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Why couriers don’t quote by text

February 4, 2011 By
Vicky's Work Area 2006

Image by Vicky TGAW via Flickr

As a courier we get asked to quote for business all of the time, it seems on some days everyone has something to get delivered.

As a courier business we know there are some not very nice customers that prefer not to pay for their deliveries. A sad but true fact.

We are currently entering our tenth year of trading, and already in Feb 2011 I have had to issue two sets of court papers to clients who are not only avoiding payment but pretending never to have been given the information in the first place.

We don’t quote by text for a reason. If you are one of those dodgy, not very nice people then we need an audit trail to track back. We can show the judge evidence that you agreed the price and that you agreed the payments terms and since then you have been a bit of a naughty person.

We have yet to lose a case and every time we have had the court costs awarded. So it costs the customer even more.

Now we are all adults here (I hope) and we understand things get tough but bills still have to be paid and it really is unethical to try and run your business on someone else’s credit.

You can try, but it won’t happen.

If you are looking to become a courier, these useful facts are included in The Complete Courier Guide. It’s sad but true you will have some customers try and rip you off.

The good news is, the courier industry is a small industry and if you don’t pay up then the chances are the pool of couriers looking to complete your work will also dry up – we all talk to each other. Often open and frankly.

3 years ago we did some deliveries for a furniture importer, a lovely chap. He had knocked several other couriers in the area before he got to us. Like I say, it’s a small industry and one days competitor is tomorrows sub contractor… we knew that the importer had done this and we laid our terms and conditions down – we took payment up front for every single delivery.

This is not as harsh as it sounds – they took payment in advance for the furniture, they were no longer running their business on someone else’s credit and the risk to our courier service was limited.

At the end of the season they gave us some lovely furniture as a gift, they found the service we provided exemplary. They also liked the fact that we had back ups of everything. So if their customer complained about a delivery, we knew exactly who, where and why.

They also knew exactly where they stood with us. Prices were in writing, payments were agreed. In writing. No margin for error or neglect on either site.

In conclusion, if your customer wants a quote by text think about your audit trail – begin with the end in mind and make sure every step of the sales process to delivery is documented.

Kevin

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As a courier or removal company, why should you bother looking for work?

April 30, 2010 By

It should come straight to you, right?

Sadly life is not like that, with good marketing you will get some work and you will find you still have to go out and get customers, you can sit back and wait for them to come to you BUT you will run through all your money first.

Being a self employed courier means if you don’t find the work you don’t get paid. If you own the removal company or are a self employed mover, then you don’t get paid. You need customers and you need to find them. You need to find profitable customers for your business.

Another white van
Image by jovike via Flickr

So what types of courier work are more profitable?

Local delivery jobs are good for a courier looking to increase their local customer base. As they are local you can complete more of them throughout the day and therefore become profitably quickly. The downside is that there will be more wear and tear on your vehicle when you complete local delivery work so you need to factor that in to your prices when you look for this type of work.

Long distance jobs can be profitable for a courier especially if they can get a return load back to their home area. Make a point of calling courier companies in your delivery drop area so they know to contact you if they have a load going your way.

Specialist delivery jobs can also be profitable to a courier. Jobs such as delivering dangerous goods (when correctly licensed) can pay a premium as this type of courier service is rare, so do your research and see what type of specialist courier services are required.

Whatever delivery work you have locally, nationally or specialist remember to calculate your costs and expenses correctly so you do not underquote on your prices, if you fail to calculate your costs properly you will quickly eat into any reserve that you have built into your business.

Source: How to deliver and profit

Attracting customers can be done a variety of ways and a blend of marketing activity is good, it enables you to reach more potential customers.

As well as an online presence, you need an offline one too. Believe it or not there are some customers who don’t use the internet, they prefer traditional media.

In conclusion, get off your backside and look for the work you enjoy delivering or get a job.

Sarah

Thanks to Graham Hunt for flagging up the removal company and their attitude in this blog, Spain is not Greece

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Why zero tolerance on drink driving will never happen

March 15, 2010 By

Over the weekend it has been announced there will be an amendment to the amount of alcohol you can consume and legally drive. Every time something like this comes up, there are calls for scrapping a legal limit and having zero tolerance. Zero tolerance meaning no alcohol in your bloodstream at all.

If you are a self employed courier or you drive for a living in a self employed capacity, every day you are on the road is a day you are earning money.

Red Bull GmbH
Image via Wikipedia

So what happens if the law is passed that if you have any alcohol in your bloodstream, you automatically get a years ban?

If you are ill and you take cough medicine, one of the ingredients is alcohol along with mouthwash, toothpaste and other everyday products such as Krispy Kreme Donuts, Dunkin Donuts, Red Bull, Ritz Crackers, Butterfingers, 7up, Dr. Pepper, Lucozade and Ribena soft drink, Rubicon Fruit Drink, Ice Cream products and some Vanilla essences.

It’s pretty hard to avoid and you could be driving under the influence without even realising it. Some products are by products of alcohol or it’s used in the process of making the product, not enough to be listed as an ingredient but if you add in the mouth wash and cough medicine you are over the limit and without your livelihood without knowing.

