How to Make Extra Income as a Courier Driver

Even if you're happily employed elsewhere for the better part of the week, if you drive your own vehicle and have at least 12 hours of spare time, you can easily work as a part-time courier driver and earn a tidy bit of extra money.

The Freedom to Choose

The great thing about working as a part-time courier driver is you’re basically your own boss. Although your client or customer is technically your "boss" for every job you take on, the freedom of choice lies in terms of whether you’re willing to work or not. You can actually work as little or as much as you want—here we speak of your ‘outside your regular work’ schedule—depending on how energetic you feel on that particular day or if you have some extra bills to pay. What’s more, you can set your own rates—the longer you do the business and the more clients you satisfy, the higher rate you can command.

An abundance of Delivery Jobs

Those who work as a part-time courier driver don't have to scour the streets looking for a parcel to deliver. Thanks to the Internet, finding customers or clients and establishing a long-term relationship with a few good ones has become relatively easy—you only have to sign up to online exchange sites to find people whose needs match the services you offer. Furthermore, you can identify who needs a parcel delivered in a particular area, the time frame or deadline for delivery, and even read up some feedback to help you determine if a client is easy to work with or not. Websites like this can even help you decide if you want to take things further—if there is much potential for growth in your area, why not take the business to another level and go full time?

Sheer Simplicity

Working as a courier driver is not rocket science—you only do what you have been doing every day, which is drive from point A to point B. For example a local chocolate shop needs someone to deliver its boxed special chocolate treats for a customer and, being a small business, it does not have its own in-house driver—they can call you to do the job! A legal firm may need to deliver some time-sensitive documents to court in a hurry and, again, an independent like you would be perfect for the job.

Pick up, deliver, be reliable—these are the keys. If you can do this always on or ahead of time then all the better; you'll earn more and more clients who will come to trust you. In fact, the simplicity of this business and the ease of accomplishing delivery-related tasks mean the job attracts many entrepreneurial drivers who use the part-time aspect to test the long-term viability of offering such a service. If they find it works for them, they may decide to set up a full-time delivery service in this always-burgeoning industry.

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.