Self Employed Courier on £50 a day?

[Frimley111R]

I can't remember the company (a big national one) but I just saw an advert to become a local courier for them on £50 a day! How on earth do the numbers stack up once you've paid for fuel, insurance and the wear and tear on your car/van??

[anothernameitist]

Depends what a day constitutes is it 2 hours at night or a full 8 hour day.

Plus are you also paid for each drop?

Still wouldn't do it myself though

[VolvoT5]

I've looked at this kind of 'opportunities' and from what I can tell the numbers don't stack up and people taking these jobs end up working 11 hours a day earning less than minimum wage.

[LordHaveMurci]

Spoke to a long standing DPD owner/driver yesterday, he was very pee'd off as he'd had 1 3/4hrs waiting around before he was sent to do a couple of collections which earned him about £8.00, he'd rather have gone home when he finished his deliveries.

Tis a tough old game & as others have said, the drivers are working silly hours if they want to earn half decent money. I'm sure the Yodel type blokes are used to earning a pittance anyway.

Edited by LordHaveMurci on Friday 1st July 13:13

[VolvoT5]

Also the other thing to keep in mind is that with some of these companies you are self-employed in name only....in reality you are effectively an employee without the rights, because if they say jump and your reply isn't "how high" you ain't going to get enough good work. Often the contract will be so heavily in their favour they will screw you one way or another regardless.

The idea of having control and being self employed is appealing but when I looked into it I concluded I would quite literally be significantly better off stacking shelves for min wage... and that wasn't even factoring in things like paid holiday & sick pay.