Courier Business Stuff

For some reason there’s a lot of criticism, mainly coming from ‘old hand’ courier companies, about owner-drivers and small same day courier companies ‘moaning’ about being paid late by other courier companies.

While the people ‘moaning’ and threatening to ‘name and shame’ are widely lambasted as being unprofessional, unbusinesslike and not taking normal business practice into account, I can’t help thinking that maybe it’s the ‘old hands’ that have got it wrong.

Should it really be acceptable that new entrants to the business are forced to fall into line with the pre-existing sloppy practices of the courier industry? ‘Real’ businesses don’t allow elastic lines of credit to unchecked, untested and undeserving customers; why is the same day courier industry so different?

Why are the new entrants, at the bottom of the ladder, forced to accept late payments that are mainly caused by the slack credit control practices of the courier companies they subcontract to?

It’s not so much the late payment that’s a problem with some companies it’s the fact that when they take advantage of extending their suppliers’ credit terms they’re sitting on an enormous pile of debt. Lending your hard earned cash to anyone in this industry is a very risky step to take, more so now than ever before.

Even with its shaky finances in the recent past Nissan is a Read More…

Posted under Courier Business, Courier Financial Issues, Late Payment

So you’ve got your Goods In Transit Insurance (up to say £15,000), you’ve got your Public Liability Insurance (up to say £1 MILLION) and you think you’re pretty much covered for everything, right? Wrong.

Unless you only ever carry goods under your own ‘Terms and Conditions’ or ‘Conditions of Carriage’, which you make available to your customers before you carry out any work for them then you could be wide open to a claim for unlimited damages from your customer or even from your customer’s customer.

Your Goods In Transit insurance might well cover you for £15,000, but what if the goods you’ve collected are worth far more than that? A consignment of computer chips or a pharmaceutical sample can be worth many times that and if it was lost, stolen or damaged while under your control you would be liable for the full value unless your Conditions limit your liability.

That’s not the worst of it though. Most couriers’ Conditions quite rightly disclaim any liability for consequential loss. Without this essential restriction to your liability your losses are potentially unlimited should a late, lost or damaged consignment cause your customer any financial loss due to your ‘negligent act’. A ‘negligent act’ could be as simple as you leaving goods in your vehicle overnight and them being stolen, being late for a delivery because your cambelt broke due to being overdue for replacement, subcontracting your delivery to a muppet or just sending a document by overnight delivery and it being misrouted.

In the absence of suitable Conditions the only defence that you may have against a claim is to be able to prove that your customer’s loss occurred Read More…

Posted under Courier Basics, Courier Business, Courier Financial Issues, Insurance for Couriers, Legal Issues

Once you’ve applied to be registered for VAT it can take anything from 2 weeks to 3 months (even longer in certain cases) for you to receive confirmation of your registration and your VAT registration number.

Unless you’ve taken the (sometimes sensible) option of starting your registration on a date in the future you could have a period of 3 months or longer when you’re liable to account for VAT on all your sales but you’re not legally able to charge VAT. This obviously leaves you with a problem.

You’re not legally able to show the VAT as a separate amount on your invoice unless you’ve received confirmation of your VAT registration.  HMRC’s solution is for you to issue a VAT-inclusive invoice to your customers. So instead of invoicing £100 you would invoice £117.50 ‘including VAT’. If you’ve got a close relationship with all of your customers and you can get them to agree to this in advance then this is without doubt the best option: please read on however.

Most established companies, particularly in the transport sector, will not pay VAT on an invoice unless it’s a genuine VAT invoice containing a VAT number and the VAT shown as a separate amount. You are not allowed (or able) to supply these details on your invoices until you receive confirmation of you VAT registration. If you use the HMRC approved method above (invoicing inclusive of VAT), without the prior agreement of your customer, you may well find that your customer delays payment of your entire invoice until they receive a proper VAT receipt.

The alternative method of dealing with this problem is to invoice for the normal amount, say £100 using the example above, with a clear notice on the invoice stating that you are awaiting VAT registration and a full VAT invoice showing the outstanding VAT will be issued as soon as your registration is confirmed. This avoids the delay that will almost inevitably be caused if you issue a VAT-inclusive invoice as recommended by HMRC.

