This is a fascinating read, thanks for sharing. I remember when I was college hearing about "vacationing couriers" and thought it sounded amazing

I used to work for a small business called The Air Courier Association. They didn't do any of the actual travel arraignments, they were a membership "club" that gave you all the information on the actual shipping companies and how you can get the cheap/free airfare in return for giving up your baggage allowance on your flights. This was at the end of the 1990s...

I can't believe that to retrieve a container today, you still need to present the original document from the shipper.

Surely, a simple database record at the port authorities office should suffice. Or a series of digitally signed transfers.

You don’t anymore. There is something called Telex release that allows the carrier to release the cargo with an electronic copy of the bill of lading.

In actuality a telex release is just an email that opts you out of the secure release process so once a container has been 'telex' released anyone with the BL number can go pick it up at the port.

It's not a technical problem, it's a political one. You'd have to get every country in the world to agree on a central source of truth.

Physical documents mean the port operators can point the finger at someone else in case of criminality.

Ironically I think international is almost easier because when the DEA finds the CIA's coke in your container you can just kinda shrug and say "well that container got tamper seals applied when they loaded it in Mongolia and we can prove it" and they just kinda stop chasing there because it's not tractable to dig further until they've established a pattern or something.

When everything is under one regulatory umbrella and it's actually tractable to pin it on someone then it turns into a giant bickering fest until someone takes it (this goes for all sorts of exceptions like damaged goods or whatever, not just crime).

Much like illegal immigration, too many people benefit from the status quo, hence there is no real desire to actually do anything about it.

As you said, it's all about passing the buck.

>For the trouble of giving up their baggage allowances, passengers were handed a free round trip plane ticket to Hawaii.

Doing that today would likely get people arrested for drug trafficking

What do you mean? As long as people inspect what they are transporting or only take things delivered to them directly from merchants, I don't see how this would be a problem.

In fact, there is a whole class of travellers in some parts of the world now called runners who do this

How would you inspect it? I don’t think you have a good chance of finding hidden drugs, but the airport might. So there’s a risk that you missed it but their dog will find it, and you’ll be on the hook.

> So there’s a risk that you missed it but their dog will find it, and you’ll be on the hook.

No problem - you have a paper trail showing where you got it, that you were unaware of what was in it, and that you were not allowed to inspect it.

Literally every check-in form I've been through had some required checkboxes to declare that you've packed your luggage yourself, have complete awareness of what's in there, and claim responsibility for such items. There are also countless, very visible, posters in airports saying so. Your paper trail might be useful to law enforcement in prosecuting the people who handed you the no-no stuff, but it doesn't absolve you of any responsibility.

Anecdotally, I once had an outrageously difficult time explaining to a German customs officer that the bag I placed in the scanner had items belonging to both my sister and myself. It didn't help that we were travelling together, and she was also there to back my statements up. He simply would not accept the fact that there was an electronic device (e-book) that belonged to her, in a bag that belonged to me, which we forgot to take out before the scanner.

Depends on the country, I wouldn’t try it myself. And I’m pretty sure „well I wasn’t even allowed to inspect my luggage, i have it on paper“ isn’t a good defense, because then you shouldn’t have taken it in the first place. If you bring something onto a plane, it’s your responsibility. If you don’t know what it is, don’t take it.

Don’t bother. This “I’m the main character, change my mind on this thing” culture has become rampant and exhausting. Smile, nod, move on.

Could you tell us please who has “I’m the main character” mindset in this discussion?

The person starting their response as “No problem …” is our main character with all the answers.

That's not how the world works. You are responsible for the luggage you are transporting even if it's not yours. The customs do not care and they are not going to try to figure out the laws of the place you came from or get in contact with their authority.

> The customs do not care and they are not going to try to figure out the laws of the place you came from or get in contact with their authority

Yes. They also won't try to 'interpret' their own country's laws, it's above their paygrade. If you aren't doing exactly what they expect, they will hold you (or your passport) and push the issue upstairs.

Source: I had this happen to me when I tried to enter Canada to work on a contract for which I should have had a work permit. My company had given me the paperwork appropriate for a salesperson or conference attendee. The officer at the gate confiscated my passport, told me to come back the next day with the correct paperwork, and threatened me with arrest if I failed to return. Stress and long nights ensued.

Yeah, and if the perpetrators have disappeared, the authorities aren't going to say "Oh well, they disappeared, let's hunt them.", but they'll drag the mule into court instead...

The runners i am referring to either receive orders from merchants like Amazon or Apple then bring them for people, or they buy the items themselves once you give them for the items you want. That way, they minimize risk. If I am not mistaken, if you want to send things like documents, you have to courier with an official courier like FedEx, UPS or DHL then you have to allow them to open the envelop to ensure it is only what is listed then they transport from there.

By the way, this service for travel between countries. So people who want things from the US, Dubai or other large shopping destinations and when it is the reverse direction, where people in the large countries want things from back home countries like certain foods, ornaments etc, then they have to give the runner the money and the runner makes the purchase.

