The episode in detail
Employment integration in cycle logistics: a complex equation
Franck Girardot spent more than a year at Sygogne, a work-integration company specialising in cycle logistics and sustainable urban delivery in Paris. His assessment of employment integration in the sector is blunt. People far from employment, identified by France Travail, come from varied backgrounds: young people with no qualifications, over-50s struggling to find new roles, the long-term unemployed, and people under judicial supervision or serving sentences in the community.
“Having an activity that’s 80 to 90% cycle delivery with people in integration schemes doesn’t seem compatible to me.”
The problem is structural. A cycle courier works, by definition, in complete autonomy: navigation, adherence to procedures, customer relations, responsibility for equipment and goods. Asking all of this of someone recently identified as far from employment is too much, too soon. Warehouse tasks, such as order preparation, goods receipt and handling, suit integration better, since day-to-day supervision is possible there.
Vélo Cargo: a crime novel rooted in social reality
The idea of writing a novel emerged during the year spent in cycle logistics. Franck was unsure of the form to give his experience at Sygogne. It was Chloé Bouilloux, a consultant at Big Bikes Consulting, who suggested a crime novel set in this world.
“She said to me: you want to write a novel and you want to talk about cycle logistics, why don’t you write a crime novel set in cycle logistics?”
The starting point of the story is a real burglary at the Saint-Augustin warehouse. Franck builds a dark fiction around it: a courier in a precarious situation who sleeps in the warehouse for lack of housing and stumbles on the burglars. The novel Vélo Cargo belongs to the tradition of social crime fiction, which starts from a social observation to give a realistic and often harsh view of the world. Here, the backdrop is the life of Parisian couriers: participants in a virtuous logistics revolution, yet facing difficult working conditions.
The fragile economic model of cycle logistics
Franck gives a frank assessment of the sector. Companies like Sygogne, founded recently, have to build everything at once: finding clients, achieving operational excellence, managing integration schemes. Established players such as Les Cargonautes, 7 to 8 years old, or Tout en Vélo in Rennes, close to 15 years old, have had time to get organised. Stuart, once a major player, ceased operations during 2024.
“The market isn’t yet ready to pay the fair price for a delivery. As long as that’s the case, operators will work with precarious contracts.”
Even established players struggle to balance their books on delivery activity alone. Many supplement it with training, consultancy or equipment sales. Successful examples generally rely on one large partner client who secures revenue while the operating model is being built.
Sector consolidation by traditional carriers
An underlying trend is taking shape: large carriers, faced with growing difficulty entering cities with lorries, are gradually adding light vehicles and bikes for last-mile delivery. DB Schenker bought Les Triporteurs Français, founded in Rennes, in 2022 and made it a subsidiary, combining cycle logistics expertise with the group’s financial and organisational strength. Other players such as Heppner or GLS already work with specialist contractors.
“We’ll probably see this pattern repeat: established carriers buying out or turning cycle logistics specialists into subsidiaries.”
This consolidation marks a new phase for the sector, where cycle logistics moves from an activist niche to an integrated link in conventional logistics chains.
Women in cycle logistics: a sector that is still very male-dominated
Franck notes that the issue isn’t so much difficulty for women to fit in as a lack of interest. Few women apply to ride a cargo bike or work in a warehouse. A handful of women couriers work at Les Cargonautes and Sygogne, but the sector is still seen as tough, dirty and physical. Similar prejudices exist in bike mechanics, an area that is slowly opening up. Yet the job isn’t physically demanding enough to stop a fit woman from doing it.
