Self Employed Courier Work
Discussion
I keep seeing adverts for drivers then you dig into the detail and it sounds almost like the Uber taxi driver situation.
The ads say you can earn up £700 per week (wow) you are responsible for paying your own tax and you need to have a van! They will rent you a van for £175 PLUS VAT per week. so thats at least £840 every 4 weeks before you have to pay for van insurance and presumably they want to see evidence of goods in transit insurance and possibly even public liability cover too. On that alone in a typical month after the van expenses if you are earning the top money which I presume is that headline figure of £700 a week you wouldnt be taking home a great deal.
Who is the real winner here with these jobs? Although I havent even dreamed of applying I do feel sorry for anybody who goes for this as it just seems like the company looking for the drivers do not actually bring much to the party themselves but I imagine they take a good chunk of the money.
Also sounds more like the real winners are the firms who are renting out the vans!
I am waiting to see an advert next for train drivers - must bring their own train LOL.
The ads say you can earn up £700 per week (wow) you are responsible for paying your own tax and you need to have a van! They will rent you a van for £175 PLUS VAT per week. so thats at least £840 every 4 weeks before you have to pay for van insurance and presumably they want to see evidence of goods in transit insurance and possibly even public liability cover too. On that alone in a typical month after the van expenses if you are earning the top money which I presume is that headline figure of £700 a week you wouldnt be taking home a great deal.
Who is the real winner here with these jobs? Although I havent even dreamed of applying I do feel sorry for anybody who goes for this as it just seems like the company looking for the drivers do not actually bring much to the party themselves but I imagine they take a good chunk of the money.
Also sounds more like the real winners are the firms who are renting out the vans!
I am waiting to see an advert next for train drivers - must bring their own train LOL.
Sounds not entirely unlike the model that resulted in a young guy taking his life as the debts from the fixed costs spiralled out of control: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/How_de...
Zetec-S said:
ToothbrushMan said:
The ads say you can earn up to £700 per week .
Sadly too many of the people applying for these jobs don't really notice this bit.The lad who unfortunately committed suicide fell foul of not paying a small fine through driving offences not through the business model of the 'dubious' courier company. That was more the thieving debt collectors. That should be capped so that a £60 fine can never turn into a £1000+ debt!
If you ask me a £60 fine for driving in a bus lane should never be allowed to be more that £120 if not paid on time. These are all 'dubious' fines at best originally.
I agree the way a debt can quickly escalate is ridiculous, but how viable would a cap be?
At the end of the day the debt collector needs to be paid for their time, travel, admin, etc. And (unless we renounce capitalism) also make a profit. No idea how much their costs actually are, but from what I remember when I originally read that article above the debt collector made a few trips, waiting around for a few hours at times, so the costs could quickly spiral. If you cap what they can reclaim then at what point does it become economically unviable to keep chasing the debt? And in which case, will people realise that if they fob off the debt collector long enough they'll give up?
Just my thoughts, and happy to be proven wrong by those more knowledgeable than myself.
At the end of the day the debt collector needs to be paid for their time, travel, admin, etc. And (unless we renounce capitalism) also make a profit. No idea how much their costs actually are, but from what I remember when I originally read that article above the debt collector made a few trips, waiting around for a few hours at times, so the costs could quickly spiral. If you cap what they can reclaim then at what point does it become economically unviable to keep chasing the debt? And in which case, will people realise that if they fob off the debt collector long enough they'll give up?
Just my thoughts, and happy to be proven wrong by those more knowledgeable than myself.
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