I expect it to make a huge difference if you go out of your way to say at the earliest opportunity : "I am (also) a courier, please check this item (that doesn't belong to me)."

Not doing it would be reckless of course.

Why? They were only transporting documents (papers for bill of lading) not actual items.

>> Four men were indicted on Wednesday for trafficking drug-laced squares of paper disguised as postal stamps to the US and South Africa using an express air service.

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2013/11/22/2...

As long as the arbitrage exists (acquisition cost for passengers is less than shipping), someone is going try to exploit it

https://www.vice.com/en/article/now-you-can-pay-people-to-fe...

Wow, this must be the dumbest idea i've seen for a long time. Good luck explaining to airport security that you just used some app to be an air courier for someone you don't know while they get their hands dirty on the white powder from your courier package.

You can easily acquire personal experience and knowledge here, instead of aggressively assuming.

Or you could read the article and use common sense?

> At first, AirWayBill’s managing director, Khaled Sehly, declined to discuss whether the app could be breaking any TSA regulations, asking to go off the record. (I refused.) He then asked me to wait four weeks until they had real users, saying that the reviews left on the app were actually from peers rather than customers. In our next series of broken calls, Sehly directed me towards the app’s terms and conditions and privacy policy, which he says were designed by a reputable law firm. Section 8 of the terms and conditions states that users must comply with technical and legal obligations and restrictions, including customs rules. However, it also indemnifies AirWayBill for liability related to shipments, stating that “any request will be made or accepted at the Members’ own risk” and that unless it’s explicitly specified otherwise within the platform, “AirWayBill’s responsibilities are limited to the correct functioning of the app and its service to the interested parties.”

> Unfortunately for wary couriers, AirWayBill is not planning on running background checks on anybody using their services. Sehly says that delivering packages for strangers—or at least friends of friends—is something that he’s seen done in an unregulated way in the Middle East and parts of Europe, with people asking if someone could deliver items ranging from documents to baby food to their families. Still, the possibility of inadvertently smuggling who knows what still remains. “We always urge people not to carry anything that they are not super confident about,” Sehly says, pointing out that deliverers can inspect the items they plan on transporting.

So the company is obviously taking the caveat emptor aka “f around find out” approach. Drug smugglers already have a lot of skill hiding drugs in seemingly innocuous items (sewn into teddy bears, etc.), so it is not at all an “aggressive assumption” to think being a courier with this service has potentially life changing (i.e. incarceration) risks.

> potentially life changing (i.e. incarceration) risks

Not talking about the even more life changing risk of involuntarily smuggling a bomb on the very aircraft you yourself are flying on.

> saying that the reviews left on the app were actually from peers rather than customers.

We need to start arresting people for this. You can't sell a product with fake testimonials. If you're not selling anything, lie to your hearts content. But this is fraud.

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/08/well-pay-...

https://www.nfib.com/content/legal-blog/marketing/what-the-f...

The hardest part I've found is figuring out what "low cost" items in one area are "high value" in another and worth schlepping over.

Here's one - Milwaukee Packout is majority red in the USA but mostly black (people call it "Blackout") elsewhere in the world. If you have luggage allowance, buy some and bring it back to the USA and it'll sell decently.

Not really. It happens a lot more than you might realize. This is a pretty big business in certain SEA communities and I cannot recall any issues with drugs.

As I commented when this came up yesterday, there are older (and better!) examples of a sharing economy.

The Negro Motorist Green Book was a guidebook published 1936–1966 for African-Americans to have safe road trips during the Jim Crow era. Some of the information was voluntarily collected by U.S postal workers who gathered the information while on their routes.

I say 'better' because paid couriers existed long before DHL. What DHL did (according to this account) was find a way to replace them with cheaper workers and not have to share the profits but instead use those profits to defend legal challenges against their business model.

Pioneering means also running it sustainably I'd say.

It lasted for 30 years, and ended when legal segregation ended. I suppose they could have lobbied to maintain Jim Crow, if they had been run by MBAs.

It was not sustainable. DHL switched to a different business model.

Related:

DHL Pioneered the Sharing Economy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41867650 - Oct 2024 (5 comments)

How DHL Pioneered the Sharing Economy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11096769 - Feb 2016 (3 comments)

Worth a watch is the documentary about the "H" in DHL, Larry Hillblom:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1212449/

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/business/king-larry-the-b...

He leveraged his FU money to become a South-Pacific sex tourist so prolific and shameless that, besides his death giving rise to a massive, multi-national paternity dispute, probably was instrumental in getting Congress to criminalize the sexual exploitation of minors by Americans traveling abroad.

He also pioneered Ruby on Rails and Basecamp.

That's DHH

Wow, I read the entire thing only to realize it’s an advertisement

I figured from the URL - but its a really well written ad!

It taught me something, and at the end, it presents a problem that I may or may not need solved.

I love how they made the term "sharing economy" a thing when in reality 99% of these things are about _renting_ something from a megacorp