Navigating the streets of Cleveland on a bicycle is nothing new to Will Ansley; he's an experienced and dedicated bike messenger. “A lot of people do it for a little bit and either can’t handle it or don’t like it,” Ansley says of the high rate of turnover in his vocation.

The only problem Ansley has encountered is that he wasn't earning his fair share. “A lot of [messenger] companies these days don’t give you a fair percentage of the rate they are charging,” Ansley says. “Since you’re not getting that much money and the company doesn’t care about their workers, people leave.”

So Ansley decided to take matters into his own hands. This past March he launched Ohio City-based North Coast Courier, the only employee-owned bike courier service in Cleveland. He based the company on a trend he’d seen in Chicago, where many courier companies are worker-owned and everyone gets a say in company decisions.

Right now, North Coast Courier is focused on personal deliveries, like food and groceries. But the company will deliver pretty much whatever a customer wants. The delivery zones are downtown from the lake to Carnegie Avenue and E. 30th Street, Tremont, Ohio City and Gordon Square. The cost is only $5 for delivery in any of these zones and $7 for delivery beyond E. 9th Street.

There are a few spots that North Coast Courier also will deliver to: The Hildebrandt Building, 78th Street Studios, the Flats and Jakprints. “It’s because we know a lot of people in those buildings and lots of them are worker-owned businesses or solo-owned,” explains Ansley.