Once your VAT registration is confirmed you send them an invoice for the full amount, with the VAT itemised, with a credit shown for the original amount (if that’s already been paid) and just the VATshowing as outstanding. If you’re ONLY invoicing for the outstanding VAT it can be seen as helpful (or at least ‘friendly’) to show the ‘payment due’ date as the last day of your own VAT quarter.

Remember that you can reclaim the VAT on many expenses incurred BEFORE your registration date. I’ll cover that in a future posting.

Posted under Courier Business, VAT

Fantasy Couriers

Is this a wind-up?

“The game is an online sim game, set in the courier industry. We’ve been planning and building now for a couple of months, and now we’re into the artwork and design phase, so we’re starting to see it growing fast. Fantasy Couriers is a simulation game set in the courier industry. This industry has been chosen as it it probably one of the most challengling markets in the world at present with ever increasing fuel prices. So, to make the game as challenging as the real world, the prices of fuel in the game are pegged to the prices of fuel in the real world. If the oil companies increase the pump price, or if Gordon Brown puts a penny or two on fuel tax, YOUR PROFITS in the game suffer, you may end up running jobs at a loss, it could make you bankrupt.”

Posted under Courier Business

Quote:
you shouldn’t knock peoples rates just because they are higher than your’s….sometimes company’s don’t give trade rates ,it’s happened to me many times when ive posted job’s.

not everybody run’s cheap,the only place you’ll find cheap prices is on web sites.

web sites are not the be all and end all….if you put all the member’s of c/x ,mt van ,shed five etc together they are only a small percent of the courier co’s and o/d’s in this country….and you’ll usualy find that those that go nowhere near web sites are running at a lot better rates.

There’s plenty of ‘non-website’ companies and owner-drivers out there though who seem happy to charge much less than the sort of rates you seem to expect Paul

I was contacted recently by a company that I used to work quite closely with years ago – 8 or 10 vans, run from home, you know the sort of thing. They do a lot of subcontract work for the ‘big boys’ and they used to charge me the same rate as they charged TNT – 50p/mile for a small van. 10 years or so later on they asked me if 58p/mile would be alright!

There’s another company I use, member of the DA or NCA or something, well established, mainly deal with end users and they’re not on CX or MTvan or anything. First time I called them out of the blue they offered me lower rates than I usually pay owner-drivers on CX. The collection went tits up and they charged me £8/hour waiting time!

As you quite rightly say Paul, there’s a lot more to the courier industry than exchange websites. You’d be wrong to believe that the situation in the ‘outside world’ is much better than on these sites though; in many cases the opposite is true.

Posted under Courier and Freight Exchanges, Courier Business

www.igloo-thermo.com

I think it was “the DHL of temperature controlled transport” wasn’t it? Old hat, already being done on a national basis, and I’d like to bet that their historical profits didn’t include a ‘real life’ depreciation of their major assets – which means some major ‘readjustments’ in a couple of years’ time.

Load of bollocks. Stand on me.

Keith and his Reggae Reggae Sauce on the other hand…..

Posted under Courier Business

EMP Distribution Ltd

Your company seems to be a bit late in filing its annual accounts. Is there something to hide or is it more indicative of poor management?

Posted under Courier Business, Late Payment, Legal Issues

Quite. Not to mention risking the chance of upsetting your best same-day customer because their 0900 delivery to Exeter has ended up in Inverness.

We offer an (expensive ) overnight service on an ad hoc basis, i.e. to customers who just send an occasional one or two deliveries out, or customers who’ve missed the cut-off for their normal carrier. We use several of the major carriers and carry out the collections on an on-demand basis. All customers are warned of the vagaries of the overnight networks and advised against sending important, time-sensitive items that way.

We’d never do an overnight for a private individual – there’s just too much to go wrong and there’s every chance that your carefully worded Conditions of Carriage will turn out to be totally worthless when you try to use them to avoid liability in respect of a Consumer transaction. Consumers have far too many rights these days to risk doing business with them.

Posted under Courier Business