The rise of online retail means that there are a lot of parcels that need delivering, which means that courier companies are never short of work. If you’re looking for a lucrative business to start and you have a bit of money to invest, you should seriously consider starting your own courier company. You won’t be able to land contracts with the large online retailers to begin with because they’re already dealing with big courier companies that have the infrastructure to meet their needs. However, there are so many small online retail businesses that people are running from home and they often prefer to deal with a smaller company that offers a more personal service. It’s those companies that you should target first, and then when you start to grow, you can try to land some of those bigger contracts. If you think that a courier business might be for you, here are a few important tips to get you started.
Get The Right Vehicle
The first thing that you’re going to need is a vehicle. When you start out, it’s best just to get one vehicle and handle the deliveries yourself. Once you have regular contracts with a few local businesses, you can start adding to your fleet and hiring some drivers. You need to keep costs down initially so it’s best to get a used van from a company like Eden Commercials, rather than going for a brand new one. Vans are very robust so as long as you do a bit of research and find one that is reliable, you shouldn’t have any problems with a used vehicle.
Get Insured
Before you hit the road, you’ll need to get the right insurance for your business and for your vehicles. You will need liability insurance to cover you if anything happens to packages in transit, otherwise, you’ll be paying for replacements out of your own pocket and that will eat into your profits. On top of that, you need to make sure that you have the correct van insurance which covers your vehicle for business use.
Market Your Services
Now that you’re all set up, it’s time to start marketing your services. The easiest way to do it is to set up social media pages for your business and start trying to connect with small local businesses. You should also speak with friends and family and see if they know of anybody that needs courier services. Often, it’s word of mouth customers that help you to get a business like this off the ground.
Find Supplementary Work
To begin with, you won’t have that much money so you should try to find supplementary work. Companies like Amazon have an online platform that you can sign up to and start delivering. You can take on the work whenever you need so if you have a few quiet days, you can still earn a bit of money. This will help you to stay afloat while you build a customer base.
Once your business starts taking off, you can buy more vehicles and start hiring drivers and that’s when you’ll be able to land the bigger contracts.
