Three Top Untapped Areas of Business for Couriers

Aside from passively conducting your delivery business (you set up shop and wait for customers), you can also actively seek out and engage with certain business areas that can help you earn consistently and lucratively. As a good, disciplined courier driver who respects their customers and values the concept of punctuality, you can dip your arm in these areas to enhance your company’s profitability.

Delivery of Court Filings

The filing of legal documents usually has tight, same-day deadlines, and serving this area requires a highly disciplined courier driver who can follow all the rules without being told and be resourceful regarding finding the best routes on the road. This is so because courthouses do not have either the manpower or time to send out and handle the documents themselves, and they need to outsource the delivery on a regular basis—daily, in fact. The large number of clients in this business area includes legal firms—the large ones with dozens of lawyers in them usually have to send out hundreds of legal documents each day—and these documents must be treated with utmost care. Drivers serving this particular area must also know the local requirements regarding the legal documents—whether they needed to be stamped, filed, or returned to the sender within a set time frame.

Passport Delivery

Another excellent area of business that can keep many a courier driver busy day in and day out is the processing of passports. Catering to the needs of those who want their passports processed and delivered can work both ways: you can pick up the passport requirements (proof of identity, police or security clearances, appropriate photos) and deliver them to the designated government agency (usually the foreign Affairs Office or its equivalent), or you can seal an agreement with the passport-issuing agency to have you pick up the finished passports and deliver them to customers. This is actually a highly lucrative business area as thousands of people every single day have their passports processed or renewed, and this is the kind of steady business most delivery companies will vie to get their foot in.

Serving the Consulate

Similar to passport deliveries, catering to the daily needs of the consulates in your area of operation can enable you to quickly turn in a profit, especially if your courier driver knows all the routes and shortcuts and is proficient in the use of GPS-enabled navigation devices. Consulates process a lot of documents and most have deliveries that must be picked up and taken to recipients several times each day. What’s more, as different documents bear different levels of priority, you can also differentiate the services you offer—from rush one-day deliveries to direct service deliveries. You will need to be thoroughly familiar with the consulates in your area of operation, especially in matters of processing and accuracy.

Norman Dulwich is a correspondent for Courier Exchange, the world's largest neutral trading hub for same day courier driver jobs in the express freight exchange industry. Over 2,500 transport exchange businesses are networked together through their website, trading courier jobs and capacity in a safe 'wholesale' environment.

Writer and Online Marketing Manager in London.