Recently, a delivery driver in his 50s in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, suddenly passed away, shocking his colleagues. Ma Chuang, known for being part of the “Six-member family, five working as delivery drivers in Beijing” as a “Northern Drifter,” stated that his entire family has now left the delivery industry.
Last year, media reported the story of a family of five delivering food in Beijing. Recently, the eldest son of that family, Ma Chuang, said that due to the dangers of delivering food, they have returned to their hometown and left the delivery industry.
Ma Chuang said that his father was involved in a car accident while making deliveries last year, but the insurance company was only willing to compensate three thousand yuan.
Since late July 2023, a program called “Midnight Delivery” has gained Ma Chuang, a Meituan delivery driver, some recognition on the internet.
Aged 29, Ma Chuang is from Zhumadian, Henan. After dropping out of high school, he worked in an electronics factory in Dongguan, specializing in screwing. In 2015, through his cousin’s introduction, Ma Chuang moved to Beijing and started as an apprentice in a Western restaurant.
Starting from the basics of spices, Ma Chuang put in a lot of effort. Being new to the workforce, with little experience in cooking at home, he was unfamiliar with the spices and utensils in the kitchen. “I was even more unfamiliar with Western cuisine than Chinese cuisine,” he said. To familiarize himself with Western spices, Ma Chuang recorded the taste, shape, and names of spices in a notebook, repeatedly memorizing them.
From initially struggling to remember what he learned daily to gradually becoming proficient, Ma Chuang spent nearly a year.
Ma Chuang got married in 2018.
In June 2019, with the help of family funds and his accumulated knowledge and experience in Western cuisine, Ma Chuang opened a pizza shop.
Facing the outbreak at the beginning of 2020, after persisting for half a year and accumulating debts, he had to close the shop.
After the business failure, Ma Chuang’s father, Ma Guobao, advised him to try working as a delivery driver. “My father was the first in our family to start delivering food.”
In 2020, Ma Chuang began learning to deliver food with his father. Initially, Ma Chuang was not enthusiastic about this job, feeling embarrassed. “After so many years of learning Western cuisine, I felt uncomfortable with the idea of becoming a delivery driver.”
At the beginning, Ma Chuang registered as a Meituan crowd-sourced delivery driver, not affiliated with a specific delivery platform but independently registered and assigned delivery orders through the app. Riders participate in deliveries by “grabbing orders” through the crowd-sourcing app.
After trying for a few days, Ma Chuang found delivery income satisfactory, with relatively flexible working hours.
Ma Chuang explained that at the beginning of 2020, delivery fees for orders within 3 kilometers during lunchtime peak hours ranged from 10 to 12 yuan. “There were also some exclusive bonuses during peak hours, so the prices were higher.” By 2024, during the same peak delivery hours, the price had dropped to around 5 yuan.
Apart from the changing prices, what made Ma Chuang feel “exploited” was the tightening of delivery times – from 50 to 60 minutes within 3 kilometers when he started to 38 to 42 minutes later. Starting from accepting orders, he had to go through the process of restaurants preparing meals, riders picking up the orders, and delivering to the destination. These steps made Ma Chuang feel nervous, almost out of breath, with a constant “countdown” of around 40 minutes.
During the delivery process, there were many uncertainties. “For example, delays in preparing food at the restaurant, orders being mistakenly taken by other riders, or waiting at traffic lights,” Ma Chuang said. For delivery drivers, accidents while driving were unavoidable.
Ma Chuang also mentioned that his mother joined the delivery team in 2022, working alongside his father in their delivery squadron.
The delivery team had around 40 members, with occasional absences due to injuries or other reasons. If one needed a day off from delivering orders, they couldn’t participate in the next cycle of delivery plans.
Ma Chuang provided an example, comparing the situation with regular company employees. If they felt unwell, they could get a sick leave from the hospital, but for them, even if injured, they had to grit their teeth and continue working. During his four years as a delivery driver, Ma Chuang even witnessed people delivering orders while driving despite having a fever and receiving IV fluids simultaneously.
“When in a hurry, they have to push through regardless of traffic lights.” Exceeding the delivery time not only affected subsequent orders, but also resulted in deductions in delivery fees. For example, for crowd-sourced riders, exceeding delivery time by 1 to 60 seconds led to a 20% to 30% deduction in fees; exceeding 5 to 10 minutes meant a 50% deduction, and exceeding 10 to 20 minutes resulted in an 80% deduction.
It is this everyday “race against time” that makes Ma Chuang dream about being overdue when he sleeps at night…
In the early hours of September 6th, someone discovered a middle-aged delivery driver lying on his delivery scooter near Yaojule Garden Community in Yuhang District, Hangzhou, from 9pm on the 5th, seemingly asleep. It was only when a fellow delivery driver woke him up that they realized he was unresponsive – he had passed away.
It is revealed that the deceased was a renowned delivery driver in the area, often completing numerous orders each day, working 16 to 18 hours, able to fulfill nearly a hundred orders in a day, earning over 500 yuan. Sometimes, he would sleep under a bridge.
According to witnesses, he was the main breadwinner of his family. It is speculated that he was resting on his delivery scooter, waiting for an order to come in, intending to start running again, but sadly, he never woke up again.
Some delivery drivers are discontent with the tough life they lead, urging society to make changes. There are also delivery drivers who can no longer bear the burden and choose to resign.