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Comment by rererereferred | Hacker News Reader

Small off-topic, I see those boxed backpacks and think of their shoulders. On motorbike the box rests in the back of the seat but here all the weight is in the shoulders.

People who have done some mountain hiking knows that the weight of the backpack should be mostly in the waist, thanks to the waist belt (sorry if I don't use the right term, I've done most my hiking in Spanish ;) ).

I don't know how weight distribution would differ from walking but with some research perhaps they could carry more while staying more comfortable.

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I can see numerous reasons why you'd want the backpack rather than a box on the bike for food delivery (may not apply for other deliveries):

- no need to fuss when you mount/dismount your bike, your backpack is already on your shoulders. Speed is key.

- the focus is not on carrying capacity, it's on speedy delivery. There's only so much food in their backpack.

- because of the time waiting for orders / going to the restaurant / going back to a hotspot, most of the time the backpack is actually empty.

- a box on the back of a bike costs money.

Counterpoint: when biking, you generally desire to have your center of mass be lower rather than higher, for better stability and handling.

The tradeoff is that the higher you carry the bag (i.e. on your shoulders), the more space you have when maneuvering between cars. You can imagine how, if your bag was at the same level as the bike saddle, it would be more likely to get pinched when cycling through traffic. A clever cyclist could even stand upright with the bag on their back to get a few more inches of clearance when need be!

Uno reverse/Yu-Gi-Oh trap card: They're not pushing the handling limits.

Capacity is still needed, or you will miss out on a lot of deliveries in peak hours, where you load up several orders and then deliver them all in one route and you dont really need to carry whole bag to client/restaurant, just fish up the package. Also boxy bags allow for bigger packages(pizza, water bottles) and usually help to pack orders in a way that damages them less.

Which companies batch food orders now? It was a short lived and unpopular experiment in India years back.

Both Grubhub and DoorDash allow drivers to pickup multiple orders in one run in my neighborhood.

Well it is pretty normal in russia, atleast for big operators

Maybe there's an issue with the box getting stolen.

Delivery workers should fuck up their backs because otherwise (1) customers would get their shitty fast food and soggy fries 15s or 20s later, and (2) boxes would eat into the profit of the shareholders.

Reminds me of seeing amazon workers struggle to drag those plastic boxes full of deliveries around the sidewalks of the neighborhood while UPS provides a hand truck. I get it, a hand truck cost more than that 10 cent box they abandon all over town.

right? This is the orphan-crushing-machine meme (referenced elsewhere here) playing out live.

Top comment: "This is bad ergonomics for the humans doing delivery"

Reply: "But here's all the reasons why good ergonomics lose money for The Platform"

But now you’re cutting out all that biological shock absorption.

(Aka: why helmet cams are much smoother than any other bike mount)

Anyone seen the wild carriers on the back of scooters in Tokyo? Apparently for delivering ramen without spilling.

https://blog.btrax.com/en/files/2019/08/Japanese_food_delive...

Why not just put the ramen in liquid-tight containers?

In my experience hauling deliveries on the shoulders generally sucks, especially if weight is bigger. hence why most active couriers around my parts prefer to fix some sort of baggage rack to their ebikes.

Agree with your points about load distribution assuming the weight isn't trivial. Instead of waist, the common term in English would be hips/hipbelt.

> I've done most my hiking in Spanish

That's genuinely impressive, I've done most of my hiking in silence /s

I know what you meant though.

Camino.

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