats and DoorDash responded by adding $5 fees to every order (even when the customer is outside Seattle city limits) while calling for the law to be repealed. According to a recent DoorDash blog post, the ordinance has resulted in an “unprecedented drop in order volume,” a drop that Illes felt personally. He told Geekwire that “demand is dead” and told local TV station KIRO 7, “I didn’t get an order for like six hours and I was done.”
So Illes had an idea: Who needs these apps, anyway? He printed up signs with QR codes directing people to a bare-bones website with his phone number, promising that he would deliver food by bike in Uptown, South Lake Union, Belltown, and a chunk of the downtown core for $5 a pop from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. daily. All you had to do was order the food and send him the screenshot. He called himself “Tony Delivers.”
Hi, I’m someone who works on bicycles for a living!
Basic maintenance such as
-checking tires for wear and cracks, keeping the bike dry and rinsing with clean water if it gets road salt on it,
-keeping the chain and sprockets lubed and cleaning them of debris if it gets caked on,
-cleaning the bearing races of debris and keeping them lubed (maybe go to a shop for this one if you aren’t sure about it)
-and just generally not doing stupid things with it
and you will have a bike that lasts a lifetime.
Maybe less if it’s a cheap brand like Schwinn or mongoose. But those steps drastically improve the life of any bicycle.
Worth noting: my main bicycle is a GT hybrid from 2014. It’s not much of a step above baseline (at the time, GT fell off in quality) but spending a little time doing some online “research” into the parts on the bike will go a long way. You’d be surprised what both cheap AND expensive brands put on their frames. Cheap brands using mid-tier gear (instead of cheapest) , and top brands using the cheapest tourney derailleur you can find in a clearance bin…
I kind of got off topic a bit but yeah.
BASIC PREVENTATIVE BICYCLE MAINTENANCE WILL KEEP CYCLING CHEAP AF
I do the basic maintenance stuff myself and then pay a shop to tune up the bike each spring. When you use a bike to commute suddenly $150 a year doesn’t seem like much to spend on it. That’s less than one month of parking at my last job.