A Brief History of the Earliest Bike Messengers

The age old New York vs DC question: 
While New York City claims the earliest commercial bike messenger company: "American Distributors" which was founded in 1891 and mostly delivered telegrams for Western Union, Washington DC claims the earliest actual bike messengers. President Benjamin Harrison used bike messengers to send stuff to congress beginning in 1889. 

While NYC and DC make claims to the earliest bike messengers, they are more likely merely the earliest *documented* messengers, not necessarily the actual first. Bikes have been written about as having been used by the US postal service as early as 1883, but the postal service itself says the first official US postal bikers didn't begin to ride until 1895 in Chicago. 

These claims completely ignore England, though, where bikes are said to have been used for various delivery duties like newspapers and bakeries as early as 1870. Young children are believed to have been employed to do these deliveries, making these victims of England's lack of child protection laws the first bike messengers. The first documented bicycle messenger company in England that I know of was "Bakers Delivery" which began business in 1902 using bikes to deliver bread around London. 

The British Post office used "boneshakers" beginning in 1869, but quickly abandoned them. 

The French postal service used "stiffwalkers", a non-pedal bike as early as 1830! 

But wait: as early as 1810, before Europe even had a working bicycle, the Chinese were said to have a bicycle that could travel long distances and were used by the armies of the Qing Dynasty to pass messages to to the troops. These were most likely the first "bike messengers" of any kind. Once more, we in "western society" take credit for an eastern invention. 

--- Shawn Bega 

back to press stuff

CONTENTS

contact information