What's it like being a delivery rider?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 31 December 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Doorstep delivery services boomed during the Covid-19 pandemic and they're still popular in many parts of the world: ordering hot meals, or groceries, via a mobile app to your door at the click of a button.
For the customer, it's a fast and convenient service. For the rider, it's flexible work, but there's no guaranteed income, the work is physical and the hours are often antisocial - especially during major holidays like Christmas and New Year. Why, then, do so many people do it?
We speak to riders in the US and UK about their experiences delivering food, drinks and other essentials to customers at all hours of the day.
If you'd like to get in touch with the programme, you can send us an email to businessdaily@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: David Harper Producer: Victoria Hastings
(Picture: A delivery rider on a scooter, travelling through a city at night. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.2 | So it's dinner time. Your phone is in your hand. What are we ordering? |
| 0:10.9 | Indulgence food. A hangover meal. I don't know. Toilip paper, baby. |
| 0:15.0 | German donna kebab, burgers. Wine. Just one bottle of wine. For emergencies. |
| 0:20.1 | Hello, I'm David Harper. This is Business Daily. and today we're looking at delivery riders. The people that make the food, drink, and even groceries that you order on an app, actually appear at your door. And while they were once an occasional luxury, the use of food and grocery delivery apps, like Just Eat, Deliveroo and Door DoorDash skyrocketed during the COVID pandemic, |
| 0:38.3 | and they're now seen as an everyday service. |
| 0:40.6 | So much so that on average in the UK, Gen Z consumers ordered food via delivery 4.5 times a month, |
| 0:46.8 | according to a recent study. |
| 0:48.6 | But as our appetite for food delivered to our doorstep has increased, |
| 0:52.2 | what does that mean for the riders and drivers on the street? |
| 0:55.5 | And why do they do it? So what's it like to be a delivery rider? Well, some riders enjoy it so much, |
| 1:02.8 | they've turned their daily grind into online content watched by millions of people. |
| 1:10.1 | My name is Bryce. I go on the internet as London Hustle and I'm a delivery driver in the |
| 1:14.6 | streets of London. My name is Joshua Cavalero. I go by biking DC on the internet. At the very |
| 1:18.9 | start, I didn't really know how to use the app. So I would just be accepting things without |
| 1:23.1 | looking at the mileage and then I'd end up riding five miles and be like, what am I doing? |
| 1:49.0 | You know, but after a while, you get the hang of it and you, you know, you kind of know, but there's always going to be some ups and downs. It's never just picked the food up and drop it off. What are the ups and downs like? People take a long time to answer their phones. You know, you could get to a drop off and people are in the middle of a meeting or they're doing something. So, you know, we get paid based off of the individual delivery and tip. So you come across people who may not really understand that and they don't really respect your time too much. |
| 1:56.0 | So you get caught waiting around for certain people. |
| 1:58.0 | One thing mentioned though just then about tipping. |
| 2:00.0 | I think that's more of an American culture |
| 2:01.7 | rather than the UK culture. |
| 2:03.2 | So most people actually tip before we drop off the order here in the UK. |
... |
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