Corporate Rivalry in the Downpour: A Delivery Rider’s Gruelling Summer

Take Beijing this summer, which has been beset by unseasonal downpours, for instance. The deluge that began on 24 July is said to have delivered a year’s worth of rainfall in just four days. When the rain is at its heaviest, gazing out of the window reveals little but a blinding sheet of white. Roads, pavements, traffic lights, traffic, billboards, shops, shopping centres, and residential blocks are all swallowed by the downpour. It is as if the city has ground to a halt, left in a stillness broken only by the drumming of the rain. Those sheltered indoors, let alone customers awaiting their takeaway, have no way of knowing what those riders who persist in dashing along the roads in the storm are enduring.

Having left the food delivery trade four years ago, I too am curious to know how my former colleagues are managing to get on with their work amidst this relentless succession of extreme weather events.

1. Feet Macerated by the Rain

The sound came from beneath his feet. Beijing had seen rain again all day. His shoes had already been thoroughly soaked while delivering the first wave of orders during the eleven o’clock lunch rush.

As we spoke, he kept shifting his weight from foot to foot. He told me his entire foot had gone numb, yet the ball of his foot throbbed with a dull ache. He suspected the skin on his sole had either broken down from the moisture or rubbed into blisters.

Now thirty-seven, Lao Cai has spent the past four years delivering food in Beijing after moving from his rural hometown in Gansu. Working as a rider for Meituan’s Le Pao tier, he is assigned the ‘difficult orders’: high-rise flats without lifts, residential estates that prohibit electric bikes, and the like—all to be navigated in sodden shoes and socks. Reduced visibility, fumbling with a rain-slicked phone, and treacherous roadways all compound the difficulty. To avoid penalties for late deliveries, he must maintain razor-sharp focus; there is no time to inspect the state of his footwear. He simply pushes through, day after day.

‘So you just gritted your teeth and logged twelve hours like that?’ I asked when we met again the following day.

Lao Cai replied, his voice carrying a tinge of hardship but unmistakable pride. ‘Fourteen and a half hours. I log on at ten every morning. After I finished speaking with you yesterday, I kept running until one-thirty before I signed off.’

I pressed, somewhat stunned. ‘Who on earth is ordering food delivery this late on a rainy evening?’ Unfazed, Lao Cai exhaled a plume of smoke. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary. It happens all the time. The other week, my latest drop was at two in the morning. Someone was even ordering milk tea.’

Ele.me’s dedicated rider, Xiao Tan, also regarded my surprise as somewhat overwrought. Born in the noughties, Xiao Tan had only arrived in Beijing from his hometown in Henan the previous year. He describes his philosophy as ‘once I’m fed, there’s no need to worry about the rest of the family’. With fewer financial burdens than Lao Cai, he carries himself with a lighter demeanour, yet he, too, has no choice but to log shifts through every downpour.

In his view, delivery riders being drenched from head to toe is mere routine. Even without rain, Beijing’s sweltering summers see them darting across the city daily, sweating through enough moisture to soak their clothes to the skin.

On 12 August, a sudden cloudburst hit Beijing while Xiao Tan was en route back to the commercial district. The flimsy raincoat he had bought for twenty yuan had already ripped during deliveries; combined with howling winds, it took merely moments for him to be completely soaked. He simply shrugged it off and carried on running.

‘I can handle conditions like that,’ Xiao Tan said. What he truly found unbearable was going from a solitary bowl of congee at breakfast to eight in the evening without a proper meal. He had expected lunch to arrive within a few hours, but the sudden deluge triggered a wave of orders from hundreds of customers simultaneously. His dashboard pinged relentlessly: ‘You have a new order.’ The surge allowed him no respite; he was trapped in a continuous cycle of darting through the wind and rain. By the time he finally signed off, his power bank was depleted and his phone sat at four per cent. He had bought a takeaway meal to eat at home, but hunger won out, and he pulled up at a bus shelter by the roadside.

He doffed his blue helmet and set it aside. Rainwater from his face continued to drip into his meal, though it seemed little more than an afterthought. Seated quietly beside a hoarding, Xiao Tan ate his fill before swiftly slipping the helmet back into place. In one fluid motion, he mounted the electric bike that had been his constant companion and disappeared into Beijing’s lengthy night, as though he had never paused there at all.

When I relayed these accounts to Lao Wei, he received them with quiet detachment. A forty-three-year-old from Shandong, Lao Wei currently delivers for JD.com, though he has been working in the logistics sector since 2018. Having weathered years on the road, he regards the hardships and minor injuries of the trade as par for the course. What has genuinely worn him down in recent days is the sting of unexpected complaints. Despite throwing everything he has into speeding up his deliveries to ensure food reaches customers on time, even during the downpours, the complaints still come.

II. The worse the weather, the more orders you have to deliver

Old Cai held up a finger. Staring at his index finger, I asked, “Does that mean you worked for a day? Or took a day off?”

“Didn’t take a single day off,” he said with a smile. “And I’m not just talking about those couple of days. I’ve been delivering food for four years now. Apart from the Spring Festival or when I absolutely have to sort something out, I don’t take any time off.”

