Van Driver/Courier

XDA

Fancy a career change, and have been looking at van driving

Anyone know what sort of salary a van driver is on? Anyone on here work for city link, dhl, parcel force, royal mail etc?

Anyone got more information?

Cheers

Conor_3

Salary? Next to nowt. Think £6/hr ish. When I was night trunking at Parceline, some of the routes the van drivers did had 100 drops. That's PER DAY. Yes, 100 drops per day. And they were on 2/3 what I was and all I did was drive an artic to Smethwick, sit in the drivers canteen watching telly and talking rubbish then drove back.

It is absolutely horrible stressful backbreaking work doing local multidrop.

terryw

Got to agree with Connor above.

Why not try a part-time number for your local takeaway delivering meals for a couple of evenings? You should make a bit more with tips, but you will soon find out what it is like delivering say 30 deliveries locally rather than 100 scattered all over the place.

terryw

uktyler

I worked as a self employed sameday courier for years, and it used to pay well. Now the price of fuel and insurance has taken the profit margins down.

A few years ago lots of people started with new vans and sat nav systems, all self employed, I don't see any of these people around any more.

custardy

depends what driving you are talking about in RM?
do you mean basic transit van multi drop or the larger 600 to artic driving?
RM dont really employ drivers as such,usually posties are put on/made up to driving duties
parcel force are moving more and more towards owner drivers

uktyler

custardy wrote: »

parcel force are moving more and more towards owner drivers

Lots of companies are, no problems with vehicle breakdowns, no big insurance bills and no employee sickness to worry about.

custardy

breakdowns are a problem if the packages are in the back
owner driving is an accountants solution
doesnt always make for good service
ive seen many dodgy cars/vans doing parcel collections/deliveries
not a good representation for a company IMHO

DGJsaver

coner is spot on , ive done multidrop , the stress is unreal , forget lunchbreaks , they dont happen , one place i was at , there idea of `london` deliveries , stretched to reading !! and down to camberley , and dunstable ... it can pay reasonable but thats more down to working up to 12 hours , driving like an idiot

think of something else mate

Conor_3

DGJsaver wrote: »

think of something else mate

...and not taxi driving because the only difference between taxi driving and van driving is the load loads and unloads itself with a taxi.

uktyler

Conor wrote: »

...and not taxi driving because the only difference between taxi driving and van driving is the load loads and unloads itself with a taxi.

And that's not always the case on a Friday or Saturday night, they may well be too drunk to get out and they may well leave 8 pints of lager and a digested curry on your back seat when you do get them out.

XDA

Cheers for the input guys, much appreciated.

I know that a few of the jobs I have been looking at have 50 drops a day, which will be very stressful to complete in time I would have thought.

I have been looking at a driving career for quite some time, and quite fancy c+e one day but Im abit young for that at the moment. Would love to get some driving experience behind me before I look at training to drive artics.

I have a stressful job at the moment, and very often dont get lunch, spend all day racing about like an idiot to get from job to job so that part wouldnt be a problem.

My only worry is the salary side of things.