Delivering Thomson Local

Dick_here

Has anyone done this, is it worthwhile ? I saw an ad asking for people and wondered... :money:

richardw

It might be a smaller directory than last year, so easier to handle.
If you can get another agreement to deliver other leaflets at the same time, double money for same effort, not sure if they check you do this though.

mandij87

I did this a few weeks back. I took on 2 routes which worked out just under 2000 books. I had 7 days to complete the routes and earnt around £180. The amount they pay depends on the size of the route. One of my routes was worth more then the other. The downside is that you have to go and collect the books. I had to travel around 45 mins each way to collect. I needed to use my car to deliver a lot of the books, and luckily have a buggy to put the books under while delivering. But it was ideal for me to earn a bit of extra money towards christmas without having to arrange childcare for my son. Worth doing if you have the time, but there is a lot of walking involved! xx

Dick_here

Well I just did it, too. Two rounds of nearly 1800 books in total for £105 but it was all fairly close to home (inc collecting the books), and took me 3 busy days. Luckily I had the LO's paper round trolley, don't know how I'd have managed otherwise. Hard work but worth it if you need the money. Not that I've been paid yet...

pinkclouds

I think I enquired about this last year (or maybe it was another directory). The chap I spoke to sounded quite honest and said it really depended on whether any of the available areas was close enough to were I lived as the petrol costs could potentially wipe out the benefit of actually doing the job. As it turned out, there was nothing close enough to tempt me so I decided against it. Worth pointing out in case you haven't considered the actual travel involved.

spender

I did it in the summer and will not do it again. I had numerous blocks of flats which made entry difficult. You do have to factor in petrol costs etc so therefore your "profit" is eaten into.

ex-dmp

Thanks for the info mandij87 & !!!!!! here. I am curious as to how many hours it took? If my calculations are right thats about 6 to 9p per drop, some what below min wage especially if you take collection cost and time into account.

I did a thomson local many years back when they were big A4 sized books, it took forever so I didn't think it was worth the money when I completed it. Main problem with directory delivery is obviously their bulk, so you could only carry say 10 at a time before needing to "reload".

To give this some perspective, I do a 1000 A4 booklet delivery each month at 5p per drop and they are delivered to my front door. I can carry about 100 copies (150 at a push) so don't have to worry about trolleys/buggies most of the time which slow you down.

Tomorrow I taking delivery of 3000 A5 booklets which I will get 3.5p per drop. I have heard some of the East European teams (3 or 4 in team) around my patch will drop A5 menus for around 2 to 2.5p per drop for the whole team!! i.e 0.5p each.

My recent best rate was 15p per drop for addressed A5 envelopes, but only had about 700 to do, but I had a bonus of having to collect about 150 from these addresses at 80p a pickup:T

ex-dmp

spender wrote: »

i did it in the summer and will not do it again. I had numerous blocks of flats which made entry difficult. You do have to factor in petrol costs etc so therefore your "profit" is eaten into.

+1..................

gargantuan_2

I did it a few years ago when I had fallen upon hard times. Would never do it again!

Took my around 4 evenings and 1 day on the weekend (approx 3-4 hours per evening after work and 8 hours on a sat), not sure how many books I had to deliver but it must have been around 1000. I was paid £120. Worked out around £3 p/h!

I didn't really do my homework, I only had a rucksack which held 10 books and had to keep trekking back to my car. I was abused by local youths, bitten by a dog, and reported for accidentally breaking a letterbox.

My shed, porch and car boot were stuffed full of directories for about a week and as has been discussed you have to sort out collection yourself.

I wouldn't do it again personally.

DS4215

I've done phone books and yellow pages, but the routes I had were close enough to work to do some on the way in, some on the way home and nip out at lunch. Altogether took me about a week, but I found the best way was to blitz a load of houses on one day and do the rest as I could.

I also found it worked best to take 20 or so books and drop them just outside the property on the way out, then post them on the way back to the car - didn't have to carry a shedload of books to every house that way...