TLDR: Bicycle Couriers is a website that assists you to transport a bicycle in South Africa. Contrary to popular belief, we are not bike messengers cycling across the city all day to deliver small parcels and documents. Nope. We deliver the whole bicycle! South Africa is a vast country, and we just want to make it easier for anyone to ship the bicycle within (and sometimes even across) our country borders. Bicycle Couriers is a website (bicyclecouriers.co.za) linking various cycling related service providers across Southern Africa to give a seamless bicycle transport solution to South Africans (but no foreigner is excluded, off course). Put us to the test and do tell your mates.

TLDR: Bicycle Couriers may help you to send a bicycle from point A to point B.

We ship bicycles. And off course the term ‘ship’ is used loosely here because we operate inland. We provide one simple service: transporting boxed bicycles from point A to point B, both of which you specify. Whether you want to package and prepare the bicycle for shipping yourself or drop it off at a local bike shop (LBS) to box it on your behalf is entirely up to you.

We prefer working through bike shops, because we want to get more feet into shops and help support the local economy. And we know that the boxing is done correctly as to ensure safe and secure shipping of your bicycle. But from a pure monetary view, it would be better for us if we just did door-to-door deliveries because the margins are slightly higher, and we eliminate the admin of working with a third party (the LBS).

TLDR: Bicycle Couriers is ‘everywhere in South Africa’.

In short: everywhere. The friendly and efficient Bicycle Couriers service is available all across Southern Africa. Our network has a surprisingly swift service that operates between all major centers (read: cities and economic hubs) in SA, including, but not limited to:

Cape Town (CPT), Paarl (PAA), Stellenbosch (STB), Somerset West (SOM), George (GRJ), Port Elizabeth (PLZ), East London (ELS), Durban (DBN), Pietermaritzburg (PMB), Johannesburg (JHB), Pretoria (PTA), Nelspruit (NLP), Polokwane (PLK), Bloemfontein (BFN) and Kimberley (KBY). Anywhere else is a remote area, to which we also deliver, even though it will understandably cost a little more and or take a little longer.

TLDR: Bicycle Couriers aim to deliver within 3-4 working days*, ‘all being equal’.

We always aim to under-promise and over-deliver. For that reason, expect most of our deliveries to take around 3-4 working days, excluding the additional day that it might take if you want a bike shop to box your bicycle. A general, no promises example would be:

If you have a race on the weekend then it would be safe to drop off your bike during the weekend prior or Monday of your race week for the shop to box, that we can collect on the Tuesday and deliver before the weekend. Obviously, bike transport to smaller places and remote locations will take a little longer. Miracles can and do happen, but they are expensive (believe me, I have been on the receiving side of this as well). Experience counts.

The behind-the-scenes world of road freight and bicycle transport logistics can be more complicated than you think. For instance, did you know that we deal with 1400+ locations, 1200+ postal codes, 270+ municipalities, 120+ rate areas and 30 different transit time zones in South Africa? That excludes linking with 150+ local bike shops and 100+ cycling related sporting events and bicycle races. Wow.

TLDR: For the love of cycling.

Why we do it is certainly not a million-dollar question, because the margins in this industry are tiny. Cycling is my hobby and I encounter the same questions frequently. Hence, I started Bicycle Couriers during Covid-19 lock-down (also because I was a bit bored). This is the online version of a very successful previous venture along the same lines.

Getting back to the tiny margins. A single mispriced delivery would set us back quite a bit and that is why it is important to have our systems in place. Hence, we reserve the right to adjust prices after payment and before shipment to cater for the unknown and unforeseen that might cause the transaction not to be financially viable anymore. Alternatively, we could refund the net amount after costs to you and cancel the transaction. However, obviously we don’t want to do this, and we have never done this before, touch wood.

TLDR: Drop off you bike at a LBS, we collect and ship to your destination.

Our service can be described as bicycle transport, bicycle transfers, bicycle travel, bicycle shipment, tri-bike travel and even move my bicycle. Now where have we heard the last one before? Either way, here is how it works:

We provide an online system. We do some marketing. You find our website, either via google or Facebook, or word of mouth or otherwise. You enquire about sending your bicycle. You receive a quote and pay online or on invoice. Your prep your bike for shipment, either yourself or by using a local bike shop. We arrange with our network or service providers to collect and courier the bicycle to your chosen destination. We aim to keep you informed. And hope that you love our service, give us a stellar review, and tell all your mates about us.

In the words of Ace Ventura: “Go ahead, snoop around.”

Have you found exactly what we do (ie courier bicycles across the country, from point A to B), at a better price at another service provider? We’d be amazed if you did… but if so, please do tell us. We will try, but cannot guarantee, to beat any other price available, provided that we’re comparing apples with apples (or bicycle transport with bike travel).

At #bicyclecouriers we send all types of bicycles, including road bicycles, race bikes, tri-bikes (triathlon), MTB mountain bikes, gravel bikes, kids bikes, balance bikes, first-time bikes, single-speed bicycles, commuter bicycles and more — as long as it fits into a ‘standard bike box’. And this is where there are notable exceptions: fat bikes and e-bikes and tandems.

Because of the size of the latter, they may need to be transported in TWO standard bike boxes, effectively incurring double the cost of a normal bike transfer. I’ve send a 20″ kids fat bike in a standard box without any problems, but on the other end of the spectrum also dealt with an e-fatbike, a double whammy  that filled two boxes because of the sheer size of the thing. So there you have it: standard box, standard price. Two boxes, double the rate.

Off course you can.