Courier Business Stuff

Maybe be you’d like to enlighten us as to the legal obligations of a Company Secretary? Hint: the only obligations are the administrative requirements of the Companies Act – keeping the Registers in order and ensuring documents are filed with Companies House on time. The day to day running of the company and responsibility for the company’s actions are the directors’ responsibility only.

I completely agree that company law is a farce and virtually a licence to commit fraud; it will only get worse when the new Companies Act comes completely into force – single person companies with no Company Secretary, Directors’ residential addresses kept private and all sorts of other bollocks that will make things easier for fraudsters. One of the few useful things is that ‘shadow directors’ will become as accountable as registered directors for the actions of the company.

The idea is that if we don’t allow people to fuck their businesses up and walk away from the problems then nobody’s ever going to risk setting up a business. The economy will stagnate and we’ll all suffer. More intelligent people than any of us have come up with that over many years so we can only assume that they’re right. Seems like bollocks to me though.

I truly believe John to be a decent, hardworking and honest person and I’ve been more than a little upset by this recent bad fortune.

We can all learn a lesson from this: don’t allow more credit to one customer than you can afford to lose. If you’re getting in over your head with a big customer then think about taking out credit insurance – it should cost less than 1% of the outstanding debt. If you can’t get credit insurance on your customer’s debt then ask yourself if YOU can afford to lose the money more than the insurer can.

It’s hard to turn away potential business because of worries over your customer’s creditworthiness but unless you REALLY like living dangerously you have to assess the risk and act accordingly. The sad fact is that over half of the companies trading today will have failed within the next 5 years. Just make sure they don’t owe you more than you can afford to lose when they fail.

Posted under Late Payment, Legal Issues

Quote:
I wouldn’t worry about it John, I’d be suprised if anyone actually uses that section of the site anyway.

I gave up with it because it’s way easier to just post a job than scan through the list, when I have called people they either don’t answer, delivered 2 hours early and have long since gone, running 2 hours late etc etc.

Do any job posters use it ?

I find it one of the most usefull features of the site. It shows me which couriers are in the area and actually looking for work. Posting a job rarely works for me. ‘Call Alec @ Anywhere 01925 598600′ all too often results in an email or text message that I don’t see until after the job’s gone.

The search by town name is a PITA as well. If I enter ‘Lancaster’ I want to see a list of couriers based within a reasonable radius of Lancaster, not just couriers based IN Lancaster. Ideally there’d be an option to enter a postcode and have the closest 20 (or whatever) members show up on a list, with the closest at the top and with their vehicles listed on the list so I don’t have to click through every entry to see what vehicles they operate.

I like the way MTvan is developing (apart from the charging model) at the moment. The responsiveness to feature requests is very impressive compared with certain other exchange sites.

Posted under Courier and Freight Exchanges

That’s slightly less than accurate Ken. And even if it was accurate it still wouldn’t make it illegal.

Posted under Late Payment, Legal Issues

In England: It becomes a smoke-free vehicle if it is ever used FOR WORK by more than one person. That’s not more than one person at a time – it could be two people using it over the course of a year.

The passenger thing’s a good point. The law actually says that a vehicle is smoke free if it is used -

“(a) by members of the public or a section of the public (whether or not for reward or hire); or

(b) in the course of paid or voluntary work by more than one person (even if those persons use the vehicle at different times, or only intermittently).”

I don’t think that (for example) taking your wife to the shops is use ‘by members of the public or a section of the public’. So it looks like you can carry passengers sometimes. There also doesn’t seem to be anything to stop the driver’s wife from smoking in the van – even if he doesn’t smoke.

I could be wrong of course but I’d be very surprised if ‘a section of the public’ could be held to include an owner-driver’s wife.

None of which has anything to do with the original question. No, if you swap vans now and again then they both become ‘smoke free’ and need stickers.

You can order as many as you want free of charge from http://www.smokefreeengland.co.uk/content/order-materials.html

Posted under Employment, Vans

I don’t know of any courier companies in Manchester that would take someone on with a van that old. Maybe Rico, but even they must draw the line somewhere.

I would suggest that anyone likely to give you work in a van of that age wouldn’t be someone you’d like to work for.

Posted under Courier Basics, Vans

‘Network’ invoices are as good as, or better than, any other invoice you can produce.

Whatever you do don’t raise a ‘Network’ invoice as well as your own – it just makes extra work for everyone.
 

Posted under Courier Basics, Courier Financial Issues, VAT

You need a tacho, but you don’t need an O-licence as long as the unladen weight of the trailer is 1020kg or less.

Posted under Drivers' Hours, Towing, Vans

I’ve just noticed that the required no-smoking signs for vehicles and premises can now be ordered free of charge from the Smokefree England website.

Posted under Employment, Legal Issues