With elderly parents to support and young children to raise, Old Cai is the backbone of his family. His eldest had just sat the high school entrance exam earlier this year. With grades falling short, he’ll have to attend a private high school from September, with annual tuition running to forty or fifty thousand yuan.

“The older the kids get, the more you spend on education. Tell me, how can the pressure not be immense? I grind away for fourteen or fifteen hours a day like this, making fourteen or fifteen thousand a month, and there’s hardly anything left at the end of it.”

Yet family has never been just a source of exhaustion for him; it also keeps him sharply focused on his own safety when weaving through traffic. He says the bottom line is undoubtedly looking after himself. If he gets into an accident, it’s not just the missed deliveries; after all, he has a wife and children relying on him.

For delivery riders, personal safety and earning enough to provide for the family are equally vital, yet they constantly clash. Still, there’s a quiet confidence in Old Cai’s tone; he believes he can strike a balance between the two thanks to his sharp skills.

On one occasion, the platform dumped over a dozen orders on him at once. While plotting the fastest delivery route, he kept a close watch on the speed and driving habits of passing traffic as he navigated at pace, calculating whether it was safe enough to ride against the flow or run a red light.

When a single delivery to a residential complex that bans e-bikes forces him to walk the order through, putting subsequent drop-offs at risk of timing out, he will sprint back to his vehicle, drenched in sweat, and immediately light a cigarette. He says: “The more frantic things get, the more I need to keep my head clear. Delivering food is far more than just physical labour; you have to keep doing the maths in your head constantly.”

It is quite literally a dance on the point of a blade. At first glance, the pressure that compels Old Cai to turn up for work regardless of the weather seems to stem entirely from his family, but that is likely only half the story.

Under the rigid management systems of platforms like Meituan and Ele.me, the room left for riders to “dance on the point of a blade” is remarkably constricted. The blade may look as though the rider has chosen to stand on it willingly, but it is not always a choice. Nor can you simply step back off whenever you please.

To begin with, Old Cai notes that one of Meituan’s reasons for establishing the Le Pao rider tier is specifically to handle the shortage of couriers during extreme weather—scorching heat, torrential rain, gales, and snow. “We pick up the orders others won’t touch. Some of the younger guys don’t have our financial burdens and would rather not go out in the rain, but the team captain will force them to go online anyway.”

Ele.me’s Youxuan programme, which mirrors Meituan Le Pao, operates under identical rules. “Nowadays, the crowd-sourced delivery fleets on both Meituan and Ele.me aren’t as free-ranging as they used to be,” explains Xiao Wang, an Ele.me Youxuan rider. “For us on the Youxuan tier, the order volume is more reliable than on standard crowd-sourcing. But miss out on a few rainy-day shifts, and the captain will show you the door.”

In contrast, Ele.me’s dedicated delivery service manages attendance during severe weather primarily through fines. Xiao Tan vented his frustrations: “While dedicated delivery pays a higher rate per order than crowdsourced work, the worse the weather, the more you have to be out running deliveries. When it’s calm and sunny like now, we can actually take time off.”

On one occasion, when he left home, floodwater had already submerged the wheels of his e-bike; by the time he reached the main road, the water was lapping at traffic police officers’ knees. Yet he had no choice. He had once tried making up excuses to take leave: “It’s always the same two reasons – the e-bike broke down, or the phone broke. The station manager knows better than that. Our delivery volume directly affects their pay. Ever since the food delivery wars began, riders have been in short supply. If too many of us are off duty, it will definitely slow down deliveries to customers.” Xiao Tan revealed that if pushed to the brink, station managers will indeed fine riders, anywhere from 300 to 500 yuan, and will even post the penalty notices directly in the group chat as a public warning to the others.

Secondly, attendance requirements also force riders to work in bad weather. Whether it’s Meituan or Ele.me, both platforms allow riders one day off per week. Exceeding the allotted rest days results in the cancellation of the “attendance bonus”. However, Lao Cai, Xiao Tan, and Xiao Wang all understand that calling it a cancelled “bonus” is just a disguised “fine”. “That’s money we’ve earned. Cancelling the bonus means losing a yuan per order, which adds up to hundreds or even thousands of yuan a month. I certainly wouldn’t dare take leave lightly. When it rains and I have nothing else on, I might as well run deliveries. Otherwise, when something genuinely urgent comes up, you won’t be able to take time off.”

Aside from the cancelled “attendance bonus”, another point of frustration for riders on Meituan Le Pao or Ele.me Youxuan is that orders during rainy days pile up relentlessly, one after another. If a rider wants to reject the orders in hand to take a break, they are surprisingly made to pay the platform a fee. “For up to four orders, it costs two yuan to reassign each one. Above four orders, it jumps to three yuan, then five, then seven. The fee structure is tiered,” Xiao Wang explained.

If we accept the reality that delivery riders must keep working in harsh weather conditions, then who is meant to foot the bill for the toll it takes on them?

