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player ready...With master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and plant pathology, you wouldn’t expect Jim Gregory to be riding a messenger bike for a living. But in fact, his advanced education might be just the reason.
“When I was studying mechanical engineering, I was fascinated with mechanical efficiency and how it can conserve energy,” says Gregory. “The bicycle is such a simple and efficient machine. It’s practically miraculous.”
People might say the same about Gregory’s Bikes at Work business in Ames, Iowa. It makes the world a healthier place, one spoke at a time.
In 1992, while pursuing a graduate degree in plant pathology at Iowa State, he started a part-time bike delivery service. Besides traveling to work or school, he figured out people used their cars most often for buying groceries. So he advertised his bike — and legs — for rent to anyone who wanted him to pedal to and from the market.
“I wanted to provide a service that cut down on how much people use their cars,” says Gregory. “I grew up in the St. Louis area and was bothered about what suburban sprawl was doing to our air quality.” At first, Gregory hauled groceries with one of those kiddie trailers parents put on their bikes. Then a customer asked if Gregory would haul some bags of recyclable materials to the city’s processing center (there is no curbside pickup in Ames for glass, plastics and paper). He knew a larger trailer would be necessary, but soon realized nobody sold the type of trailer he needed for a commercial cycling business. So he invented one sturdy enough to pull up to 500 pounds.
Soon enough, Iowa State started its own recycling program. Gregory’s company was awarded the contract on the strength of having already done some hauling for dormitories and the fact that Bikes at Work didn’t put any fuel waste into the air. That’s a lot of energy — and plants — spared from basic mechanical engineering.
“We’ve moved nearly 600,000 pounds of recyclables since we started,” says Gregory, who answered questions on a cellular phone for this column while riding his bike across Ames to deliver bundles of a weekly newspaper and airline tickets (part of a per diem arrangement with a local travel agency).
Gregory’s company now employs 14 bicyclists, mostly students. It is not unusual for riders to carry several hundred pounds of cargo, and Gregory himself remembers one pulling close to 1,000 pounds of recyclables in two trailers linked together. Gregory has averaged roughly 30 miles every working day, while most employees get in at least 20. The cyclists consume about 4,500 to 5,000 calories daily to handle the workload, though currently the Internal Revenue Service doesn’t allow any bike messenger to deduct food as a fuel expense (a Canadian tax court has ruled it is an eligible write-off).
Gregory’s idea is not original — anyone who has traveled to, say, China, Vietnam, New Zealand or even northern California knows that — but he appears a lone pioneer in the Midwest.
The Bikes at Work online site offers some intriguing analysis of U.S. Census Bureau statistics about American cities and towns. The top three “car-free” communities in the U.S. are military towns, including the U.S. Naval Academy in Maryland and the Air Force Academy in Colorado. The Stanford University community makes the top 10, perhaps thanks in part to a local business called Pedal Express or “PedEx.” New York is the top big city on the list, No. 7, while the North Side of Chicago is ranked 21.
The North Side also fared well — No. 11 — among communities where residents walk to do errands.
Ames didn’t make any of the lists, but that doesn’t faze Gregory. Nor does snow, freezing rain, wind or low temperatures most days.
“The city is great about clearing snow,” he says. “If the roads have been plowed, it is no problem to keep making deliveries. For ice, we need studded tires.
“During the winter months, people say they feel sorry for making us ride in the cold or snow. But it’s our job and we’re used to the sweat and hard work.”
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To contact Bob Condor or find an archive of his columns, visit chicagotribune.com/go/health
His e-mail is bcondor@@tribune.com