How long before it becomes a legal defense for someone speeding and over the limit -”no I haven’t been drinking officer but I have just had a Red Bull and Krispy Kreme…”

It’s not just food and drink products, or oral products. If you look in your kitchen or bathroom you will see you are surrounded by alcohol based products – facial toners, cleaning products, shower gels, shampoo, bubble baths. Can it be proved you don’t absorb even trace amounts?

Of course the cost of breathalysing will go up, and so will the amount of false positives. The amount of alcohol on your breath being enough to trigger a breathalyser to say you are over the limit, when followed by blood tests that show negative. Increased costs involved here will increase costs elsewhere as usual.

Ask any practicing Muslim or recovering alcoholic what lengths they have to go to to find products without alcohol in them and you see it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Reduce the limit by all means, driving under the influence of alcohol isn’t something to be proud of, and we do not condone drinking and driving but to reduce the limit to zero? That’s foolhardy and there will be no one left on the roads to deliver your goods, especially in cold and flu season.

Sarah

Article Sources: Sunni Forum

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Green wash in courier businesses

March 11, 2010 By

You may be thinking that it’s good to be green and it is. Any colour you like so long as it’s green would Henry Ford’s new mantra. In fact, it’s the mantra of many courier companies these days. From pale green to dark green, environmental awareness is essential in all businesses let alone a courier or transport business.

But it has to be done properly.
Using LPG or Electric vehicles do not make you a greener more environmentally aware company than Joe Bloggs down the road, you see there is more to your business being greener than what fuel you use. I have had courier companies ring up and moan about not getting a green business award (we got ours in 2007, one of the first in the UK). I ask them what else they offered as evidence in the awards application… “err nothing else, I run on electric I am green, that’s enough”. Well that’s why you didn’t win. You need to be doing more.

I have recently become aware of what I call Green Wash in couriers. For example I share subcontractors with a proclaimed leading courier company, the subcontractor was moaning about having to read and sign that he understood our green policies and green driving techniques – the real green courier company whom he also worked with didn’t offer or ask for this.

Damning with faint praise…
He went on to say they have electric vehicles and he was annoyed that the electric vehicles didn’t actually complete any deliveries – they just sat there and switched on for the media and they are getting heaps of work from being green!
Well, that’s not being green and it’s not ethical. It’s a start, a step in the right direction but the lack of ethics completely negates the positive – what good are their electric vehicles if they don’t get used?

So how do you become a green courier business?
You start with the end in mind and lower everything that has carbon emissions. You start with the office and finish with the customer.
Some couriers seem to think offsetting their carbon emissions absolves them from doing anything else, which is sad in a way – their policies need to be more joined up and so does their thinking. Or they stop servicing their vehicles, highly maintained vehicles run more efficiently, but all that is forgotten when it comes down to what fuel is used.

You may like this article here, that talks about waste and other aspects of making your business greener. The biggest enemy of green is waste, the vehicle that don’t get used – waste, the packaging that doesn’t get recycled – waste, the mobile phones that are out of date and kept in a box ‘just in case’ – a waste.

When proclaiming you are green remember there is more to being green than the fuel or vehicle you use. Remember what could happen to your reputation if you are found out to be green washing. It would take more than a few well prepped press releases to get you off the hook – just ask Primark and Mark’s and Spencer.

Sarah

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If you met you for the first time, would you do business with you

March 3, 2010 By

Here at the courier shop we are lucky enough to work with leading sales trainer Linda Mattacks on how to grow sales for our courier businesses, in a nutshell – how do we find more courier work?

DEDHAM, MA - SEPTEMBER 30: AT&T Area Retail Sa...
Image by Getty Images via Daylife

If you are looking for a quick fix solution then go and join a freight exchange – there are enough of them, but that doesn’t fix the underlying issues that you may have and doesn’t improve things long term.

One of the things that Linda does best (and believe me she can do a lot of fantastic things) is Elevator Pitches, she wrote mine and it works. An Elevator Pitch is where you explain what you do within a minute without selling, and quantify what sort of leads/prospects you are looking for. This makes it easier for the person you are talking to to understand what you are doing and how they can help you.

One of the easiest ‘pitches’ for me to remember was a magician – he demonstrated a quick trick and said he was available for parties, weddings and corporate events: Job done! Or so I thought…

What do you want?

The magician example leads into the fact that it seems many of us (Brits, anyway) when networking not only fudge what we do, we won’t say what we really want: we prefer to say what we’ll settle for! How daft is that?

Linda Mattacks Source: Birds on the blog

If you cannot talk about what you do with with passion and enthusiasm then quite simply you are dead in the water – you are not worth remembering and you are certainly not worth recommending to.

Now, before we get lost in the intricacies of a pitches and introducing ourselves to other business people remember every business situation is an opportunity to talk about how you and your business can help other businesses. If you are attending event after event and getting no where fast, you need to examine why you are there.

If you met you for the first time, would you do business with you? And why?

Sarah Arrow & Linda Mattacks

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