A week after that rainy evening, when I finally got hold of Old Cai again, he was at the hospital undergoing tests. It transpired that, amid heavy downpours the day before, the roads were slick and condensation on his helmet visor obscured his vision. While making a delivery, he rear-ended a car and was thrown over the handlebars.

I was momentarily stunned when I heard the news, unable to believe the accident had struck so swiftly. Old Cai’s offhand, relaxed tone as he described how he was “dancing on a knife’s edge” still rang in my ears. Yet reality is brutal and unforgiving, far removed from the breezy way he put it.

When I asked Old Cai and Xiao Tan whether riders receive any extra allowance for braving the dangers of heavy rain or extreme heat, the reply was a resounding “practically the same as nothing.” On rainy days, with fewer riders on duty, the per-order rate fluctuates according to the supply and demand of riders versus orders, but there is no specific subsidy for working in the rain. Furthermore, from the small costs like buying a raincoat, helmet, or uniform, to the big expenses like repairing a damaged phone or e-bike, riders foot every bill and absorb all the losses themselves.

Both Old Cai and Xiao Tan independently recalled having their phones water-damaged after long shifts delivering in the rain. Old Cai, typically careful with his money, had no choice but to splash out on a replacement himself.Xiao Tan, meanwhile, vented that he’d earned 400 yuan that day, only to spend 450 yuan on a new screen. After a full day battling the rain, he’d actually ended up 50 yuan in the red.

When it comes to high-temperature allowances, Old Cai finds the whole arrangement rather laughable. Beijing’s official standard for outdoor workers this year mandates a monthly allowance of at least 180 yuan per person. This summer, Meituan rolled out its “2025 Summer Cooling Campaign”, promising to “boost riders’ earnings in extreme heat through per-order incentives and sustained initiatives, employing more precise and varied approaches.”

In Old Cai’s day-to-day experience, however, the corporate speak of “per-order incentives” and “precision” translates to something quite different. Rather than issuing a flat monthly allowance for working in the heat, Meituan ties the payment to daily delivery targets set between 1:30 pm and 5:00 pm: zero to four orders attract no bonus; four to twelve orders earn a modest 1 yuan per delivery; and completing more than twelve orders brings a 3 yuan bonus per trip.

Anyone who has done food delivery knows that the hours between 1:30 pm and 5:00 pm see the quietest order volumes, sandwiched between the lunchtime and evening rushes, making such targets notoriously difficult to hit. On top of that, this is precisely when the day’s heat peaks, with temperatures frequently climbing above 35°C. In short, cloaked in the rhetoric of “precision”, an allowance meant to recognise riders’ gruelling work has been twisted into yet another lever for the platform to compel them to keep delivering under the sweltering sun.

Xiao Tan had never even heard of a ‘heat allowance’. When I asked what he’d most like the platform to improve, he replied with a wry smile: “At least provide something like Huoxiang Zhengqi fluid.”

Last summer, he suffered his first bout of heatstroke while on a shift. Wracked by dizziness and tinnitus, and feeling utterly wretched, he ended up retching up bile but still forced himself to finish the deliveries. He only began to recover after picking up some Huoxiang Zhengqi fluid from a pharmacy. “After that, I finally learned my lesson: I absolutely have to keep Huoxiang Zhengqi fluid stocked up during the summer.”

By contrast, Lao Wei, a rider for JD, takes a much lighter touch when discussing these issues. As he explained, JD provides a monthly heat allowance of 300 yuan to full-time riders—an incentive that is actually delivered in full. Riders can also claim essentials such as cooling arm sleeves and Huoxiang Zhengqi fluid at no cost.

Lao Wei frankly admitted that he hopes JD continues to thrive and maintains this level of rider support. Yet a note of concern lingered in his voice; he knows that such perks are ultimately dictated not by the riders themselves, but by the platform’s commercial strategy. Just a few months ago, JD’s food delivery service offered 10 yuan per order to attract drivers, but that rate has since plummeted to around 4 yuan.

Listening to Old Wei, I was reminded of a conversation I once had with an older woman about the “delivery war” a decade ago. Back in the summer of 2015, before Baidu Delivery and Dianping were swallowed up by Ele.me and Meituan, riders could earn over 2,000 yuan a month in combined allowances for rain, long-distance drops, and extreme heat. Once the delivery market tipped into monopoly, those allowances all but disappeared. In the current “Three Kingdoms” skirmish, platforms still compete, but the subsidies are being channelled to customers rather than couriers. With the delivery labour market already saturated, there’s no longer a need to sweeten the deal for riders to grab market share and traffic. Platforms would rather foot the bill for mountains of wasted milk tea than put that money towards rider benefits.

In truth, whether it’s a small bottle of Huoxiang Zhengqi liquid, a pair of cooling sleeves, a genuine allowance for rain or soaring temperatures, or simply more reasonable delivery windows during foul weather, these practical, ground-level tweaks—however small—go a long way towards ensuring couriers can work and live with greater dignity, better health, and less stress. And yet, they didn’t even raise the issue of statutory benefits. This summer has already drawn to a close, yet their voices remain drowned out by downpours and heatwaves. Will things change next summer, and in every summer beyond? The answer, it seems, lies beyond their control.